“I spent Christmas night sitting outside in the cold with her son as she passed and all he could do was look in the window.”

This experience was one of many that nursing homes and personal care homes around the country faced daily during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lisa Perla, executive director of Heritage Hill Senior Community in Weatherly, recently shared her facility’s experience as it ravaged everything around them in 2020 and 2021.

Heritage Hill, a personal care facility in Weatherly, is licensed to serve 143 residents and averages about 80 to 90 people living in the community.

In 2020, life as Perla knew it changed because of the pandemic. At the time, she was serving as the resident care director at Heritage Hill.

“Our executive director goes to Florida in March of 2020,” she said. “She’s getting off the plane and COVID hit. She calls and tells me ‘we have to lock down.’ That was March 12, 2020.”

A few months later, Perla’s boss retired and she stepped into the lead position.

The staff, now under Perla, tried to make the lockdown for residents as easy as possible, with impromptu dance parties in the hallways as physical therapy sessions.

“The staff became the physical therapists because the therapists couldn’t come in,” she said. “They had prayer groups and it was wonderful. This was when most of the other communities were getting COVID. We started having family parades because you could see the change in the residents. You could see they were losing weight. They were isolated. They were depressed. They were struggling and you could see it.

“We did everything we could to keep them moving.”

Months passed without a positive case in the facility and the staff began to think that maybe, just maybe, Heritage Hill would be spared.

“We started to think, maybe we’re going to make it,” Perla said. “None of the residents had gotten COVID and in early December, they started talks about the vaccine coming.”

But time was running out and COVID came knocking.

The first case

As vaccines began to roll out to nursing homes, Perla grew worried.

She was not getting a response to her requests to set up a vaccine clinic for her residents.

“I was calling everyone I could think of for where I could get it.”

On Dec. 14, 2020, Heritage Hill had its first case of COVID.

Perla said the virus was detected from a hospice member who came into the facility. From there, it spread.

“All of my hospice patients tested positive for COVID.”

On Dec. 24, 13 staff members tested positive, in addition to 23 residents.

“That was our Christmas Eve.”

Perla and her remaining staff scrambled to lock down to slow the spread. They reached out to organizations that had worked on this in the beginning of the pandemic, but they were gone since most nursing homes had already been hit hard and now had the vaccine available to them.

They locked down the residents further, requiring them to eat in their rooms and began Zoom calls with family to try to help the residents through this nightmare.

“Families just wanted to see what they look like,” Perla said.

The calls helped a bit, but Perla could see the decline in her residents’ mental health.

“The hardest part was getting doctors in. They didn’t want to come in and they didn’t want them in the hospital. They were sending them back to us. We were doing everything except surgery to keep these people alive.

“We were the ones holding their hands. We were their families. We were the ones listening to them.”

Death comes knocking

Perla, fighting back tears, recalled one resident who lived in Heritage Hill for eight years.

“I remember when we brought her in,” she said. “Of course, I’m close to the family. I spent Christmas night sitting outside in the cold with her son as she passed and all he could do was look in the window. It was horrible.”

Perla credits her staff, who stuck with her and Heritage Hill through it all, but noted that there were struggles since many had families of their own they were trying to keep safe.

“I have a wonderful staff,” she said. “We did whatever we could but the place looked like a war zone.

“We pride ourself on how beautiful (the facility) is, but there were garbage bags blocking our hallways. We had isolation rooms set up in every hallway. Dressers and drawers and parts of things everywhere. We couldn’t get supplies. We were begging to borrow to get supplies. Cases of gloves went from $30 to almost $200 and then you didn’t get them.”

Ten people were lost to COVID.

Hope comes in a phone call

As the pandemic continued to ravage Heritage Hill, Perla recalled the patient incident that led to action.

“It was about 6 o’clock one night and we had sent one of our residents to the hospital,” she said. “The doctor called and said he was sending her back because there was nothing more they can do for her. He started spitting off all these orders and I started to cry.”

Perla told the doctor that Heritage Hill had 25 residents with COVID and only six staff members, including herself, able to work to take care of everyone.

“I told him, please don’t send her back. I can’t care for her.”

The doctor then asked if the facility had received the vaccine yet and Perla told him no.

The next morning, Perla found emails between the Lehigh Valley doctor and various suppliers.

“I had the vaccine by the end of that week,” she said.

But the damage had already been done. Heritage Hill’s census dropped from 80 to 51 and the staff had been battered and bruised by the past year.

“I lost some of my top management team members and we had to rebuild,” she said.

Picking up the pieces

Over the next several months, life at Heritage Hill began to return to normal.

The worst of the pandemic was subsiding and family was beginning to resume visits.

Perla spoke about one time when a prayer group was in the facility’s breezeway and she went into a resident’s room and she and the resident just sat there with the window open listening to the prayer group.

“I was listening and I put my head down because I didn’t want him to see me crying,” she said. “He came over and he hugged me and kissed the top of my head and he said, ‘You forget, we’re OK. We’ve been through this. We have been through this for our age group. We’re good.”

That statement made Perla realize that things were going to be OK at her facility.

Heritage Hill has since rebounded, both in staff and resident population, and has taken the hard-fought battle and lessons learned to better the future.

“We learned that every person that walks through that door, we’re going to love them because we have seen what it is to lose them,” Perla said. “We’ve learned to take care of our families. They matter. Their voices matter. We’ve learned that we’re strong. We can do this.

“We made it. We went through COVID and we survived. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone, but that’s our journey.”