ORLANDO, Fla. – A traveling memorial of about 300 signs that read “Isolation kills, too” made a stop in Orlando, many of the signs with names and pictures of loved ones who have died in long-term care facilities in the past year.
The signs are traveling across Florida this week ahead of the one-year mark since Florida’s more than 4,000 long term care facilities shut down.
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The event is hosted by the grass-roots group, which started on Facebook, called the Florida Caregivers for Compromise, led by Mary Shannon Daniel. Daniel’s story went viral after she took a job as a dishwasher at her husband’s Jacksonville facility just to be with him.
“It’s really a reminder for people, a visual for people to see in mass,” Daniel said. “Three hundred signs and each one has the name of an individual currently living in isolation or has passed away of isolation in the last year.”
In Orlando on Tuesday morning, Dennis Dulniak was taping a picture of his wife Nancy to a sign that displayed her name. He said his wife died on Jan. 26th of Alzheimer’s, which he believes was exacerbated due to the isolation. The picture he put up was his first visit with her through a window on their 47th wedding anniversary.
“From her perspective, the difficulty she had to connect with me outside this window when before we were together, we could physically hug and hold hands,” Dulniak said.
By the next visit weeks later, he said her health began to deteriorate.
“As she walked out of the facility, she shuffled, she didn’t shuffle before the lockout,” he said. “It took a while for her to understand I was there in a loving capacity and it took several weeks before she finally called me Denis, even with that name, I am not sure she fully understood I was her husband. It was a heartbreaking experience.”
It was a similar experience for Penny Velazquez. On her mom’s sign, she put a picture taken exactly one-year ago Tuesday, on her birthday.
“It says, ‘Happy 94th Heavenly Birthday,’” Velazquez said. “She passed away Aug. 4.”
That was before limited visitation had opened up in long-term care facilities, meaning Velaquez only saw her mom twice before she died.
“I didn’t realize she wasn’t eating that much, it wasn’t until later I found out she lost like 20 pounds,” she said. “I just feel it was the isolation, being in the room all day long. It’s very difficult, I try not to think about it too much. It hurts, I wish I could have done more.”
She said within three months of the lockdown, her mother would call her desperate to see family.
According to a national survey from the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long Term Care, 86% of participants said they saw a decline in their loved one’s mental health during the lockdown.
It’s why Daniel and other families across Florida are hoping the signs bring awareness to allow for less restrictions and more opportunities for loved ones to reunite.
“It’s about awareness. We want people to know it’s been a year and we want people to know there are still people in skilled nursing facilities and in rehab who have not touched their loved one in a year,” she said. “We have had one year of this, everyone has gotten their shots and we want to know what is coming next.”
According to the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees long-term care facilities, though the vaccine rollout is happening, there has been no changes to the visitation policy or the executive order on visitation in the state.
“We have not had an update in the visitation policy. The state continually monitors and analyzes the situation in long-term care facilities across the state. At this time, we remain focused on providing vaccines for staff and residents at these facilities and any future changes to visitation policies will be publicly announced and made through existing emergency rules,” the agency said in an email.
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