DEAR EDITOR:

This is wrong, if I understand this correctly. I cried tears of joy thinking my 15 minutes-a-day window visits could now be 30 minutes each day inside. Now I am in tears again, of sadness, as it appears it’s 30 minutes a week. This is crazy!

My mom, 93, is rapidly approaching the end her life. At the start of this virus, she was in assisted-living and the life of the party. Isolation rapidly exacerbated an unnatural decline. On Aug. 20 I had my mother transported to the hospital to see if there was something we could do about her decline. She spent 10 days in the hospital, and I was with her 12 hours a day the whole time.

When she left the hospital, she could not go back to assisted-living and had to enter the nursing home. Her frame of mind was so much better during her stay in the hospital because I was with her. Now, after 14 days quarantine and only window visits, she again is in a decline. I just received a phone call from the facility telling me she had fallen, that they cannot calm her down and will be starting a new medication to try to help her. I could hear her screaming in the background (in agitation, not pain). You cannot imagine my feelings of desperation. I am so upset right now, through my tears I am contacting everyone I can think of looking for help.

Please, I need your help. She needs your help. Don’t let her last weeks be in isolation.

This isn’t a joke. This isn’t funny. This is cruel.

I truly am the only one who can calm her down, and I can’t get near her. Until November 2019 I had been the only person she had been with that whole time. Even then, I was with her daily for long periods of time to help her settle into this type of living, constantly promising I would never leave her alone.

I think one of everyone’s greatest fears about growing old is being left alone in a nursing home. Now that is coming true. The patients don’t care that we were told we couldn’t visit. They just know their worst nightmare has come true.

If a hospital allows one person to stay with that patient, why can’t nursing homes do the same? If the workers can work because they passed a COVID-19 test, why can’t a family member be there to assist? They actually had me do that in the assisted-living because they were so concerned about what was happening with my mom, as well as others.

SUE DENNIS

Warren