"
It's inhuman, I couldn't say goodbye to him
."
Muriel lost her brother in December, a few days before Christmas.
A bad fall in front of his mailbox had led him to a hospital in Mulhouse, where he contracted the coronavirus.
When his condition suddenly deteriorated, the service authorized a single person to visit him, thanks to the exceptions granted for “end of life” patients.
Priority to the wife.
“He had been hospitalized for four weeks and I could not see him once,
” continues Muriel.
Her niece, she could not bring herself to the rule and sneaked into her father's room, "
only 5 minutes"
.
Read also: Covid-19: the obstacle course to visit hospitalized relatives
As in Mulhouse, most French hospitals today impose very strict restrictions on visits: drop-in appointments, prohibited in covid sectors, or even totally banned.
At best, visitors are sometimes allowed to go to the bedside of their loved ones at the end of their life.
A heartbreak for patients and their families
: "So do people have to die to have the right to see them?"
gets angry Francis, in Moselle.
Her 85-year-old mother has just survived a stroke, but is not considered sufficiently endangered to qualify for visits.
Then the old lady repeats on the phone:
"Please come and get me"
.
"
We feel the distress in his voice, it's inhuman"
, enraged Francis.
“It's the first time that she's without her husband.
She has anxieties and I feel that she is declining.
His cognitive impairment is increasing. ”
To read also: "The West is inhabited by the fear of death"
Unreachable doctors
It is still necessary to be able to telephone the sick.
It was by opening his letterbox that Philippe, whose mother was hospitalized in Franche-Comté for breathing difficulties, found a letter with the latest check-ups.
“She can't speak on the phone because of a problem with her vocal cords.
I have a hard time getting information about his state of health.
"
He calls daily nursing office but the line rings usually busy.
“I had to be angry to be able to talk to a doctor.
And learn that she was suffering from lung cancer
,
”he
sighs.
“It was hell to have the doctors on the phone.
I had news twice a week at best, ”
confirms Nathalie *.
In January, her husband spent three weeks in a coma following a stroke.
"They kept telling me 'nothing new, we'll keep you posted if things change" But imagine my anxiety, from a distance!
"
"I feel inhuman when I tell families that unfortunately this is the rule
Camille *, resuscitation intern at AP-HP
In the corridors of hospitals, caregivers are exhausted in running between the phone which keeps ringing and the distress of isolated patients.
"I feel inhuman by announcing to families that unfortunately this is the rule"
, loose Camille *, intern in intensive care in a covid service of the AP-HP.
“It is extremely cruel to give information over the phone, especially when the patient is in serious condition.
Eye contact is very important to be able to explain events ”
.
The young doctor struggled with this constant tension:
"I have the impression of being the one who deprives families of their last moments together"
.
"These daily calls are extremely trying from a psychic point of view for caregivers"
, observes Gaëlle Abgrall, referent of the white psychiatric plan at the AP-HP.
“
Making this constant link creates real pressure, moral and physical, over time”
.
The white coats sometimes turn a blind eye to a reunion deemed necessary.
Like Fanny *, a nurse in a psychiatric facility, who sometimes allows patients to walk with their loved ones in the garden, despite the current ban.
“These are people who need to be supported.
I don't think I'm helping them by isolating them even more, ”she
says.
To read also: "There are things to which you do not get used": faced with Covid-19, caregivers are facing psychiatric disorders
System D and petty cheating
The border of the hospital makes any formality complicated.
Families talk about sick people dazed by loneliness, whom they are unable to help.
“It's all a stewardship.
It took me 48 hours to be able to pass laundry to my father, ”
says Marie-Christine Regnier.
The old man, 85, signed without quite understanding, far from his daughter, for a single room that he could not afford.
“He's becoming a child again.
And now, I have to tell him on the phone that he will have to go to a retirement home
,
”
regrets the Parisian.
"When I go to the hospital, I feel like a bandit"
Sophie gurion
So, as it seems to be the rule in times of epidemic, we deal with the restrictions between System D and petty cheating.
"I'll go see my mother, even if I have to wear a white coat,"
asserts Sophie G., whose mother is hospitalized for cirrhosis in a Parisian hospital.
The nurses refused her a visit: the patient, they say, is not "in danger of death".
On the phone, something in his voice tells him however that his condition is deteriorating morally and physically.
His daughter therefore plans to make a false exemption on the model of those attributed to relatives who visit patients on their deathbed, to go to the hospital at all costs.
“I've never lied, never cheated in my life.
I feel like a bandit, I have a lump in my stomach.
But it's unthinkable to leave her like that, alone and sick.
"
* The first name has been changed.
