72-year-old returning home from Parkview Place after family advocates for discharge

After weeks of waiting, a 72-year-old man is returning home after being discharged from Parkview Place, the site of one of Manitoba's worst long-term care home outbreak of COVID-19.

Charles Scribe's daughter, Lisa Muswagon, and his wife were advocating to bring him home as the COVID-19 situation at the downtown Winnipeg care home worsened. Last week, they got the call that Scribe was coming home.

"There are a lot of different feelings. You don't know how to feel because there's so many things going on at the same time," Muswagon said in an interview with CBC Radio's Up To Speed Tuesday.

"You don't know if you should feel offended or if you should feel like, 'Hey, you know what? They try.'"

Scribe had been living at Parkview Place since March. But the long-term care home moved to critical-level restrictions under the province's pandemic response system on Sept. 16, after a staff member tested positive. So far, 120 residents living at Parkview and 43 staff have tested positive for COVID-19. Twenty-nine have died in that outbreak.

Muswagon and her mother were concerned for Scribe when they wouldn't hear from the nurses about the situation in Parkview Place, and were primarily relying on news reports.

But incidents Scribe had told his family about over phone conversations were more concerning. Scribe told them that he wasn't being changed or checked on regularly. One night, he fell on his way to the washroom and was not tended to for hours, Muswagon told CBC News in a previous interview.

When Scribe officially left the care home, he was only given a blanket and discharge papers, said Muswagon.

Scribe, a residential school survivor, described his time in Parkview as one of the toughest times of his life, his daughter says.

"I'm sure in the coming weeks he'll be sharing with us his experiences. But right now, he says he feels pretty traumatized and that he's just looking forward to resting," she said. "He didn't really sleep much last night, according to my mother."

CBC News has contacted Revera, the company that manages Parkview Place, for comment but they did not immediately respond.

Scribe has several health issues that require him to have a certain level of care throughout the day, said Muswagon. So she and her mother had to call on the community for help to enable him to live at home.

A health-care aide will be coming in to help him, she said, while other family members help with tasks such as trips for essential items.

Now that Scribe is out of the care home, Muswagon is unsure whether a spot will be reserved for him to go back once the situation calms down.

But she and her mother don't want him to go back there anyway, she says.

More support for care homes — both financially and in staffing — would need to be in place before they would consider having him live there again, Muswagon said.

In the meantime, she said she will continue advocating for seniors in care homes in Manitoba who may not have a family to turn to for help.