Woman with husband in memory care facility reflects on 1 year of visitor restrictions

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    ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (WLOS) — March 10 marks one year to the day that Gov. Roy Cooper issued a state of emergency in North Carolina as COVID-19 cases began popping up across the state.

On that same day, state health officials began recommending long-term care facilities start restricting visitation — recommendations that soon turned into hard rules at facilities statewide.

It’s been a tough year for those with loved ones inside those facilities.

Asheville woman Michelle Goyeau says she hasn’t hugged or even held her husband’s hand in over a year because of the pandemic. Her husband, Larry, has early onset Alzheimer’s and lives in a memory care facility in the Asheville area.

Alzheimer’s is a disease that makes every moment, every memory and every touch so valuable. The pandemic has robbed them of a whole year’s worth of all of that.

“I’ve been that constant presence, that emotional support, that physical support holding his hand — and then for that to be gone one day?” Goyeau said. “I don’t know what he remembers.”

At the start of the pandemic, they couldn’t see each other at all. So she went from seeing him several times a week to not seeing him for weeks. She said they tried Facetiming, but that was difficult with his disease.

“I try to remain cheerful through the visits but oftentimes would leave and cry,” she said.

Since September, they’ve been allowed to see each other in-person again — but only once a week — and they must remain masked and six feet apart.

“I just wanted to cheat and go hug him and hold his hand and be physically present with him,” Goyeau said.

She said she’s seen a noticeable and accelerated decline in his wellbeing during the pandemic.

She said her husband has received wonderful care there, but she believes it’s more than the disease taking a toll on him; it’s the isolation.

“In the past year, he is now in a wheelchair, he’s not walking. He can no longer feed himself,” Goyeau said. “His behavior starting in about August of last year — a lot of agitation, verbal aggression.”

Then, in January 2021, visitation at the facility was put on pause for about a month again when they had their first COVID-19 outbreak.

Michelle Goyeau says she hasn’t hugged or even held her husband’s hand in more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her husband, Larry, has early onset Alzheimer’s and lives in a memory care facility in the Asheville area. (Photo credit: Michelle Goyeau)

Larry was among the residents who got sick. She said he even got pneumonia. But all she could do was worry about him from afar.

“It’s pretty bad when you feel kind of desperate that you want your loved one to go to the hospital so that maybe you can be there for them,” Goyeau said.

Now, she and many others in similar situations are pushing for the state to grant “essential caregiver” status so that residents of these facilities never feel that sort of isolation again.

On Wednesday, a group rallied in Raleigh, asking state officials to allow residents of these facilities to designate a loved one as an essential caregiver who can come in and provide hands-on support, even during public health emergencies.

“So if we go through something like this again, so that someone who’s in an assisted living facility is not left in isolation and alone and cut off from their family,” Goyeau said.

It’s a cause several NC state lawmakers are backing, too, with a new bill — the “No Patient Left Alone Act.”

News 13 has reached out to the North Carolina Dept. of Health and Human Services regarding this. We are still waiting on a response.

But with new guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on visitation at long-term care facilities, Michelle Goyeau is feeling hopeful she’ll be able to at least embrace her husband again in the coming days.

The new CMS guidance says if a resident is fully vaccinated, they may have close contact with their visitor while wearing a mask and performing hand hygiene before and after.

“They deserve the love and the respect and dignity to live a full life with their family as much as they can,” Goyeau said.

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