Perspectives and Suggestions
On one of my first visits to my cousin Leslie I found a sign on the front door of her memory care home that read, “Quarantine in place. No visitors allowed. We appreciate your cooperation.”
As I read this handwritten sign, I had a flash of apprehension, not just for Leslie and the other people inside, but for myself. And, had someone opened the door and offered to make an exception for me, I probably would not have taken it. Quarantine, to my way of thinking, was warranted only in dire circumstances, the kind where people could catch a disease that could kill them. If I couldn’t save anyone else by going inside, why would I put myself at that kind of risk?
One thing that I didn’t fully realize at the time, is that nursing homes, assisted living centers, and care facilities for people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia give greater attention to the possibility of contagion and epidemics than the rest of us do. The same is true for cruise ships, boarding schools, prisons, refugee camps, residential hotels, and conference centers. Wherever large numbers of people are spending days and nights together, a contagious disease or infestation might transfer rapidly from one person to another and put everyone at risk. A quarantine–of those afflicted from those who are not– is a routine strategy for keeping that from happening, or at least slowing the pace at which it does.
Another thing I didn’t have in mind that day was that some people living in close quarters might be much more vulnerable than others, and some of most vulnerable, in fact, might die. Whenever that possibility exists, quarantine becomes an essential strategy for trying not just to minimize suffering, but to keep everyone alive.
A third thing I didn’t understand at the time was that I could be the threat that Leslie’s memory care home was trying to guard against by instituting the quarantine. And indeed, as I learned more about the particular circumstances of the day I visited, that seemed more and more the case. Yes, several residents had come down with a particularly nasty flu. But a similar flu was reportedly passing through the general population at the same time. To control contagion within Kairos, people who had symptoms were segregated from those who did not. To control contagion from the outside, visitors were told to stay away. And so I did.
A fourth thing I didn’t fully realize until encountering this quarantine, was that if we couldn’t see each other face-to-face, there was nothing in place that would enable me to communicate with Leslie, nor her with me. She was unable to place calls or answer a phone. She could not access her mail through the individual lock box near the central office. She was not “on line” through email, text, or any of the increasingly popular social media apps. And if I left a message for her at the office, I had no confidence that it could, or would be communicated to her as I would have liked.
Recognizing that Leslie and I could not stay in touch with each other during a quarantine at Kairos prefigures the challenges many people face in trying to stay in touch with each other through the Corona virus pandemic and shelter in place restrictions. In both cases, routine connections are interrupted in ways that restrict movement and increase isolation. In both cases, individuals have to look to other forms of social life and other kinds of movement to sustain their existing relationships.
For people living independently through the Corona virus pandemic and shelter in place restrictions, those other forms have included new protocols for “getting together” safely and a rich array of digital and mediated channels of communication. The latter include opportunities for sending messages via email, text and within-application messaging programs; real-time video communication through FaceTime, Whatsap, Zoom and other programs; joint participation in online network, gaming, and interest group platforms; and collaborative work through individual applications or complementary programs.
For people in most nursing homes and memory care facilities, the primary purpose of new social protocols is to ensure the safety of residents, not enrich their social life. And the channels of mediated communication that people on the outside are harnessing to enrich their own social life are, by and large, unavailable and inaccessible to individual residents or care-givers.
With these residence-side deficits in mind, trying to stay in touch with family members and friends living in nursing homes and memory care facilities requires that we think creatively, use existing channels of communication as fully as possible, and do what we can to create additional channels–especially those that can convey voice and image messaging as well as text. The following suggestions along those lines have come my way. They are presented here on an interim basis and will be updated as I explore them in more detail.
STAYING IN TOUCH DURING A QUARANTINE
For residents who DO NOT HAVE or cannot use a personal phone, iPad or tablet:
– Cards and Letters: Revise the frequency, schedule, and content of cards you mail to make up for the missing visits and other contact.
– Safe On-site Visiting Spaces: Offer to help care staff and administrators establish a “safe visiting space” where visitors and residents could see each other (and, ideally, talk to each other) at a safe distance and/or on the other side of a glass window or door.
– Group Tablet for Incoming Calls/Text: Offer to assist nursing home administrators and care staff in setting up an iPad or tablet that could be moved around from one resident to another to receive incoming calls, text messages or email for individual residents.
For residents who DO HAVE and can use a personal phone, iPad or tablet:
– Telephone Calls: Revise frequency and content of phone calls to make up for missing visits and other kinds of contact
– Text Messaging/Email: Increase frequency and range of content (with residents who are adept and equipped for that).
– Online Games/Pastime: Play an online game with a resident that each of you can respond to at your own pace (card games, Words with Friends, etc).
– Share Images of Your Daily Life: Take and send a photo every day or two of something you’ve seen or done to help a resident follow what you’ve been up to. [Photos can be sent directly as attachments to text and email or through a social media platform that you could both access, such as Instagram, Facebook, etc.)
– Pursue a Joint Photo Project: Take and send photos on a theme of interest to the person you want to stay in touch with (e.g. neighborhood trees, flowers in bloom, walks you’ve taken together in the past, or new neighborhoods you can explore through photos you take for both of you, and so on).