Hello. In around May 2020 when we were in lockdown my Nanna was living in a rest home.
Her sight and her hearing weren't so great and she wore really thick glasses and hearing aids. What happened is that her hearing aids broke and they had to be sent away to be repaired and then lockdown happened!
So my nanna didn't have hearing aids for the whole four weeks of lockdown. She couldn't contact her family or her friends and she couldn't interact with or enjoy a nice chat with anyone else in her rest home.
Now Nanna loved talking to people, she was a really social person but at that time, for those four weeks, she was completely isolated, and just shut herself away in her room. People would try to phone her but she would pick up the phone and she couldn't really hear who it was or understand them so she would hang up.
Nanna was also not very tech-savvy so she didn't use video- calling or anything and as a result she was completely disconnected. The family tried to be supportive and encouraging but at that point we weren't allowed to visit her because of lockdown.
When we came out of level 4 we went to level 3 and then to level 2 where, eventually, she was allowed one visitor at a time, but they had to wear a mask.
By this point Nanna's mental health, confidence and her motivation had really gone downhill because of her experience and she started to sleep all the time. She was really unresponsive, she wouldn't engage in conversation, she just wanted to sleep.
At level 1, the family were finally allowed to visit Nanna as a group. We visited her regularly over that time but she was sleeping all the time and eventually she passed away. So for Nanna the impact of not having contact with family or being able to interact with others was really huge.
Thank you for watching.
