Grandmother describes living through COVID isolation

Margaret Byl, a mother and grandmother, is accustomed to tackling issues of family safety.

She is currently managing an issue more and more families are facing during the pandemic — a full house of family members in isolation.

Byl has been a long-standing member of the Virgil Women Institute, and is also president of the national Federation of Women’s Institutes of Canada, the goal of which has been educating women about any and all issues which can be a threat to their family’s safety, or “really, to anybody,” she says.

COVID is the most current threat, and many families, two years into the pandemic, are still figuring out how to deal with it. Byl has become somewhat of an expert.

She has four grandsons living with her at the moment, three of them having tested positive for COVID. Their dad and pregnant mom live next door, and the boys are staying with their grandparents to protect the brother that they are expecting to arrive mid-February.

“We were isolating in a bubble of six,” says Margaret, other than the boys going to school. Two are 13 year olds, one nine, the other six, all attending one of the local schools, which, thanks to Niagara Public Health taking the extra initiative, unlike other areas around the province, notifies families if there is a COVID case in any of their kids’ classrooms.

When one of Byl’s grandsons began showing symptoms last week that could have been either a cold or flu, she used the rapid tests the school gave them.

“He said his brain hurt, but it was different from a headache. His legs and arms were sore, and he was tired,” she says.

He tested positive, as did two of his three siblings. One of the two older boys has remained negative.

Margaret’s husband Lane soon started feeling sick, and tested positive. By the second day, she was encouraging him to go to the hospital, but he said he was okay. The next day he couldn’t deny that he needed help, and was admitted to the COVID ward of the St. Catharines site of the Niagara Health System. She was able to talk to him by phone, and he is getting better, after being treated with steroids. But she was surprised by how quickly mild symptoms turned into something more serious, she says, a warning to others not to put off that trip to the hospital too long.

He checked himself out of the hospital early Sunday morning, but she is checking his oxygen level often and watching over him carefully.

On Tuesday afternoon, she was also a little concerned about her youngest grandson, whose oxygen levels were fluctuating. She was waiting to hear from his doctor, not sure whether a trip to the hospital with him was going to be necessary.

Everyone in the family has been vaccinated, and Margaret, 66, is thankful she and Lane, 73, have had their booster shots as well.

Bly has continued to test negative, as has one of the boys, and of course they are all isolating. Fortunately they have a large home, with the two older boys staying downstairs — they’re always together, she says, so there is no point separating them now — and the two younger upstairs, keeping their distance. There are enough washrooms that Margaret and her grandson who has continued to test negative can each have their own.

She wears a mask when they are nearby, as do they, they wash hands frequently, dishes are sanitized, and despite the extra work, she feels relieved, she says, knowing “it could be so much worse.”

As she contemplates her life at the moment, worrying and complicated, but necessary for the sake of her family, she says she watches what is happening in Ottawa and across the country with the truckers’ convoys and the protests that have accompanied them.

“I feel sad,” she says, “sometimes angry, but mostly sad, and frustrated. There are people who can’t be vaccinated, and I feel sorry for them. But those who can and won’t — sooner or later, they or someone close to them will get COVID, and go through what my family is going through.”

She speaks of the vaccinations we’ve willingly had over the decades that have nearly eradicated diseases such as polio and measles, and says, “we didn’t protest. We did it for our families and for society. To those who can get the vaccine, please do so. For the health and safety of your families, and for everyone else.”

Those who are not vaccinated are taking up hospital spaces, costing taxpayers money and stressing the health care system, she says. “They need to look at where they’re getting their information from. They’re being stubborn, refusing to listen to the experts, the right information. Instead they’re getting it from Twitter or Facebook. Please, use some common sense. We have enough hospitalizations because of COVID, and there are people who are not getting the treatment they require because hospitals are full. There have been lives lost because of surgeries that had to be cancelled.”

Also, she says to those who read her story, “please thank the frontline workers, nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, everyone who is an essential worker. I don’t know where we would be without them.”

One of Lane’s nurses is pregnant, but continues to treat COVID patients. “She is very caring,” says Margaret. “They must all be exhausted, but they keep going. God bless them.”