When Steve Rinne, 64, and Barb Meuth, 68, learned that KC Shepherd's Center had been flooded with increased demand for Meals on Wheels deliveries, they volunteered to take a route.
“It makes me feel good to do this,” Rinne said as he loaded another box of fruit cups, peanut butter, toilet paper and other nonperishables into the back of his royal blue Prius. “Someday someone might need to help me like this.”
Rinne headed back to the truck to grab some cold sacs for the dairy products each person received to hold them over through the holidays.
More vulnerable
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those over age 65 are 80 percent more likely to die of COVID-19.
Some more statistics: those over 85 are 13 times more likely to go to the hospital with COVID-19 than someone in their twenties, and 630 times more likely to die from the virus.
Shepherd’s Center Executive Director Janet Baker said their number of weekly deliveries has skyrocketed from 50 to 400 over the nine-month pandemic, pulling back the curtain on longstanding food insecurity among older adults in our communities.
“What I say isn’t so much that the need has increased as that the awareness has,” she stated.
Kansas City is in the top 25 cities nationally where the older population experiences food insecurity, or a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. When the pandemic began, Baker recalled that the public rallied to help non-profits address the problem. But almost a year out, she is concerned interest is waning.
“People are going back to work, they have COVID fatigue themselves,” she said. “That immediate burst of passion to do something to make a difference has slowed down a little bit.”
KC Shepherd's Center is having a hard time recruiting volunteers to meet the greater demand and has had to add a budget line to hire some part time workers.
Grateful customers
Rinne and Mueth have added stops to their route, including the home of Nora Karnes in east Kansas City.
The effervescent 80-year-old greeted them with a gleeful hello, her golden hair nicely coiffed. She wore a mask and a glittery black and gold sweater.
“Hi, Miss Nora,” Rinne called. “How are you?”
Karnes moved close, as if to offer a hug. But, Rinne reminded her they needed to maintain social distancing, as he placed her boxes and bags on the porch.
“We’ve giving you an extra delivery today because we’re not gonna deliver before New Year’s, “he explained.
“Thank you! I really appreciate it,” Karnes said. “It really helps.”
Karnes has never had Meals on Wheels deliveries before. But she’s been homebound since the pandemic began, not shopping for groceries, going to church, or even to her beloved thrift stores, her favorite pastime and place to socialize and shop.
“The pandemic hit (me) in the butt,” she said. “Sometimes you get through paying bills, (you) gotta keep your water, lights and gas on, and I aint got no food! Then (Rinne and Meuth) come along.”
The pandemic has also cast attention on another well-known issue for many who are older.
Isolation and its ripple effects: depression and deteriorating physical health.
For Reina Dudley, who I have talked with throughout the pandemic, the isolation has hit hardest on her ability to visit her husband of 40 years.
“I can’t touch him, hug him, hold his hand, kiss him, nothing,” she said.
A month before retirement and nursing facilities went on lock-down, Dudley put her husband in a memory care unit. His Alzheimer’s had become too much for her to handle alone at home.
Then she was laid off from her job.
When I talked to her recently, she had just that day been back to see her husband since the latest shut down in September.
“And I didn’t recognize him,” she said. “He’d lost so much weight. He’s 65 years old, but when you look at him, he looks like he’s 80 years old.”
The fear, sadness and anxiety is palpable in Dudley’s voice. She said she lies awake at night wondering if her husband knows why she hasn’t visited more. If she had stuck it out trying to care for him at home, whether she’d have made the decision to put him in the facility at all. The lack of access has been gut-wrenching. Without daily visits, she can’t complete what she calls “the checklist,” wondering if he's clean? Is he eating well, being well taken care of?
She has worried about money as she looks for another job. She has missed going to work every day, not just for the structure, but for the collegiality of her co-workers.
“It’s the loneliness that has been really intense,” she said. “My children don’t live here, and I can’t get to them. It’s very depressing. It is just, at times, too much, just unmanageable to me."
Jessica Kalender-Rich, professor of Geriatric Medicine with The University of Kansas Center on Aging, said what Reina Dudley has described is not uncommon among those she’s seen recently.
Heightened isolation often leads to decreased cognitive function, severe depression and even more frequent falls.
She said as a society, we lack the infrastructure to accommodate these issues.
“Older adults are already isolated in many ways,” she shared. “(The pandemic) has just exacerbated and made (it) so much more public and there is nothing that can really be done to fix the problem.”
The impact of the pandemic on older adults has turned out to be a puzzle. How do these folks balance their risk of contracting, or dying of COVID-19, with the greater risk of isolation this virus has created?
