COVID-19 patient in Florida Keys nursing home tells of nightmare life in isolation
At least 13 residents of a Florida Keys nursing home are in isolation because they either tested positive for the novel coronavirus or they are awaiting test results.
One of them, who has multiple sclerosis and is in a wheelchair, says he has been bathed only once in the past six days and has not been able to brush his teeth in nearly two weeks. Guy Rehmann, 64, says most of his clothes are missing, and he and other residents in isolation have no access to the showers.
“So far, nothing for my toothbrush or my fingernails being clipped,” Rehmann said in a text Wednesday from inside the Crystal Health and Rehab Center on Plantation Key.
A nurse gave him a sponge bath Tuesday night, but the last time he had been bathed before then was six days earlier, he said.
Before he went into isolation, Rehmann had an electric toothbrush that required charging. When workers brought it to him, the battery was dead. He asked for a manual toothbrush, but has yet to get one, he said.
“It’s been more than a week since I brushed my teeth,” Rehmann said.
Jacob Walden, one of the owners of Emerald Healthcare, the company that owns Crystal Health, did not return a phone call and text message seeking comment on Rehmann’s account of his experience inside the nursing home.
Rehmann tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, on May 2 and since then has been in the facility’s wing dedicated to those with the virus.
He said despite the positive result, he is asymptomatic.
He is among more than a dozen residents and five staff members at the nursing home who have tested positive since the Florida Department of Health began mass testing everyone at the 120-bed facility in late April, said Bob Eadie, administrator of the state health department operations in Monroe County..
That was done after two elderly women died there within days of a staff speech therapist testing positive. It turned out, those women did not have COVID-19, but the Health Department ordered all 70 employees and 80 residents tested as a precaution.
After the first round, nine residents, including Rehmann, and one more employee tested positive. Since then, almost all the new cases of COVID-19 in the Florida Keys have come from Crystal Health, the Health Department said.
According to the latest information released by the department. 100 people in Monroe County have tested positive for COVID-19, and three people have died from the virus.
According to the Agency for Health Care Administration, the state agency that regulates nursing homes, the only other nursing home in Monroe County is the Key West Health and Rehabilitation Center on West Junior College Road in Key West. The 120-bed facility does not have any reported COVID-19 cases.
In the meantime, several family members and friends of those inside the Plantation Key facility have complained they have had little contact with their loved ones, and communication from Crystal Health’s management has been lacking.
The state has banned person-to-person visitation at nursing homes and other assisted living facilities since mid-March in an effort to protect residents inside from contracting the novel coronavirus. But the complaints from relatives of Crystal Health residents have been more about not being able to reach their loved ones by phone and a lack of transparency about the coronavirus situation inside.
They also say the facility was understaffed even before the pandemic.
Earlier this month, some friends and relatives staged a protest outside of the nursing home.
One woman, whose father is in his 80s, said Wednesday that she used to do his laundry for him when she could visit. Now that she can’t, it’s up to staff to clean his clothes, and she said it sometimes takes them up to two weeks to run a load of her father’s laundry.
“He was wearing someone else’s clothes,” said the woman, who agreed to speak if her name was not published.
Rehmann made a similar complaint. He said since he’s been in isolation, he’s missing 13 shirts, nearly 20 shorts, three pair of pants and 20 socks.
“It’s just been a fiasco here in terms of getting help,” Rehmann said.
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 8:11 AM.
