Pandemic’s Impact on the Elderly

“My friends are not the same,” said the pleasant 80-year old woman with a long gash on her forehead. One silver lining about stitching a complex cut is that it affords me the unique opportunity and time to learn more about my patients beyond their current illness. If you’ve ever visited a busy urban ER, you know those conversations can be a true rarity as efficiency oftentimes takes precedence over humanity, to my frequent dismay.

She dropped out of college but later got her GED to eventually land a dream job on Wall Street in the 1970s. She had a prolific career in New York, but it was difficult to keep up with the pace of technology and the rise of the Internet. She retired, finally enjoying her free time at book clubs, coffee shops, and theaters. She and her few friends developed a reliable and satisfying routine in their older age. Suddenly, all of that changed in one week.

Not to dismiss the challenges that younger adults faced over the past year, with long-lasting impacts on their education, rising careers, relationships, etc. but the elderly, particularly the previously independent elderly, have certainly been overlooked in the conversation.

I was about half way done closing her wound when she began telling me about a young man she met at a coffee shop in 2019. He had recently immigrated from Asia for school. He needed someone to help him translate certain words in his assigned readings, and she enjoyed this newfound purpose. They would meet every Tuesday and go over the circled words in his books. They never met outside of the coffee shop, but she soon began relying on the routine and companionship. March of 2020 rolled around, and suddenly she did not see her new friend for over a year. One day last month, while leaving the supermarket, she saw a young man entering. Both were masked but immediately recognized each others’ eyes. Their eyes and barely visible facial expressions were filled with nostalgia of happy memories, and sorrow over those that were never made.

Now, as she begins getting accustomed once again to a new reality with lifting social restrictions, there is something missing. Her friends are not the same, deconditioned both physically and emotionally after a year of unanticipated solitude. Amongst all of my patients that day, she seemed the happiest to be in the ER, in no rush to go home. I understood why, and took my time placing the remaining stitches.