New Brunswick’s announcement that hospital visitation can resume has spurred celebration and feelings of relief in those who have been unable to visit sick loved ones.
One of those people is Heidi Hudson, who saw her father at the Saint John Regional Hospital on Saturday afternoon, for the first time in six weeks.
“Everything seems better now,” Hudson said before her visit on Saturday.
“Looking around, things are brighter, life is brighter… it’s like this darkness has been lifted.”
Changes to the orange level of COVID-19 recovery were announced in Friday’s provincial briefing. The update included the resumption of hospital visitation, which previously was only allowed for those in palliative care.
Premier Blaine Higgs said the province hopes to allow visits to long term care homes as well, but that will depend on the ongoing vaccination effort.
“Visits to hospital patients will be permitted with public health measures in place, if the facility has the capacity to allow this under their operational plan. We will work with each facility to ensure this is possible,” Higgs said.
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For Horizon facilities, visitation went into effect at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Hudson’s 75-year-old father Douglas has been in-and-out of hospital with several different health issues for a long time. He was recently medically discharged, but is remaining in hospital while waiting for a spot in a nursing home.
The transition has not been easy on her father, Hudson said, compounded by the fact that he has had to undergo much of it without visits from family.
“To hear him suffering and to get those calls where he’s crying and he doesn’t want to be there… It seemed so inhumane to me.”
The feelings of helplessness and frustration led Hudson to post on Facebook about the situation, where she received an outpouring of support and stories from those in similar circumstances.
“My father has been locked away alone in the Saint John Regional and calls me crying every day saying that he is so alone and doesn’t want to live anymore. Because he is not in Palliative Care he is not allowed to have visitors; even though we rarely have any new COVID cases in New Brunswick,” she wrote in the post, which has since been updated.
Douglas Hudson is a Navy veteran, and wasn’t long before fellow veterans began to send well-wishes, and candy to his hospital room.
Heidi said her father is a fairly well known character of uptown Saint John, as a frequent visitor of the city market, with distinctive facial hair.
“He’s embedded in Saint John,” Hudson said.
“He’s the one who comes uptown with a big handlebar mustache and a cane and just wants to talk to everybody and be social.”
As she prepared to leave for the hospital for the long awaited visit, there’s no doubt Douglas was waiting with anticipation.
“I called him yesterday morning when the decision was made and said ‘I’m going to be able to visit you’ and he just giggled with delight,” Hudson said.
“He said: ‘That’ll be great dear, I’ll save you some candy.'”
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