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Azle nursing home resident who died of COVID 'deserved more respect,' daughter says

Fort Worth Star-Telegram - 7/27/2020

Jul. 27--Hours before 85-year-old Anita Mayfield died of coronavirus complications, her daughter was allowed to be with her in person for the first time in four months.

Jan Stallons sat close to her mom, a resident of the Azle Manor nursing home, in an emergency room late on July 18. The long-suffering diabetic had been moved to Texas Health Harris Hospital in Fort Worth due to her worsening condition, Stallons said, and doctors determined liquid was filling her lungs. Mayfield was incoherent and unresponsive as she lay in her bed.

From the time Stallons was informed of her mother's COVID-19 diagnosis only three days earlier, she had thought of it as a death sentence. But she couldn't have known it would be this quick.

Stallons, covered in protective gear like the nurses, squeezed Mayfield's hand through plastic gloves, savoring the contact she had been denied at Azle Manor since March due to the pandemic. She told her mom it was OK for her to go freely, she said. She told her she loved her.

About three hours after she left the hospital, around 1:30 a.m. on July 19, she got the phone call that Mayfield was dead.

"I wasn't able to comfort her at all. That made it real rough," Stallons told the Star-Telegram over the phone. "The thought that she went through this alone makes me even more angry."

Stallons, an Azle resident, believes her mother might have been suffering at the nursing home for longer than she had known, and that the outbreak at Azle Manor was worse than management had let on. She also believes staff weren't taking the virus seriously enough, based on the lack of social distancing she would see when she visited with her mother through her bedroom window.

A nurse who spoke with the Star-Telegram last week said though employees don't know how many of the roughly 120 residents are infected, there are believed to be at least 60 cases since three out of six halls are filled with COVID-19 patients. Twenty-five staff members with the virus have also been asked to go home, the nurse said.

Reached on the phone over the weekend and asked if he had a comment, Azle Manor Administrator Kinny Pack said, "No, sir, I don't."

The facility, located in the small city of Azle about 17 miles northwest of Fort Worth, is the latest North Texas nursing home to turn into a coronavirus hot spot. There have been clusters of cases at senior living centers such as the Lake Worth Nursing Home, and elderly individuals across Tarrant County have been most at risk of dying from the sickness.

Stallons alleges that as coronavirus cases and deaths were climbing across Tarrant County, she would look into her mother's room and feel concerned about a lack of social-distancing precautions. On the Fourth of July, she said she saw a gloveless aide running her fingers through Mayfield's hair and on her face. People would walk into her mother's room with no mask on, she said.

What has been especially frustrating, she said, is that those in charge of Azle Manor appear unwilling to be transparent and address the reality of the outbreak that has overwhelmed the facility.

It's that attitude that she believes led to her finding out one day her mother had the coronavirus and four days later having to mourn her.

Mayfield was always a loving parent, she said, creating special lifelong memories for her and her four siblings in Amarillo. On Sunday nights, Mayfield would invite 30 to 60 kids from their church youth group over for dinner, serving up barbecue and cobblers. She taught her children how to make candies like peanut brittle and chocolate bon-bons.

Stallons buried her in Amarillo on Thursday next to her father and her three brothers who have died. It was a small and straightforward gravesite-only service, with everyone keeping their social distance, she said.

But Stallons did hire a person to release white doves into the air to honer her mom.

"When you can't have a normal funeral, you've gotta think of something a little different," she said.

'She didn't deserve to go like this'

The last time Stallons saw her mother inside of Azle Manor on July 10, she said, she looked weak. That was a few days after staff disclosed there was one confirmed COVID-19 case at the facility, which she said was the first and only update she had received from them.

Mayfield, sitting on the other side of the glass, told her daughter she simply felt tired.

With 100-degree heat bearing down on her outside, however, Stallons left after a little while and promised to return soon. "But that wasn't so," she said.

She got a phone call late on July 15 from an Azle Manor official who told her Mayfield had contracted the coronavirus. She said she asked if she could come to see her but was denied.

"I wish I would've gone and made them open the window," Stallons said. "Because I would've been able to see my mom and see then that something was wrong."

The next morning, her phone rang as she drove to the nursing home to pick up her mother's dirty clothes like she does every other week.

An Azle Manor nurse told her Mayfield wasn't looking good, she said. She asked if she wanted her to be moved to a hospital or a hospice center.

"I asked the nurse, 'Well, what good is hospice going to do? Are they going to bring a ventilator?'" Stallons said, recounting their conversation. "'If mom's that bad, she needs to go to a hospital."'

The 85-year-old's decline was so rapid from July 16 to 18 that Stallons' primary focus was on doing whatever she could to be there for her mother, waiting on the phone call that she could come to the hospital.

In the time since her mom died, she has fixated on the weeks preceding her death that she said she still knows little about.

Stallons said she called up Azle Manor to request her mother's medical records, stating she has retained her power of attorney, and was "stonewalled." The woman who answered the phone told her the request needed to go to a supervisor, she said. She plans on calling back again.

She would also like more answers on the size of the outbreak but has been unable to learn anything concrete, she said. During one phone call with a nurse, she said, the woman informed her wings 1, 2 and 3 were for coronavirus patients, and she asked how many cases there were.

The nurse told her she couldn't disclose that information.

"I thought, 'You know, I'm not as stupid as you people think I am,' because I got to adding up how many people were in mom's hall," Stallons said. "If you've got three hallways that are COVID, that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people."

Nurses had spoken optimistically about her mother recovering from the virus, even as she stated plainly she couldn't, she said. Mayfield moved into the nursing home in August 2018 after falling and breaking her hip, and she had struggled with other issues before then. That includes a history of diabetes, a bad heart and some dementia.

Stallons said she wishes the leaders at Azle Manor had treated the coronavirus as the dire threat it represented beginning in March, though she wouldn't go as far as to hold them responsible for Mayfield's death. She does feel like she was lied to and robbed of the little time she had left with her mother.

She thinks Mayfield had the coronavirus possibly for a long time before July 15. She just wonders "how many days she suffered," she said.

"She didn't deserve to go like this," Stallons said. "She deserved more respect than this."

'You don't hide something like this from families'

Mayfield was happy living at Azle Manor before the coronavirus pandemic, especially because of the nursing home's lax attitude about pets, Stallons said. The lover of dogs kept a Shih Tzu named Charlika and would light up whenever Stallons brought in her yellow Lab.

Charlika, whom Stallons called Cha-Cha, helped Mayfield overcome her shyness, like her "voyeur opening the doors" to help her make friends.

But Stallons said her warm feelings about Azle Manor have shifted as she seeks answers to her questions.

The Texas Department of Aging and Disabilities Services is apparently investigating the facility, according to the nurse who spoke with the Star-Telegram for an earlier story. The agency didn't respond to a request for comment.

Stallons hopes Pack, the administrator, is held accountable for any wrongdoing, she said. She also would like to see a culture of transparency at the nursing home, where staff would relay all information to families.

She doesn't think anyone should feel the shock she experienced.

"You don't hide something like this from families," Stallons said. "It's not fair."

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