Ronnie Mack, Resident

Ronnie Mack, a Texas native, has been a nursing home resident for five years. He enjoys going to the movies, visiting museums, spending time with friends and family, and reading in his spare time. Click the black squares below to hear and read about Ronnie’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The expanded interview (edited for clarity) is available at the bottom of the page.

I was not a person who just stayed here in the nursing home all the time. I would go out pretty much every day or every other day or so, in the community and at various things. And that was, the hardest part for me was just being confined here in the building and not being able to move around, visit friends, do anything, or engage in family activities and such as that.

The pandemic especially hit hard on people in the nursing home because we wasn’t allowed go out pretty much, and we had no visitors. So that kind of put a damper on that.

I do a lot of reading on the e-reader because I have a very difficult time seeing — I am basically legally blind. You can only get a very few words on the page on my Kindle because my vision is very poor. But I love to read!

Basically what I did was pretty much just read, I watched movies on TV and stuff like that. Basically I just read a lot.

Many people in the nursing home, unlike myself, they really don’t have a whole lot of cognition and able to see that they are getting the care and so forth that they need to be getting. And so in that regard, there is just a lot that needs to be done in this area of the nursing homes. 

Click below for the expanded interview (07:14).