My father dies of Covid – a reflection

Little did I expect at the beginning of the Covid pandemic that my own father would succumb to this virus. But just over a week ago, he died in hospital of Covid-19 related pneumonia.

This was given on the death certificate as the primary cause of death. Being an 83 year-old, there were other underlying conditions including COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), gradual onset of dementia and E.coli, which he’d more than likely contracted in the care home – leading to his collapse.

My father had been a heavy smoker up until ten years ago but giving up had given him a new lease of life. However, his lungs were impaired and in 2012, he’d punctured one of them falling off a ladder.

Two weeks before his death, he collapsed at the care home where he’d been resident for nearly two years. Those of you with elderly parents or other relatives know only too well that the final years are punctuated with repeat falls and trips to hospital. But this time, I sensed it was a lot more serious. Though I didn’t know he had Covid.

Covid at the care home

The virus had ripped through the care home with 32 staff and residents being infected in a four month period from October 2020 to January 2021. I was eventually rung in January to be informed of this by the care home manager.

It also emerged that the GP (family doctor) was unwilling to give vaccinations on site for at least four weeks. However, the GP then relented and my father received his first Covid jab a week before collapsing.

What amazes and frankly distresses me about the care home situation generally is the refusal of about 20% of care home staff nationally to be vaccinated for ‘cultural’ and – yes, believe it or not – ‘medical’ reasons. Think about this – staff refusing to be vaccinated and then looking after your loved ones. I call that negligence.

At the hospital, he displayed all the signs of Covid infection but there was some uncertainty at the outset. However, a swab test came out positive after he’d been there for a week.

In the days that followed, he seemed to be resisting the worst of the virus. So much so that medical staff thought he could be transferred to an intermediate facility and then sent back to the care home. The E.Coli was presenting the great challenge and the difficulty he was experiencing with swallowing food. But my father seemed to be defeating the Covid virus.

This turned out to be very wrong.

DISCOVER: Covid today and TB yesterday – diseases in history

That turnaround moment

A week to ten days after being in hospital, the information given from the ward led us, as a family, to believe that he’d displayed once more what we called his ‘bounceability’. Time and again, the old man had looked ashen-faced and positively deathly only to claw his back to the land of the living.

So, we seemed set for another bounce.

The only thing I’d noticed was his dementia getting a little worse. This manifested itself in various vaguely paranoid ideas involving shadowy conspiracies against him. All pretty standard stuff I’m afraid to say. But it was still possible to engage him in rational conversation once you got through some initial nonsense.

What started to overturn the optimism were the daily reports to me by the doctors that indicated the antibiotics weren’t working and that he was becoming more delirious. I was assured, though, that the objective was still to get him back to the level he’d been in when he was admitted to hospital. Not perfect – but stable.

However, on the Sunday evening before his death a new doctor came on the line and asked me whether I fully appreciated the seriousness of my father’s condition. I was flabbergasted. I knew the antibiotics hadn’t been working and that he’d ingested material into his lungs.

But now I was told that if I wanted to come on to the ward and see him, Covid restrictions would be lifted. That could only mean one thing. I asked for some candour. And I got it. The doctor told me that the problem with swallowing was linked to the dementia – he was forgetting how to do this basic human task.

He’d now developed ‘aspiration pneumonia’ and was not conscious. In combination with his underlying conditions, it was doubtful he’d make the night.

But then he did.

All through Monday my father clung on. His breathing now becoming the classic ‘death rattle’. And even though he wasn’t particularly religious, I agreed to a chaplain giving last rites. I’m an atheist myself but the thought of him being entirely alone in his final hours overrode that consideration. A bit of ritual and company seemed right.

There are many awful decisions to make as the clock ticks to the end of a life. The doctor posed the question to me – do we try and cure or do we manage the situation? I opted to manage the situation knowing full well that there was no cure. A Rubicon had been crossed in health terms.

He died at 01:20am on Tuesday morning. As agreed, I was phoned. Amazingly, I’d fallen asleep. But then found myself at my desk emailing family, writing death notices for the newspapers and even, I kid you not, amending the Ancestry.com website. The things you do to stay sane in that moment!

Within 48 hours, I had the death certificate in my hand with Covid-19 related pneumonia as the primary cause of death and COPD as the secondary.

Already, I’d had to deal with funeral arrangements. We’d decided, because of Covid, for my father to go directly from the care home to a crematorium and the ashes to be delivered to my home. Then later in the year, we’d have a service when the pandemic had lifted.

Now, I had to redirect the undertakers to the hospital. And then discovered that because of a Covid backlog, my father wouldn’t be cremated for nearly a month. So, suddenly, I was having to find out where his body would be kept. Whose fridge? The hospital to begin with – and then the crematorium – it turned out.

Disconnects in the health service

I’m a huge supporter of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. But those of you who’ve had to process your ageing loved ones through the system – will have lost your rose-tinted spectacles on the way. I should mention that both my parents worked in the NHS – my mother in a psychiatric hospital for thirty years. So we were an NHS family!

The plus sides of the NHS include having access to top medical care from paramedics, nurses and doctors free of charge. I was having lunch with my father when he had a stroke in 2018. The ambulance arrived promptly and the London hospital brought him back from the brink.

The staff were amazing and selfless. And I would say the same of the doctors in my father’s last few days. Always keen to update and keep me informed. Plus a pleasant and understanding manner.

So what about the downsides?

Well, the inability to share data in the NHS is mind boggling. With my mother, she would turn up from the care home (with advanced dementia) for a hospital appointment, after developing cervical cancer, and another hospital or the GP wouldn’t have sent her file in advance.

This wasn’t a one off. And it begs the question – can’t all this data be shared on these curious modern devices called computers?

I was also asked on two occasions – in an ambulance after my father had suffered a stroke and a week before my father died when he was in hospital – whether my father was allergic to penicillin. Now, I knew he was. But I bet a lot of people might not be able to answer that question.

Why on earth don’t we have a central database with this information accessible via our NHS numbers? Answer: because some people think it would infringe our civil liberties. So the next time you’re given an antibiotic that takes you to death’s door – thank your local libertarians.

Care homes

If we’d got my father into sheltered accommodation earlier, it would have been a godsend. But he’d experienced several falls at the home he’d lived in for fifty years, most of them with my mother. The GP’s records showed these falls and no sheltered accommodation provider would accept him. So – he had to go straight into a residential care home with nursing care.

The cost – about £1500 a week. Goodbye savings! I can only liken it to pulling a plug on his bank account. And for a man who saved diligently and was terrified of going overdrawn, he protested furiously at paying out this money. But we prevailed on him as a family that he should have the best even though it was our inheritances going up in flames.

From Spanish flu to Covid

After my mother died in 2016, I’d got my father involved with Ancestry.com. We opened an account and I began to plunder his grey cells for details on the family. And what a mine of information he turned out to be! In fact, he’d been doing a whole load of research for years as well as being able to churn out names and stories from memory.

At the time, he was at the very early stages of dementia. I’d certainly recommend something like family tree research as a great way to engage those whose brains are at risk of degenerating. Apart from anything else, I became totally addicted to Ancestry.com as we made some amazing discoveries together. So, keeping him mentally active wasn’t a chore – but good fun.

One of the things we uncovered were relatives who died of diseases like tuberculosis and the dreaded Spanish flu. The latter was the Covid equivalent of the years immediately following the First World War. My grandfather’s sister was one of those who sadly died of Spanish flu aged 29.

Final thoughts

This Covid pandemic has taken us all on quite a journey. Not a physical one but into our own minds and our closest relationships. I had no expectation that it would claim my father. And I’ve seen friends and acquaintances contract Covid but mercifully pull through. But it’s changed all of us.

How we emerge from this horror is anybody’s guess. I used to worry that every day would be like the next until the grave. Now, I’m craving normality and routine stuff like going for a walk, shopping and popping down the pub.

In recent years, digital strategists blathered about the virtue of ‘disruption’. You don’t hear so much of that anymore. But the virus has disrupted us. In our families, Covid has robbed us of loved ones. In our communities, it’s blighted the prospects of the young. And in our wider societies, it’s devastated entire sectors like retail and hospitality.

Covid came to visit me this month – and now I’m mourning a much loved father.