Vice Provincial Sharon Gray visits with a resident at Nazareth Home in Louisville, Kentucky. In March, restrictions on long-term care facilities in Kentucky that have taken place during the pandemic began to lift.
Nazareth Home Felt ‘Web of Support’ During Lockdown Susan Tahaney, a social worker, went to work on Thanksgiving Day at Nazareth Home in Louisville, Kentucky, to help residents connect to their families with the help of an iPad and a TV screen. As she pulled into the parking lot on the Highlands campus, a stranger stood silently on the asphalt holding up a sign that said, “You are loved.” As she recounted that story May 27, Susan pulled off her glasses and wiped tears from her smiling eyes. “It was like a web of support,” she said, sniffing back her emotion so she could speak. A spider’s thin silk becomes stronger as it’s woven into the layers of a web, she explained. “I’ve only been here a year and a half,” she said. “I don’t know what good times
at Nazareth Home look like. I came two weeks before the shutdown.” But she believes the facility and the community around it provide “a web of support” for staff and residents alike. Nazareth Home’s two campuses, like the rest of Kentucky, went into lock down in March of last year. But while most people locked down by degrees, residents of long-term care facilities were suddenly isolated entirely from the outside world. The staff who worked there became their lifelines. This March, restrictions on long-term care facilities began to lift and access is now possible with some precautions. Susan, the home’s program director, shared her story of the lock down at Nazareth Home SISTERS OF CHARIT Y OF NA ZARETH • VOL. II 2021
9
