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The interview almost never happened. But thank God he did.
It is one of the most compelling and powerful accounts of the devastating impact of COVID-19 in a nursing home I’ve heard.
Bridgitte Caner has dedicated her life to care work. It is difficult, emotionally and physically exhausting.
Bridgitte says the staff were tired and scared
But nothing could have prepared Bridgitte for the devastation she was about to experience.
“I have cared for over 30 years, (but) never in my entire life have I seen anything like this,” he said as he began to tell me about the trauma he had inflicted on him.
We had been filming at a day center for adults with learning disabilities to make a movie about the challenges facing social care.
I was told that Bridgitte wanted to be interviewed, wanted to tell her story, but wasn’t sure if the report we were working on should go over what had happened in nursing homes, a story that has been told throughout this crisis. of health.
But Bridgitte had traveled a lot to meet us and she didn’t want to let her down.
We lined up two chairs in a now disused theater at the other end of the building, drew the black curtains, brought her into focus, and she began.
The house stopped receiving visitors when the pandemic struck.
“We knew there was a virus,” he said. “Everyone was on fire. We thought it would spread like wildfire, and it did.
“As soon as the first case was discovered, we closed the doors and detained all visitors. Obviously, staff kept coming and going. Unfortunately, many of our residents end up having COVID.”
Despite the best efforts of the staff, it was only a matter of time before the silent and invisible killer found his way into the house and infected the first resident.
This was in March. Bridgitte and her colleagues had been watching in horror as the pandemic spread across the country.
They knew that the virus would affect the elderly and the most vulnerable; the residents in your care at Birchwood Care Home in Newbury, Berkshire.
“You couldn’t see it coming,” he said. “It didn’t matter what you did or how you tried to avoid it. We followed government guidelines with the use of PPE (personal protective equipment). We kept people isolated, but obviously he went in and took quite a few residents.”
Thirteen residents died of coronavirus
I understood now. Bridgitte didn’t want to just tell me her story. She necessary to tell me.
This anguish, this pain that has been carrying her all this time, had to come out. It was important for people to know the impact COVID had had on them and on all the other caregivers who were struggling with its burden.
“It was chaos,” he continued. “One fell, then another. We were tired, we were afraid, we felt lost. No matter what you were doing, you kept losing people.
“Obviously people weren’t coming in, so you’re sitting holding someone’s hand. You were going home at night, you come back, and you’ve lost three more.”
The isolation of dying alone without the tender comfort of a family member makes COVID-19 doubly cruel. It robs loved ones of the opportunity to say goodbye. Bridgitte was determined not to allow this to happen to the residents in her care.
“I took his hand. I took his hand. I’m not going to let anyone I care die for themselves,” he told me.
I asked him if they knew. “Did you understand”?
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “There were people crying, saying just let me die. I don’t want to be here.
“Some had gone further, there was no response as I comforted them. Hearing them cry, hearing their breathing change.”
Bridgitte says the staff became the family of the residents.
Up to this point in the interview, Bridgitte had managed to stick together. It was an account charged with emotions. But the memories came back and she broke down.
Crying now, Bridgette told me that her residents were more than people she cared about.
“We became like his family,” he said. “Some of us spent more time at work than at home. We took care of them as if they were our own. It was like losing ours. Day after day.”
The nursing home lost a quarter of its residents to the pandemic. Thirteen vulnerable lives taken by a relentless virus.
“I was taking care of three gentlemen who were all serious, seriously very bad,” Bridgitte explained.
“Hearing someone suffocate. You know … and clear their throat. Get hot, delirious. Cry. And then come back the next morning and all three were gone. It’s just …”
Bridgitte says she’s afraid another coronavirus wave is coming
His voice trailing off mid-sentence. He gathers himself, rubs his tear-soaked eyes with the palms of his hands, and then tries to make me understand the difficulty of breaking the news of death to a loved one.
She said: “I had to tell a lady that her partner had passed away. We thought he was getting better, the youngest man in the house. I gave him his medicine in the morning, I left and then they told me he was gone.
“She didn’t speak English. Hearing her scream and cry … I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Bridgitte’s sense of grief is shared by her colleagues and Birchwood Care Home staff, and the same sense of loss will be felt in nursing homes across the country.
Bridgitte has been incredibly courageous in sharing her grief with us so that we can begin to understand the trauma experienced by caregivers everywhere.
But she is, understandably, terrified of having to relive her ordeal.
“I have cared for more than 30 years,” he said. “Never in my entire life have I seen anything like this.
“You have scars and fear. Another (wave) is coming. We are better prepared (but) it will come back. I don’t want to go through that again.”
