Posted on 02/26/2022 4:30:06 AM PST by lightman
Late one night in January, Jonathan Coffino, 78, turned to his wife as they sat in bed. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he said.
Coffino was referring to the caution that has come to define his life during the COVID-19 pandemic. After two years of mostly staying at home and avoiding people, his patience is frayed and his distress is growing.
“There’s a terrible fear that I’ll never get back my normal life,” Coffino said, describing the feelings he tries to keep at bay. “And there’s an awful sense of purposelessness.”
Despite recent signals that COVID-19’s grip on the country may be easing, many older adults are struggling with persistent malaise, heightened by the spread of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant. Even those who adapted well initially are saying that their fortitude is waning or wearing thin.
Like younger people, they’re beset by uncertainty about what the future may bring. But added to that is an especially painful feeling that opportunities that will never come again are being squandered. Time is running out, and death is drawing ever nearer.
“Folks are becoming more anxious and angry and stressed and agitated because this has gone on for so long,” said Katherine Cook, chief operating officer of Monadnock Family Services in Keene, New Hampshire, which operates a community mental health center that serves older adults.
Henry Kimmel, a clinical psychologist in Sherman Oaks, California, who focuses on older adults, said, “I’ve never seen so many people who say they’re hopeless and have nothing to look forward to.”
To be sure, older adults have cause for concern. Throughout the pandemic, they’ve been at much higher risk of becoming seriously ill and dying than other age groups. Even seniors who are fully vaccinated and boosted remain vulnerable: More than two-thirds of vaccinated people hospitalized from June 2021 through September 2021 with breakthrough infections were 65 or older.
The constant stress of wondering, “Am I going to be OK?” and “What’s the future going to look like?” has been hard for Kathleen Tate, 74, a retired nurse in Mount Vernon, Washington. She has late-onset post-polio syndrome and severe osteoarthritis.
“I guess I had the expectation that once we were vaccinated the world would open up again,” said Tate, who lives alone. Although that happened for a while this past summer, she largely stopped going out as first the Delta and Omicron variants swept through her area. Now she said she feels “a quiet desperation.”
This isn’t something that Tate talks about with friends, although she’s hungry for human connection.
“I see everybody dealing with extraordinary stresses in their lives, and I don’t want to add to that by complaining or asking to be comforted,” she said.
Tate described a feeling of “being worn out” and “flatness” that saps her motivation.
“It’s almost too much effort to reach out to people and try to pull myself out of that place,” she said, admitting that she’s watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol. “It’s just like I want to mellow out and go numb, instead of bucking up and trying to pull myself together.”
Beth Spencer, 73, a recently retired social worker who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her 90-year-old husband, is grappling with similar feelings during this typically challenging Midwestern winter.
“The weather here is gray, the sky is gray, and my psyche is gray,” Spencer said. “I typically am an upbeat person, but I’m struggling to stay motivated.”
Spencer said her husband was recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure as well.
“I can’t sort out whether what I’m going through is due to retirement or caregiver stress or COVID,” she said. “I find myself asking ‘What’s the meaning of my life right now?’ and I don’t have an answer.”
Bonnie Olsen, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, works extensively with older adults.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, many older adults hunkered down and used a lifetime of coping skills to get through this,” Olsen said. “Now, as people face this current surge, it’s as if their well of emotional reserves is being depleted.”
Most at risk are older adults who are isolated and frail, who were vulnerable to depression and anxiety even before the pandemic, or who have suffered serious losses and acute grief. Watch for signs that they’re withdrawing from social contact or shutting down emotionally, according to Olsen.
“When people start to avoid being in touch, then I become more worried,” she said.
Fred Axelrod, 66, of Los Angeles, who’s disabled because of ankylosing spondylitis, a serious form of arthritis, lost three close friends during the pandemic: Two died of cancer and one died of complications related to diabetes.
“You can’t go out and replace friends like that at my age,” Axelrod said.
Now, the only person he talks to on a regular basis is Kimmel, his therapist.
“I don’t do anything. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go,” Axelrod said. “There’s a lot of times I feel I’m just letting the clock run out. You start thinking, ‘How much more time do I have left?’”
“Older adults are thinking about mortality more than ever and asking, ‘How will we ever get out of this nightmare,’” Kimmel said. “I tell them we all have to stay in the present moment and do our best to keep ourselves occupied and connect with other people.”
Loss has been a defining feature of the pandemic for Bud Carraway, 79, of Midvale, Utah, whose wife, Virginia, died a year ago. She was a stroke survivor who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat. The couple, who met in the Marines, had been married for 55 years.
“I became depressed. Anxiety kept me awake at night. I couldn’t turn my mind off,” Carraway said.
Those feelings and a sense of being trapped throughout the pandemic “brought me pretty far down,” he said.
Help came from an eight-week grief support program offered online through the University of Utah. One of the assignments was to come up with a list of strategies for cultivating well-being, which Carraway now keeps on his front door. Among the items listed: “Walk the mall. Eat with friends. Do some volunteer work. Join a bowling league. Go to a movie. Check out senior centers.”
“I’d circle them as I accomplished each one of them. I knew I had to get up and get out and live again,” Carraway said. “This program, it just made a world of difference.”
Kathie Supiano, an associate professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing who oversees the COVID-19 grief groups, said older adults’ ability to bounce back from setbacks shouldn’t be discounted.
“This isn’t their first rodeo. Many people remember polio and the AIDs epidemic,” Supiano said. “They’ve been through a lot and know how to put things in perspective.”
Alissa Ballot, 66, realized recently that she can trust herself to find a way forward. After becoming extremely isolated early in the pandemic, Ballot moved in November 2021 from Chicago to New York. There, she found a community of new friends online at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, and her loneliness evaporated as she began attending events in person.
With Omicron’s rise in December 2021, Ballot briefly became fearful that she would end up alone again. But this time, something clicked as she pondered some of her rabbi’s spiritual teachings.
“I felt paused on a precipice looking into the unknown and suddenly I thought, ‘So, we don’t know what’s going to happen next, stop worrying,'” she said. “And I relaxed. Now I’m like, this is a blip, and I’ll get through it.”
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Your servant.
(Prostration)
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed are You, unto ages of ages. Amen.
(Prostration)
A coward dies every day. A brave man dies but once.
Holy crap, people in the article...get the hell over it!
You guys are pissing your life away over an overblown cold.
EVEN if mortality is slightly higher in the old, its still minuscule!
Woe is me people should be grateful they aren’t living in Ukraine
buck up..be grateful you have food and bombs are are not raining down on you. Can’t imagine what it was like while Hitler rampaged
Here’s the deal...something I began posting about one year ago:
Reality check.
COVID-19 is airborne.
That means, “in the air, everywhere”.
It is ENDEMIC.
We will ALL get exposed..over and over.
MANY of us will “test positive”, mostly without symptoms.
SOME of us will be “symptomatic”, and a subset will be really sick.
And (unfortunately) a FEW of us will die.
This is NOT the Bubonic plague.
This is NOT the Spanish Influenza.
You can’t mask it away.
You can’t [anti]”socially distance” it away.
You can’t even “deep clean” it away.
And {{{shudder}}} YOU CAN’T EVEN VACCINATE IT AWAY!
Tear off that face diaper.
Breathe deeply. Inhale some COVID.
Build up your immune system.
And LIVE!
Well I’m not ready to die from “a cold”.....I have to much I want to accomplish.
Agree and I see patients with it every day. Have two in hospital now. I never wear a mask outside work unless it’s required. I’m not young either.
Funny how that works..
In a real world they would have stated, ‘because the vaccines are useless in preventing the CCP virus’.
This article is spot on for my older siblings. It’s so sad, and I don’t see any way for them to get over their fears. All of this has been blown out of proportion and it has had severe effects on my family. I try to help them get over their fears but their children are keeping them trapped out of fear. Their kids are local, and I am many states away. None of them are “living”.
Drama queens. I’m going on 62, female, working two full time jobs and couldn’t care less about the Plandemic (other than its assault on freedom)
POST 6:
Probably good advice.
Too many mindless “Kens” and “Karens” wringing their hands.
The article underscores a continuing Covid threat and the people so hungry for their old lives and human connection described therein are still hiding under their beds. Whatever.
I have three living grandparents aged 84-91. One of them has Parkinson’s and one has kidney disease. The third one had a double-bypass back in his 60s. In the past 30 days they all three got COVID and all three of them survived. Time to stop worrying about it folks…
I’m guessing there’s not a single Christian that was quoted in this article. I will qualify my remarks by stating that I am far from a perfect Christian, but one theory I had throughout this whole thing is that Christians were basically the least fearful of covid because they don’t fear death. And I’d caution anyone that may not be elderly just yet then if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ as your savior then you will encounter the same fear these people have at some point in your latter life.
My neighbors are middle 60’s ..they have self imposed locking in since 2/2020..Grocery delivery from a a store about a 10 minute walk away..They wave out the window as I go buy..never stepping out to speak..just wave..The wife said her hip gave out ..from inactivity..They look 80 yrs old..but seem happy..The Government scared them sufficiently..ruining their lives ..because I guess they believed politicians…Sad to see..Some people aren’t coming back to normal lives..physically & mentally damaged for life..
Me neither.
But the folks in the story seem powerless.
Thats ridiculous.
I was sick and disabled when covid hit. Had no problem handling the isolation until my home and community burned and was forced to be homeless and leave everything in my life that was familiar. No matter the reason, no one wants to friend the homeless victim
That’s exactly my sister. She’s 69. She’s been hiding for nearly two years now. Briefly ventured out a little last year after vaccinations. Then Delta hit. It took our oldest brother, who was almost 71. Well, truthfully, his overweight, diabetic body couldn’t fight the virus. He is in incredibly missed. Needless to say, my sister is so afraid. Even though she was recently sick with a cold, and survived without going to the hospital, she seems convinced she’s about to die. So what does she do? She stays away from everyone and everything, except for seeing her grandchildren every few weeks. She has totally withdrawn from society. She is not happy. Very depressed, but she has always fought that. This has taken her to a new level of low. I have to watch it happen. I have tried, but she won’t listen to me. She is so afraid. Thanks Fauci, et al.
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