MISSION, Kan (AP) – Brian Simmons, owner of the morgue, has undertaken more trips to homes since the pandemic to pick up corpses that need to be cremated and embalmed.
With the devastating communities of COVID-19 in Missouri, its two-man crew regularly arrives at homes in the Springfield area and removes bodies from people who have decided to die at home rather than spend their last days in a nursing home or hospital. where family visits were prohibited during the pandemic.
He understands all too well why people prefer to die at home: his own 49-year-old daughter died of coronavirus just before Christmas in a Springfield hospital, where the family only received phone updates when her condition deteriorated.
“The separation section is really rough, rough,” Simmons said. “My daughter went to the hospital and we saw her once through the glass when they put her on the ventilator, and then we never saw her again, after she died.”
Across the country, patients with deadly diseases – both with COVID-19 and other diseases – make similar decisions and die at home rather than face the frightening scenario of saying goodbye to loved ones behind glass or during video calls.
“What we see with COVID is definitely that patients want to stay at home,” said Judi Lund Person, vice president of compliance at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “They do not want to go to the hospital. They do not want to go to a nursing home. ‘
National hospital organizations report that facilities are seeing an increase in the percentage of patients being cared for at home.
The phenomenon played out at Carroll Hospice in Westminster, Maryland, which saw a 30% to 40% increase in the demand for home care, said Regina Bodnar, executive director. She said avoiding nursing homes and coronavirus risks is the biggest factor behind the increase. ‘
Lisa Kossoudji, who oversees nurses at the Hospice of Dayton in Ohio, took her own mother, now 95, out of their livelihood and made her live with her after the pandemic. She spent weeks without seeing her mother and was worried that her condition was deteriorating because she was confined to her room as the possibility of spreading the virus was spreading.
Her mother, who has a condition that thickens and hardens the walls of the veins in her brain, is now receiving hospital services. Kossoudji sees that the families she serves make similar choices.
“A lot of people bring people home physically, they have a lot of physical problems, whether they have a feeding tube or a trachea, things that an everyday layman would look at and say, ‘Oh well, I can do that,'” she said. “But still they are willing to bring them home because we want to be with them and see them.”
Prior to the pandemic, hospital workers cared for patients dying of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and other terminal illnesses in long-term care facilities and, to a lesser extent, home care facilities. Many families have been reluctant to follow the door-to-door route due to the many logistical challenges, including work schedules and complicated medical needs.
But the pandemic has changed things. People suddenly worked from home and had more time, and they were more comfortable with the home hospital knowing the alternative with a lack of visits to nursing homes.
‘What happened to COVID was that almost everything was on steroids. “Everything happened so fast that family members were suddenly willing to take care of their loved ones at home,” said Carole Fisher, president of the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation. “Everything has accelerated.”
“I’ve heard families say, ‘I can look after my elderly mother very differently now than I could before, because I work from home,'” she added. “And so there’s more togetherness in the family because of COVID.”
However, dying at home is not for everyone. Taking care of the needs of a critically ill family member can mean sleepless nights and extra stress if the pandemic rages.
Karen Rubel recalled that she did not want to take her own 81-year-old mother to the hospital when she had a stroke in September, and then pushed hard to bring her home as soon as possible.
She is president and CEO of Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, which has designated one of its patient clinics for COVID-19.
“I come from where people come from,” she said. “They’re scared.”