At Petaluma senior care home, pandemic is ever present

When Kelly Eriksen makes his weekly trips to the grocery store, he expects a few sideways glances.

More than eight months into the pandemic, most of his fellow shoppers have long since swapped gloves for a quick splash of hand sanitizer, sporting fitted cloth face masks rather than the clumsily austere medical-grade ones.

But not Eriksen. As a caretaker and a co-owner of a Petaluma residential care facility for the elderly, a routine shopping run is as unnerving now as it was in those first days of the March shutdown.

“I have never felt we were rounding the corner or getting back to normal life,” Eriksen said. “Because I work with seniors, I take the most extreme precautions. I am geared up when I go out, and we completely sanitize and clean anything we bring inside.”

For the employees and residents of Taking the Journey, a small residential care facility operating out of a nondescript home in an east side neighborhood, time has stood still, the threat of the coronavirus as dire as ever. As Petaluma embraces business reopenings and downtown streets swell with outdoor diners, Eriksen says he feels like he’s living in a parallel reality, one bounded by the care home’s Cloroxed front doors.

Across the United States, senior homes and nursing facilities have made headlines as the virus swept through, in some cases killing dozens of elderly residents. Nursing home residents are more vulnerable to infection and death from the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control, because of their congregant nature and high density of vulnerable residents.

In Sonoma County, 114 of the 149 people who have died from the coronavirus were residents of senior care homes, including both skilled nursing facilities and residential care facilities for the elderly. To date, at least 401 skilled nursing patients and 235 residential care facility residents have been infected with the virus, while at least 247 skilled nursing staffers and 215 residential employees have tested positive.

Eriksen’s small care home had its brush with the highly contagious virus as well, after an employee’s weekly screening came back positive late-September. Shortly after that, an elderly resident tested positive, Eriksen said.

Luckily, the resident didn’t exhibit any symptoms and tested negative on two follow-up tests, according to the care home owner, and the employee has also since tested negative several weeks in a row.

The home’s six residents are all seniors with varying levels dementia, and two are on hospice care. Eriksen and his wife, Kisa, have owned and operated the facility since 2013, motivated by their personal experiences as caretakers for family members.

At the beginning of 2020, the couple was looking toward their goal of opening a second care home in Petaluma with a slightly larger capacity. But around February, Eriksen realized the coronavirus was not a far-off problem, and readied himself for what would be the biggest challenge his business has faced yet.

In mid-March in tandem with the shelter-in-place order, the Eriksens essentially sealed off the house. Residents have not been able to hug, hold or touch their loved ones since, instead opting for “window visits,“ Zooms and phone calls. The only exception is for those residents in hospice care who are, as Eriksen puts it, “close to transitioning.”

72-year-old Cotati resident Bob Justman moved his mother Violet Tufts to Taking the Journey about a year ago, though he hasn’t seen her in-person for more than seven months. He used to drop by for a mid-morning visit once a week, at least, before March. But that routine, like so many others, is simply no longer possible.

“Before, if I had a cold I wouldn’t go visit, because I don’t want them to get sick with anything,” Justman said. “With this, I’m not scared for myself, but I would never jeopardize my Mom’s life or the lives of the other five ladies there, even though I want to go there and see her.”

Justman says his 96-year-old mom has severe memory loss and no longer speaks, so virtual methods of connecting aren’t a feasible option. She’s on hospice care as well, and in the months since the pandemic began, has moved to a liquid diet and is now bed-ridden.

If the time comes, Justman said he’s prepared to wrap himself in layers of personal protective equipment to say goodbye to his Mom.

“She’s been sick a long time, she had dementia a long time,” he said. “But she’s also lived longer than she was supposed to already, I don’t know. But when it’s okay and safe again I’ll go back – I just hope my mom waits for me.”

For those with family members and loved ones in care homes, the impending holiday season adds another layer of heartbreak, as physical absences are especially acute. Eriksen said he’s been experimenting with creating a virtual holiday party using a handful of laptops and iPads scattered around the home’s central dining room.

But even as Eriksen plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, the usual excitement that accompanies this time of year is tempered by news of rising case counts across the country.

“People need to know this is the scariest time right now, more than ever before,” Eriksen said. “We are going into a very scary winter.”

(Press Democrat reporters Mary Callahan and Martin Espinoza contributed to this report. Contact Kathryn Palmer at kathryn.palmer@arguscourier.com, on Twitter @KathrynPlmr.)