I am trying to create a groundswell of public outcry and change regarding the inhumane policies being implemented in hospitals and nursing homes that ban family members from bedsides. Virtually every family in America has been touched by these harmful policies, and they must end. Thousands of our family members have suffered and died alone in hospitals and nursing homes while we were forced to be isolated from them, while agonizing alone ourselves. We, the family members of the hospitalized and confinees of nursing homes say ENOUGH! I am collecting a body of personal stories. Please share yours, along with your name, with me at 
ChangeThePolicies@gmail.com
Here is my story.

Somethin’s Gotta Give
 
My dad, a 97 year old machine gunner in WWII, recently had a medical emergency that required a trip to the hospital via EMS. He wears two hearing aids, relies heavily on me to communicate with medical personnel on his behalf, and I have Durable Power of Attorney. You know where I’m going with this, because thousands of you have been through the nightmare that is now the current Covid hospitalization protocol I’m going to describe.
 
At the ER I was told flatly and coldly that I could not see my dad, nor could I wait in the waiting room. If I wished to stay, I must wait in my car. My pleas to help my dad communicate his symptoms and pertinent medical history fell on deaf ears. There was an armed security guard standing by to escort me to my car should I refuse to leave. Clearly, they’ve been to the “How To Deal With Distraught Family Members Training”, and it was sorely lacking in sensitivity and empathy instruction.
 
As I was weeping and praying in my 97 degree car for over two hours without  word from anyone, irony of ironies, a clerk with a clipboard approached  my car. She needed me to fill out my dad’s admitting forms…because he could not.
 
During his 48 hour stay, I was allowed to be with him for three hours. My mom, who suffers from dementia, was frantic, confused, and alone at their assisted living facility, and I was not allowed in to comfort her, either.
 
These same harmful policies are in place at my parents’ assisted living facility, where they have been in lockdown since March 4. They cannot come out, and no one can come in.  They have been isolated from their family members, their pastor and church friends, even their fellow residents. Not a single hug or kiss or touch of a hand, no affection of any kind. For over five months. This begs the question medical, health, and geriatric professionals must ask, “Is it better to die from Covid-19, or from loneliness, despair, and depression?”.
 
We, the family members and advocates for our hospitalized and confinees of nursing homes/assisted living residences say ENOUGH! Even if you have not been disrespected by medical personnel like I was, the documented reality of husbands missing the births of their children, mothers giving birth alone, and tens of thousands of  grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives dying alone as their family members grieve and agonize, isolated from them, is unconscionable and malevolent. Hospital patients and elders have rights and individual liberties that are being egregiously violated and callously ignored by health professionals. Any good physician will readily agree that a patient’s best advocate is a close family member. Additionally, without family members present, monitoring conditions in nursing homes and hospitals, the most valuable source of accountability is removed.
 
If these oppressive and injurious policies, which are wholly arbitrary and enacted by unelected health officials, can only be changed by laws or “mandates”, then we call upon city council members, county council members, and state legislators to act.   We want these rights restored and respected.  If masks work, put them to use for family members of hospital patients and nursing home residents. Mask up, gown up, glove up, and let us in. Anything less is simply inhumane.
 
Sincerely,
 
Ann Hathaway
Wichita, KS