I never planned to keep these daily posts going so long. What started as venting became a tool to help me process, and at some point, it occurred to me that there would be some value in documenting my experience in real time, rather than waiting to construct a narrative out of it after the fact. If you’ve stuck with me all this time, thank you. This whole business of forced redeployments will be such a small footnote in the history of Quebec’s COVID-19 response, but I hope it doesn’t get forgotten. It’s always interesting to think about how current events will be judged in retrospect. Was it a strong, unpopular but decisive action that ultimately brought the crisis to heel? Or yet another example of government taking advantage of an emergency to violate personal freedoms? Did it solve or create more problems in the long term? Those are questions that remain to be answered (although I have some guesses). What about me, was *I* ok with all this? The answer to that is still no. I...
Day 12... Or, Day 1 of my new job! What is it exactly? The doctor says to ask the recreation coordinator, but she’s not in today. I ask the nurse but she’s preoccupied: “I guess you could go talk to people?”, but not right now because breakfast is in progress. I hunt down the social worker to see if she has any ideas. “Oh that’s great,” she says. “Mrs. P is the sister of the resident who died last week. She could use a check-in.” Ok, that got heavy fast. I’m adding social work to my expanding list of qualifications. I find Mrs. P in her room, sitting in her wheelchair. She’s slumped over but when I ask how she’s doing she perks up a bit and smiles sadly. “Oh, you know.” By the standards around here she is very coherent, although she chides herself for forgetting names and details. “You know, I never thought my sister would go like that. I went to see her, she recognized me but she couldn’t talk. She’s younger than me. I always thought she’d be the last one. I could have gone first...
The army is here! Veterans of international Ebola missions are now feeding seniors in Quebec nursing homes. That’s not a sentence I ever thought I would write. It’s an unusually busy morning as the staff scramble to set up for and train the 7 medics who are now helping nurses and PABs on the floors. With the extra help, the situation seems to be increasingly coming under control. The patients today seem to be largely stable and even improving (even though we know that can change quickly). Lunch for the staff was generously donated by the family of a resident. The sun is shining. Overall, today was a good day. Day 10
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