Front Burner - A son’s extraordinary mission to care for his mother

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Concerns about deadly coronavirus outbreaks at long-term care homes are top of mind for a lot of Canadians. Today, we speak with a man who is going to incredible, and potentially life threatening, lengths to visit his mother at her nursing home in Toronto. With the facility on lockdown and a resident with COVID-19, there was only one way Brian Corcoran could visit and check-up on his mom, Margaret — get a part-time job on staff.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poiseau. So you've seen these videos, right? You know, the kind where people go to visit their loved ones in nursing homes on lockdown. Can you see her?

I can see her hands waving. They go to their windows, they wave, they hold up signs and talk through the glass. This is just one of the ways that families are trying to stay connected in these times. Other people are trying to get their parents out as fears mount over deadly COVID-19 outbreaks in care homes across the country. But one man in Toronto, Brian Corcoran, well, he's gone a different route. One most wouldn't even consider. He's decided to put his health at risk and become a part-time staffer, just so he can see his mom. This is FrontBurner.

Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for making the time to chat with me today. No problem. It's a real pleasure. So can you help me get to know your mother a little bit? Margaret, what's she like? Oh, you mean Miss Manitoba in 1968? What? It's true. Maggie Corcoran, a.k.a. Margaret Alice Smith, hailed from Winnipeg at the ripe old age of 21, packed her bags, moved to Toronto, and believe it or not, ended up almost immediately working at CBC. 1965, working in TV sports with people like Don Chevrier. So she was a lifer at CBC.

She worked in the newsroom at a time when she was the only woman in the newsroom. The walls were covered with centerfolds. Every drawer had a Mickey of booze in it. People chain smoked at their desks. Yep. And rodents ran across their feet. So, yeah, she is an extraordinary force of a person growing up i used to complain incessantly to my friends that i had to take homemade bread to school every single day when they all got to have wonder bread which i think is kind of ironic in

the midst of this pandemic that i grew up in a house that had nothing but homemade bread in downtown toronto and now people are catching up with that. We were just talking about that before this interview started. This is the pandemic of homemade bread. That's right. And I feel like it's, you know, I feel like anytime I do any sort of a baking experiment in the pandemic, like I'm playing into the artisanal apocalypse. But, you know, because of my mother, I was actually raised in the kitchen, like I'm playing into the artisanal apocalypse. But, you know, because of my mother, I was actually raised in the kitchen. You know, she was a very accomplished chef, baker, and our little bowling alley of a backyard in downtown Toronto was chocked full of fruits,

vegetables, you name it, that she would can every fall. And really, you know, a Renaissance woman ahead of her time. She would have been a phenomenal hipster had she been born a few decades later. She sounds wonderful. And tell me a little bit about her health. How is her health right now? So around the age of 40, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it manifested itself by way of inability to grip things, exhaustion. If your baseline of health is 100, you have an attack where you can't use your legs for a day or something, or you feel it. And when you bounce back up to that baseline, instead of bouncing back up to 100, you bounce up to 98. And over the course of years, decades, whatever, gradually your baseline falls until your health

is considerably compromised. So for my mother, she's quadriplegic. She's been quadriplegic for i would say about a decade one of the last things to go was the ability to move her thumb so believe it or not that was actually a huge asset because she was a beast with an ipad when she could still move her thumb but i would say she's been quadriplegic for about a decade my My father was her primary caregiver throughout that time. Last year, my father passed away. So my siblings and I had to hustle to get her into a nursing home, which is, you know, that's a whole other episode, just the act of getting a loved one into

a nursing home and ideally one that fits them, one that's in a neighborhood that works for them and the family, like that's a whole thing. So we fortunately were able to get my mother into a nursing home called Kensington Gardens, which is just north of Kensington Market in downtown Toronto. Okay, that must have been a relief, eh? And I should say I'm so sorry that you and your family have had to go through all of this. Okay, that must have been a relief, eh? And I should say I'm so sorry that you and your family have had to go through all of this. Oh, I appreciate it. But you know, from a pretty young age, I had serious talks about health and the repercussions of illness. So they did a great job prepping my siblings and I for the writing that they saw on the wall.

So we were able to transition into the different phases of my mother's health quite well. And I attribute that entirely to my mother and father. I know in the last month, obviously, life has changed drastically for everybody, right? But your life has changed in this really unimaginable way. And you went from being someone who worked as a producer at the CBC. You mentioned your mom worked at the CBC, but you also have worked at the CBC helping make shows like Dragon's Den and The Hour. And now you're wearing scrubs, right? You're about to clock in for a real day shift at this home.

New career. It's a whole new world. It's exceptional. Can you tell me what the shift is going to be like? Yeah. And, you know, this will be my, I think my seventh shift, something like that. So I am a noob and I don't want to speak on behalf of, by no means do I want to speak on behalf of all care workers because I'm stumbling my way through this.

And hot damn, is their job ever hard. Today, I'm going to go in for the 11 to 7 shift. So I'll get there at 11 and I'll start prepping the lunch. I'm in the COVID ward of this nursing home. There has been two cases of COVID. So that is the only floor that I'm on. As soon as I get there, I'll have my temperature taken, put on a mask. I'll go up to the third floor, checking on my mom. Are we having a good time during the pandemic? We are. You're definitely making it more fun if a pandemic can be fun. You are changing the course. Well, thanks for saying that. And then I'll make my way to the kitchen where anyone who's ever worked in the service industry, I think they're called wrap-ups when you wrap up the knife for roll-up. My partner just corrected me. I'll do the roll-ups because right now every resident is quarantined to their room. So instead

of eating in the dining room, every meal has to be brought to them. So I'll get their trays all ready. And then myself and the rest of the staff, as soon as the kitchen staff sort of have the meals ready to go, we start running them to rooms. As soon as they've been distributed to all of the residents, then there's several residents that need help eating. So care workers and I will divvy ourselves up to the different residents, such as my mother, that need help with consuming their meals. So immediately following lunch, after collecting all the trays and doing the cleanup, generally there's a bit of a run on call buttons. And that can be anything from helping somebody on or off the toilet, somebody who wants something as simple as changing the channel on a TV station. It never, it never ceases to amaze me. And I, you know, I find sincere humor in some of the reasons for the call buttons. It's oddly

endearing. But oftentimes, it's dealing with parts of, you know, human life that we don't really like to think about with regards to others. It's a lot of cleaning and wiping and things like that. It sounds like really difficult and exhausting work. It's tremendously physical. The work is unbelievably physical. And there's all sorts of systems in place to try to make it sort of standardized and safer for staff. But at the end of the day, my takeaway so far is you can get all the training in the world about how to correctly lift someone. But when somebody is stuck in a funny position on a toilet, and the only way is to kind of lean over them to help lift them up, like invariably, you're doing physical work in weird confines.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. You mentioned that there were two cases of COVID-19 on your floor. Where are those people? So of the two cases of COVID on my mother's floor, one was another resident who was actually immediately next door to her. So her next door neighbor is 81,

was diagnosed with COVID, and then is now back in the home and is recovering. So it's a great news story in that, you know, this trooper has sort of powered through at age 81, and everybody is crossing their fingers. The other case of COVID in the wing was from an employee. That employee's quarantine technically ended yesterday, I believe. But Kensington Gardens, the nursing home, is waiting until a confirmed negative test comes back before permitting that employee back into the nursing home. Okay, and when you're working there,

what kind of protective gear are you wearing? A mask goes on as soon as I arrive until I leave. The masks are your standard surgical masks. They're not N95. They're the floppy ones. And then I'll grab a handful of gloves at the start of a shift, stuff them in my back pocket. And that way, anytime that I'm dealing with any sort of waste, you know, if I'm helping a resident with the washroom, then gloves go on. If I'm touching skin, gloves go on. Okay. And just to be clear here, this was the only way for you to be able to see your mother, right? Oh, you want the story of my geriatric mission impossible? Yes.

This is it. Nursing homes have been shut down. There is no visitation, period. The COVID-19 outbreak has taken a heavy toll on Canada's senior care homes, with at least 600 of them reporting cases across the country. Provinces have taken action to better protect these facilities, like banning visitors and freeing up more staff to relieve workers who are sick. So we got notice that visitors were no longer permitted. I love all the stories of family members that are going and standing outside windows and holding signs up and things like that. When your mother is quadriplegic on the third floor of a nursing home, there's no means by which you can do that so my siblings and i were obviously

concerned and staying in touch where things sort of went to another level was immediately upon the report of a case of covid on the wing they were extremely short of people and people that had never been on this floor were suddenly staying in and doing double shifts. And working all afternoon, evening, and overnight. So they were extremely fatigued. And they weren't people I was used to. But they were trying really hard. But they were trying really hard.

And I think Kensington has really done a good job. So there was one night in particular where my mother was left sitting up in bed with the TV on and nobody checked on her from about 8 p.m. until 8 in the morning. I was already in that. Well, it was absolutely a tough night for my mother. She's pretty adept with Alexa, but sitting up and being quadriplegic, she can't always get a deep breath. So she wasn't able to use Alexa to call me or to call my sister or anything like that. So she was just kind of stuck in this incredibly uncomfortable position for the duration of the night. So when that happened, as a family, we kind of figured we've got to do something. We were in touch with the exec team at the nursing home who really have done a remarkable job because this has all been bonkers from the get-go.

And they started to sort of dance around this idea of being able to hire somebody as an aide. So last, I think it was last Monday, I was talking to a member of the executive team at the nursing home. And by Tuesday, I was in training until four in the afternoon. And then I transitioned immediately into my first shift following training. Wow. And you didn't have to do a police background or anything like that? No, I didn't have to do a police background. That would have definitely slowed things down considerably. As it is, the extent of my interview is what is your legal name and what is your legal address, followed by an offer letter at a whopping $16 an hour.

So it was a very expedited training. Now, I also have a decade of experience as at least a part-time caregiver. So, you know, I think there was a comfort level right out of the gate. I've used lifts for years with my mother to help get her out of bed and into her chair and things like that. So I was pretty comfortable with that. It's good that you feel comfortable with the work, but how are you feeling about being in a place where there's been COVID-19? Like so many long-term care homes are having trouble keeping staffers right now. The COVID-19 outbreak at Pinecrest Nursing Home

was announced on March 20th. Within 10 days, nine residents were dead. I don't really see any light at the end of the tunnel, but we just keep soldiering on because that's what we do. I've scrubbed my hands and I've used hand sanitizer to the point where I basically have bones for fingers. So I am acutely aware of how imperative it is to keep a mask on at all times, to never touch anyone or anything with a hand that hasn't been freshly sanitized.

Everybody is on board with that, but it still is not aligned with everything that was explained in training. And does that concern you, though? Do you have concerns throughout the day when you're working? I think that my concerns, more than anything, are for the residents and for the staff. You know, I feel like a bit of a tourist. I'm doing my best to help out, but I'm also doing it for selfish reasons and that this is the way for me to keep tabs on my mother and to make sure that she's okay and to help out a little bit. You know, I've thought a lot about what would happen if I was diagnosed with COVID. And, you know, my hope is that I'm 45. So my hope is that if I do get it, it will be relatively benign.

And I hope that my partner would sort of be in the same boat. We live in a loft, so there's no quarantining here. Really, I think spending a bit of time on the floor, the concern is you just see how compromised the health is of a lot of the residents. And, you know, my biggest fear is if it gets in here and if it gets in here unchecked, it's just going to rip through the population like it has at other nursing homes. There are now 10 deaths at Almont Country Haven. It's a long-term care home hit hard by COVID-19. A letter was sent out to families notifying them of the deaths. What has that been like for you watching these outbreaks all over

the country? The Lynn Valley Care Home in BC where almost 80 staff and residents have been infected. If there is any doubt about the speed of COVID infection. Consider how calm things were just a month ago at Lynn Valley Care Home. In Ontario at Pinecrest in Bobcajan more than a third of the residents have died. What has that been like for you to watch that? It's frightening first and foremost but when I get past that there's a little bit of anger and disappointment. And it's targeted not at the caregivers, nor necessarily the homes. I think it's a societal failure. You know, I think that we are all collectively so afraid of mortality and illness and aging, that we have collectively swept the care for the elderly and the infirm under the carpet and forgotten about it because

that's the convenient thing to do. And I think that's reflected in how we treat our care workers, how we pay our care workers, and the expectations that we have of our care workers. So my hope from all this is that this has shone a spotlight on nursing homes and care for the aging. And my hope is that we'll come out of this recognizing that these care workers need to be better compensated. They need to be protected, not just protected from illness, but they need to be protected in the sense that so many of them are working on a part-time basis. And part of the issue with the other homes is that care workers are working multiple gigs at multiple homes. And they're possibly transmitting the virus from home to home to home. Right. We know for certain this was a major issue in British Columbia.

It was the source of other outbreaks, care workers that felt like they had to work in multiple homes just to make ends meet. You know, you mentioned before you're making $16 an hour. Brian, can I ask you, when you told your mom that you would be coming to see her, but as a staffer in this home, how did she react? Well, I didn't tell her. I just showed up. Huh. Room service.

Room service. My concern was that she would have another sleepless night or tell me not to do it because she'd be afraid that I would contract COVID. And because it all happened so fast, you know, one day I didn't have a career as a nursing aide and pow, you know, 24 hours later, look at me. I'm a personal care workers aide. So I didn't tell her, but I did videotape when I walked into the room and surprised her. So that was, that was pretty funny. I sent it to my brother and my sister and we've, we've all had a pretty good laugh over that. How do you feel about me working here as an aide? I feel great. You feel great? I think you're a wonderful addition to Kensington and to me.

Were you shocked when I showed up? Yes. What went through your mind when you first saw me? What are you doing here? You can't come in. What do you think when I told you I was now working here as an employee? I thought, oh my god, what's he done now? Well, I just want to say I think your mom is so lucky to have a son like you. What you're doing is amazing. Or I'm making amends for my childhood. Who knows? Brian, thank you so much. And please, please say hi to Margaret for us. Absolutely. She's really looking forward to listening to this. Hi, Jamie. I hope my voice isn't too weak. How's it feel to virtually be back at CBC by way of podcast? Wonderful. It's full of my friends.

Okay, that's it. Any last thoughts? No. No, I've got the best son in the world. You got to get back to Judge Judy? Yeah. All right. After speaking with Brian, we reached out to Kensington Gardens in Toronto for comment. In a written statement, a facility spokesperson confirmed that one resident was in isolation recovering from COVID-19 and that one garden staff member has tested positive and is in self-isolation. The staff member has not

worked at the facility since March 26th. The statement goes on to say that Kensington Gardens' privacy policy prevents them from commenting on the care of individual residents, but says that the facility is testing all residents and staff members who display symptoms and meet testing criteria, as well as providing personal protective equipment for staff, maintaining display symptoms and meet testing criteria, as well as providing personal protective equipment for staff, maintaining stringent infection control procedures, and actively screening all staff and residents twice a day. Finally, the statement says that Kensington Gardens is following new provincial rules, allowing for the hiring of new staffers without background checks in response to staffing needs caused by the pandemic.

All right, we have a news update for you. On Thursday, Ontario announced new recommendations for COVID-19 testing for anyone moving into long-term care facilities. COVID-19 testing for anyone moving into long-term care facilities. The province's chief medical officer is now saying that any resident coming in should be tested within 14 days of arrival, whether they have symptoms or not, and also put in isolation for two weeks. That's all for now. FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced this week by Mark Apollonio,

Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, Ali Janes, and Nahayat Tzouche. Derek VanderWijk does our sound design with help this week from Matt Cameron and Evian Abdiguer. Our music is by Joseph Chavison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.