‘All these people are helpless’

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This article was published 08/11/2020 (1546 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There were never enough staff, families say. Not even back when things were “normal,” before COVID-19 ripped through the Maples Personal Care Home in an outbreak that has now caused 22 deaths.

So when the pandemic struck and staff confessed being under desperate pressure, at least one family member fought to get help.

On Oct. 30, a week before paramedics were called to what one whistleblower described as a “nightmare” scene, Joann Kubas called Manitoba Health Minister Cameron Friesen’s office, trying to alert the minister about what a Maples nurse had told her about a critical staff shortage and asking him to call in the Red Cross.

Kubas, whose mother-in-law Rose Kubas, 77, has lived at Maples since last December, left several messages with Friesen’s office.

On the last attempt, she said she would go to the media if she didn’t receive a response. Finally, on Friday morning, a staffer from the minister’s office called her back with an update.

“They told me they had somebody go into the Maples and check things out and there were ‘deficiencies,’” Kubas recalls.

“I said, ‘do you mind me asking, deficiencies of what?’ They said ‘staffing. They were short-staffed…’ They were well aware that there was an issue. Anybody watching the news would have been well aware.”

“If a building was on fire in the city of Winnipeg, would we wait two weeks for the Red Cross to be brought in?”

Within 24 hours of that call, all of Manitoba would know the crisis the facility was facing, after a post on social media site Reddit revealed how paramedics had been called to the home on Friday night. In a news conference on Sunday morning, Friesen said the situation at the Maples had changed “quickly.”

In fact, some family members say, the situation is both critical, but also a long time in the making.

On Sunday, the Free Press spoke with seven family members of Maples residents about their experience at the nursing home, both before and during COVID-19. Many shared similar experiences: frail seniors left languishing amidst staffing pressure. A shortage of communication that grew far worse during the pandemic.

There were positive experiences, too. Kubas says her family was thrilled with staff who worked with her mother: they are “like family,” she said, and her mother loves them. And when Lisa Prost’s father, Murray Balagus, first moved in a few years ago, he loved his room and seemed to be doing well in the environment.

But after he broke his hip and began using a wheelchair, Prost grew more concerned. She would sometimes find her dad hungry and dehydrated, or simply left without companionship for long periods of time. She and her brother visited daily to make sure he was fed, after another visitor told them staff sometimes rushed food at him and walked away.

“There were times where I’d be visiting my dad and he’d just reek from being in a soiled diaper,” Prost says. “I would talk to (an executive), she’d say ‘Lisa, our hands are tied, we don’t have enough people to do everything you expect us to do for your dad.’ They just don’t have enough care.”

Then came the COVID-19 outbreak. That severed the chance for some families to be present with their relative and advocate in-person for their care. Now, they’re left to check on their loved one through a window, or to make calls to verify how the resident is doing — calls which, amidst the outbreak, have often gone unanswered.

“He’s helpless, I’m helpless, all these people are helpless. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what kind of care they’re getting. I was there today, my dad was in his bed. Has he been changed? There’s nobody there to change him. I can just see his arms, shaking in his bed.”– Lisa Prost is concerned about her father, Murray Balagus, who is a resident at the facility.

Now, every day, Prost goes down to check on her father through his window. Due to a family member’s illness, she’s self-isolating for 14 days and cannot go into the facility to help care for him. She has observed him left alone, staring at a wall and simply rocking in his wheelchair, for long periods with little human contact.

“He’s helpless, I’m helpless, all these people are helpless,” Prost says. “We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what kind of care they’re getting. I was there today, my dad was in his bed. Has he been changed? There’s nobody there to change him. I can just see his arms, shaking in his bed.”

After COVID-19 struck, Alexis Martin also began regularly visiting her mother, Mary Osadchuk, at her ground-floor window. Sometimes, her mother would motion that she was thirsty; Martin would call the home’s front desk, urging staff to make sure her mother had some water or her favourite drink, Diet Pepsi.

Martin was already concerned about the amount of care in the home. Since her mother had been transferred to the Maples in spring, the 95-year-old had grown quieter, and showed signs of being frightened. Now, amidst COVID-19, Martin sometimes saw food trays sitting on the far end of her mother’s long desk, uneaten, with no staff around.

Then, on Saturday morning, Martin got a call: her mother had died in her sleep. She was 95 years old.

In the wake of her death, the family has questions. While her mother had some memory issues and was frail, she was otherwise in good health. The family would like an autopsy to determine the cause of death. And they want to have some answers about what happened to resident care, as the COVID-19 outbreak escalated.

“I don’t want Revera homes to get away with this,” Martin said, as her voice caught in her throat. “The people at Maples, I’m sure they’ve done their best. But they’re not to get away with this. They have all these homes across Canada and all these people are dying… They’re charging the money, but they’re not providing the staff.”

All the family members the Free Press spoke with emphasized that they want to see urgent action. That includes things such as bringing in more staff and doing full medical assessments of residents, many of whom have shown signs of decline over recent months and weeks just due to isolation and lack of social contact.

Prost says she is grateful for the paramedic who made the Reddit post that spurred action to be taken.

“I don’t want my dad to die in there. Not like this,” she says. “They need people in there taking care of these people and consoling them. They need lots of people. Lots. The Red Cross isn’t coming until Friday. Well, how many more are going to die before Friday?

“I know he’s old. I know his time is coming. But it’s coming way faster than it should have, and he doesn’t deserve to sit in a room deteriorating and just rot. Because that’s what’s happening.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca