For 2 months they visited only through a window. Now he’s hospitalized with COVID-19
Betti Nix Williams started Tuesday morning how she starts most days: with a daily devotional before getting into her van and driving from her Irmo-area home to the assisted living facility in Chapin where her husband lives and where, for the past two months, she has only been able to see him through a glass window.
The daily devotional that morning? “God has planned your day. He is in control,” said Williams, 74, who had learned ten days earlier that her husband had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Soon after her prayer, the phone rang.
Bill, Williams’ husband of 53 years, was showing more pronounced symptoms from his COVID-19 diagnosis, such as not eating, an employee at his home, Lowman Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, told Williams, saying if she wanted Bill, 75, to be taken to Lexington Medical Center she needed to come sign Bill out of hospice.
“She said, ‘How soon can you be here?” Williams said. “I (said I) can be there in less than 15 minutes. I did get to be back there as they took him out of the room. I did snap a picture as he was being put into the ambulance. His eyes were open, but it was like he didn’t really see me.”
Bill tested positive for the COVID-19 novel virus on April 18, days before the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control released numbers of positive virus cases associated with nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout South Carolina.
There are roughly 19,000 people who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities spread out across the state.
Since the agency first published last month that more than 45 facilities reported more than 200 positive cases, DHEC as of Friday published 72 facilities had reported 691 positive cases in both residents and staff. Of those case numbers, 69 had resulted in death.
Lowman has so far accounted for 32 of those cases, many of whom were reported in residents. At least four people have died, according to DHEC.
Lowman was one of the first homes in the state to shut its doors in early March to visitors ahead of an outbreak, showing just how quickly the virus can spread, now accounting for more than 6,000 positive COVID-19 cases, resulting in 244 deaths as of Thursday.
Williams said she doesn’t fault Lowman for the outbreak, and said the facility staff have so far handled it well.
“They have done everything possible to prevent (it),” Williams said.
Williams said she receives daily calls, sometimes more than once a day, from nurses and staff since Bill was moved to Lexington Medical Center in critical condition on Tuesday. Bill is still in the hospital’s intensive care unit, but Williams said she was told Thursday afternoon that he is more coherent and smiling when doctors tell him her name, she said.
Williams said she has encouraged nurses to turn the TV to investigative cop shows for Bill, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
“He’s just sick. I’m trying very hard to stay positive and am trying very hard not to cry a lot,” Williams said. “I hold together when I’m talking with people and not being able to be around people right now is really really hard. I can’t keep somebody on the phone all day, unfortunately.”
She’s been driving to the hospital parking lot each day to pray.
“I know God hears me from home. I just need that nearness. I need it,” Williams said. “It’s just, even though he has been in the nursing home for two years, I was still able to see him every day. Even when I had knee replacement, I went there for rehab to be there every day. I am so afraid of it.”
COVID-19’s spread has done more than disrupt her life and her husband’s.
Williams’ cousin in New York died after contracting the virus. She was 53 and living in an assisted living facility.
Williams’ cousin and his wife in Greenville also have contracted the virus, but are isolating at home, she said.
Bill’s positive case had made the virus that “more real” to Williams, she said.
For now, she doesn’t let her daughter, Kimberly Best, or son-in-law, Stewart, come into her house. Instead, they meet on the porch with masks on and drink bottled water. Williams said she also cleans the groceries delivered to her home.
“I have to say, in the very beginning, I was probably one of those people when I heard about it in China, I thought, ‘Well that’s over there. This is America, and it’s not going to happen to us,” Williams said. “Boy was I wrong. I was very wrong.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 3:14 PM.
