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'It was awful, and after he coughed, he cried'

COVID continues to plague Jubilee Lodge patients and their families
17 Jubilee Lodge
The Jubilee Lodge is seen in a Citizen file photo.

COVID is showing no signs it will stop creating nightmares for hospital patients, their families and friends, and medical staff at University Hospital of Northern BC struggling to keep the pandemic from worsening.

For weeks now, Virginia Jenkins has been driving her friend, an elderly lady, to Jubilee Lodge at UHNBC so the woman can visit her husband, an 83-year-old man with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. As a resident of the 66-bed facility the man became infected with the virus two weeks ago but is showing signs he might live through it.

“He was up in his wheelchair (Sunday) and he had a cough that you would not even want to hear, it was awful, and after he coughed, he cried,” said Jenkins, a retired pediatric nurse.

“He’s making it through, so far. He was up in his wheelchair eating. He’s at 14 days now and if he makes it 20 days they say that’s a pretty good sign that he’ll survive it.”

Not everybody has been so fortunate.

Two more Jubilee residents died in the pandemic over the past two days, raising the death toll to 14, as the outbreak that continues. Since the outbreak was first announced Dec. 12, 48 of the 66 residents and 11 staff at Jubilee have tested positive for COVID-19.

Jenkins said she can’t understand how rampant the virus has been at Jubilee and how hard it has been to keep people from becoming infected despite all the precautions in place.

“I just can’t figure out how 60 people would test positive, what is wrong, it’s just so sad,” said Jenkins.

“I mean, I never thought I’d be thankful that my husband’s dead, and not in a facility. I’ve heard some of the workers are refusing to come to work, but I have no proof of that. The hospital has always been tight-lipped about talking about anything like that.”

Jenkins, 77, has been retired as a nurse on the children’s ward since 1990. Her husband Wayne, a Prince George real estate agent for 35 years, had Alzheimer’s and died four years ago. She cared for him as well as his parents, who also suffered with the disease.

“I went from pediatrics to geriatrics,” she said.

“I have spent a lot of time in hospital and care facilities and as an Alzheimer’s wife you get to meet a lot of other Alzheimer’s wives and most of their husbands are in care facilities.

“It’s one of the clubs you don’t want to belong to.”

Jenkins’s friend, who is visually impaired and can no longer drive, was told her husband would likely die of COVID and as a result the hospital eased her visitation limitations. He lives at Jubilee in a room with three other patients, all of whom are infected.

“I bought some N-95 masks and I take her in my car and she wears her mask and I wear my mask,” said Jenkins. “She can get in but I can’t. They meet her at the door and it’s only by appointment that you can get that far. They take her into an office right inside the main door at Jubilee and she takes off her coat and has to leave her purse and they gown her, put a hat and gloves on her and, I think, the booties. They completely dress her up and they take her to his room.

“He’s in the same room he’s always been a four-bed room and there’s three other guys with COVID and him. She goes in and sits in a cesspool for an hour. But he knows that she’s there, so she goes.”

If and when the man shows he has recovered, Jenkins says her friend will go back to a routine of only visiting him once per week, the same protocol that was in place before the outbreak was declared.

“For months she wasn’t allowed to go in at all,” said Jenkins. “Then when they started the visiting coming back they let them come in by appointment and it turned into once every three or four weeks. Then they found there were a lot of people who didn’t have anybody who wanted to come to visit so she was able to come once a week, but with COVID, not at all, until they thought he was going to die about a week ago.”

Northern Health spokesperson Eryn Collins confirmed the two new deaths at Jubilee and that there have been no new positive cases among the patients of the facility, which is at the south end of the UHNBC building, closest to 15th Avenue.

“There is some good news on the Jubilee front, we’re still at 48 cases and 22 of those are deemed to have recovered,” said Collins.

“Usually somebody who tests positive for COVID, they would self-isolate for the pre-requisite 14 days, there would be a period of time since their symptoms have resolved and then public health declares them recovered and releases from self-isolation because they’re no longer infectious.

“With more complex cases, like anyone in a long-term care facility would potentially be, rather than follow just a standard number of days, they do an individual assessment based on the course of the person’s illness to make doubly and triply sure there’s no potential to further transmit illness and they’ve done all that for the 48 cases. Over the coming weeks and days more people will be cleared from that and determined to be recovered.”