Man not allowed back into rehab facility after contracting COVID

One Englewood woman risked putting her husband in a nursing home, knowing it would be months before she saw him again. The nursing home he was previously in now won’t take him back because he has COVID-19.

“I love you a lot and I miss you a lot, baby. I know, I want to hold you in my arms too,”  said Rosemary Dias.

It’s clear that their love for each other is unconditional. But the past few months have not been easy for Bill and Rosemary Dias.

“It’s difficult being alone. I still talk to his pillow,” said Rosemary. “I still give him the weather report every night. Tell him I love him.”

But she said Bill isn’t himself anymore. “The dementia is what has taken over, he is no longer my Bill.”

Bill has been battling Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Taking care of him got to be overwhelming, so she moved him into a nursing home in North Port.

“That was the worst decision of my life so far,” Rosemary said. “He is my life. He is my everything, and I had to decide to put him somewhere where I knew at this point I couldn’t see him.”

But now, the nursing home says they won’t accept his return.

Bill is at Englewood Community Hospital and has tested positive for the coronavirus. However, he’s asymptomatic.

“He can’t stay at the hospital because Medicare won’t cover it because he is not acutely ill,” said Rosemary. “And he can’t go back to North Port, is what they told me, because he is COVID positive.”

So for now, Rosemary doesn’t know what to do with him and Bill has no place to go.

Rosemary feels terrible. “I feel like I let him down.”

She’s a wife on a mission to not let her husband be stranded and alone.