Well, good news is Grandma Nina did enjoy eating the thickened apple juice this morning. In addition to thickening her fluids to a gelatinous consistency, we also moved her to an inclining bed, which makes it easier for her to eat. She was in a flat bed before, so she had to sit straight up on the edge of the bed to eat. It’s difficult enough for the old lady to eat without choking, not to mention trying to keep her balance while sitting up at the same time. Now she can lay back comfortably at a 60° angle and she doesn’t need to hold her balance and posture.

Unfortunately, there is only one bed in the entire nursing home that inclines like this. All the others are just flat twin beds. By coincidence, the resident who usually “lives” in this bed is in the hospital for emergency treatment right now. When he returns, Grandmother Nina will need to be returned to her regular flat bed. It would be a small blessing if the nursing home could replace some of the flat beds with simple reclining beds, at least for the more feeble residents who are unable to ambulate. If any readers are interested in providing some support, this would be one very worthwhile upgrade for which monetary donations could be used. Please feel free to look at the RAYA community page for more information about supporting RAYA’s work.
Gennadiy also did call in medical help today. The doctor examined residents who had serious symptoms or issues and prescribed antibiotics and some other drugs. However, many of the residents are still at very high risk despite these medical interventions, because of their advanced age and general feebleness. Unfortunately, financial means are likely to be a factor in the outcome, because the nursing home and its residents have only a very basic level of social safety net health insurance and medications must be paid for with cash.
Casting an even darker shadow over the day, we suddenly lost one of our residents this morning. I think she had a heart attack. She’s been under a lot of stress for the last couple of days. Her husband Evon was the first resident to be taken ill, the man I described on February 12 who had the sore throat. They are an unusual situation, a married couple in the nursing home. They moved into the nursing home when they both became too feeble to take care of their own household independently. They could both walk very slowly with canes, and they could still handle toileting and personal hygiene independently, but neither one of them could prepare food, clean house or launder clothing. They lived in separate dormitory rooms, one room for men and another room for women, but they would sit together at every meal. The only time I ever saw them together was at meals. But after Evon got sick and couldn’t get out of bed for meals anymore, his wife would come into the men’s dormitory room after each meal and sit with him. I think it put a lot of stress on her because it meant she spent much more time on her feet each day than she was used to. Yesterday she was unable to walk back to her dormitory room and had to be wheeled in a chair. But she wasn’t just tired, she was also having difficulty breathing and appeared quite agitated. I don’t think she rested well overnight, and was still gasping for breath this morning. But she was anxious to eat her breakfast this morning, even though she couldn’t really sit up. Right after breakfast Evgeniya was taking her blood pressure and she suddenly just slumped over on the bed, as limp as a rag doll. Her face turned a waxy white color and she just didn’t look like she had merely passed out. Evgenia tried some simple CPR but did not get any response.
Evhenia and Gennadiy both seemed very surprised that she died like that. Gennadiay kept saying, “but she was just eating breakfast a few minutes ago, she was fine. . . “ I know he has seen a lot of people die since he began managing the nursing home. He told me especially during the Covid pandemic there was a period of time when they were losing several people every week. But perhaps none of those people died suddenly of heart attack.