Lori Barber

Lori Barber joins us to talk about what it's like living apart from loved ones during the pandemic.

We wil c1 many of us have struggled being away from family members and kq2 met one such daughter out of texas who is grateful for the home healthcare her parents received as she keeps in touch from afar.

Lori barber joins us from dallas, texas.

>> hey, jodie, thank you for having me on.

>> i'm so glad to meet you.

I can relate.

Tell us about your mom and dad.

>> so my father kenny barber is 79-year old army veteran and he has just completed his last chemotherapy treatment and worked so hard and fought so hard to come through just a horrible struggle only to be hit with the coronovirus, he's not suffering from the coronovirus, but to deal with this and his wife, eileen suffers from diabetes.

So they are you know in a stage in life where family means everything.

It's really, really hard to be away and not help support them and just help them pitch in where i can.

>> i understand.

I also remember you saying that he is in the hospital right now because he had a fall.

Is that correct?

>> yes.

So good news.

He was released this morning and he did have a fall yesterday and the last place i wanted him to be was in a hospital during the pandemic.

But, he did get released this morning and he's very happy to be home.

>> so how did you deal with that, the last 24 hours trying to see if they're taking every precaution necessary as far as keeping him isolated away from those patients that might be presumptive cases.

Are you taking care of my dad?

>> yeah.

It was complete terror.

We tried to get ahead of it when we knew the pandemic was coming and communicated really clearly.

I talked to the hospital and really used technology to stay in touch you know the whole time.

I have to really kind of give my credit to my dad.

He's the one i think who took it more in stride than i did.

And his you know advice to me was you know sometimes you can't do what you want to do, you need to do what's right.

What is right is not to spread the pandemic.

So he was actually the one who encouraged me to stay home.

He did say that the hospital was operating very efficiently and the emergency room staff was very accommodating to wait for me to get on the phone to talk to the people from the er.

Of course, after the fall, they were worried about head injuries and the cause of the fall.

Technology was a big help and communicating using video technology and face time, calling, texting that sort of thing.

The er was broken down into two areas, basically with coronovirus symptoms and without.

So they had basically the er quarantine when made me very happy and the nursing staff was fantastic.

Keeping us updated.

>> i'm so glad.

I'm so glad.

Well, just real quickly, we have about 30 seconds left.

I know that's not a lot of time.

I would like to hear from you the four things you feel like are helping you get through this.

>> okay.

So our family got really ahead of the curve.

We prepared really early.

Ordered supplies.

Researched what we might need.

Communicate really clearly.

I feel like i'm command central in dallas with the rest of my family members.

We're using technology in the best thing we're really relying on our support system.

Our boots on the ground and the love of the st.

Joe community.

If it wasn't for the healthcare workers there every day, i would be a nervous wreck.

I have to give a big shout out to st.

Joe.

If you ever need anyone to check on him, i can do that.

>> thank you so much.

>> lori, thank