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It’s my mother’s birthday today. Back in May we were going to take her for lunch for Mother’s Day, but weren’t able to owing to the first lockdown. The hope was that we could take her for lunch today for her birthday instead, but that isn’t going to happen now due to lockdown number two. In actual fact, I’m not sure that she’s really up to it now anyway. She’s become very forgetful and physically she’s not walking very well, even when using a walker. She really struggled when we took her to the dentist a couple of weeks ago.
When she first moved there, her walking improved because meals were served in the communal dining room and she had to walk there, but now for safety reasons, meals are being served in residents’ rooms, so she is not as mobile.
Around 40 nursing homes in Melbourne have COVID-19 infections, which is really scary and two nursing homes in country Victoria are infected as well. These outbreaks are due to the large number of casual staff in these settings who move from venue to venue. That is owing to long standing federal policies that have created job insecurity and large numbers of casual workers across many sectors. Some measures are now being taken now to address this issue, at least in nursing homes. Too late for some.
On Friday a friend of mine told me about his elderly aunt who was diagnosed with COVID-19 last week and sadly passed away in a nursing home a few days after contracting the virus.
Fortunately, my mother’s care home is not affected, so far. We were going to visit her today for her birthday, but given the level of community transmission of this virus, we felt it was better not to go. The facility hasn’t stopped visitors from attending, but recent correspondence from them, and a recent announcement from Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, have both said they are one step away from that measure, so we decided to be cautious.
Instead, we phoned. I wished her a happy birthday. She said, ‘Oh, it is? How old am I?’ I told her she was 84, and she laughed and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry I asked.’ We both laughed. It’s great that she’s in good spirits. We’ll visit her again when the situation improves. Hopefully, that will be soon. Another 275 cases of coronavirus were recorded in Victoria overnight.