Oral archives
When: April 2022
Location: A residential area in Bansongyuan Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai
Name: Xiao Gao
Age: 44 years old
Status: A stay-at-home mom, a community volunteer
This is the 13th oral story of occasional healing
Xiao Gao, a stay-at-home mom in Shanghai's Huangpu district, has been volunteering since March 24, taking residents to do nucleic acids, and has been in a state of intense "fighting" for nearly a month.
The community she lives in is relatively simple, with two high-rise buildings, nearly 240 households, and more than 40 families living alone over the age of 60. In the early stages of lockdown, there were abnormal cases of nucleic acid in both buildings, and the volunteers faced many challenges because they were "staying at home".
Xiao Gao is mainly responsible for helping solve the plight of the elderly, from modifying the group nickname to finding medicines and dispensing drugs.
She noticed that when she asked some elderly people about their needs, they were initially very calm. Later, Xiao Gao realized that behind this calmness, there may be some "embarrassment and troublesome psychology".
Once, she asked an aunt if she needed to dispense medicine. Auntie said that she had never wanted to bother you, but because of esophageal reflux, there was no medicine, and I really didn't sleep well last night. Xiao Gao asked the neighbors in the group and helped his aunt adjust a box.
"We can deal with it, and then put it together for the neighborhood committee, so it's much faster." As a volunteer, she also saw how grassroots work works, "many of the problems encountered by neighborhood committees now are not in their previous business scope."
"Neighborhood committees are like a needle with a lot of threads on it, and now many threads have to go through this needle at the same time."
Here is Xiao Gao's dictation:
Some elderly people are calm
Probably embarrassed to bother people
On March 21, the neighborhood committee recruited volunteers in our community group, and I signed up when I saw it. On the afternoon of the 24th, the neighborhood committee called volunteers to a meeting, and only then did they know that we needed to take the residents to the point to do nucleic acid.
This is the first time that volunteers have participated in nucleic acid testing services.
Since this time, we have built a volunteer group in our community, and now there are 21 people.
Some volunteers need to work on weekdays, we have 3 or 4 resident people in the group marked "volunteer", everyone will take the initiative to find us when needed.
The neighborhood committee said in advance that it would send a gift package, an antigen test box, and go downstairs to do nucleic acid; the volunteers came up with a plan for the voice conference, communicated with the neighborhood committee what the requirements were this time, and this time it was convenient for people who went downstairs to sign up immediately to form a small team.
Before the first community nucleic acid, volunteers took a group photo.
Everyone said that this background was a "backlit angel".
Courtesy of respondents
In addition, we volunteers find things to do on our own.
When the epidemic first occurred, it was more difficult, no one knew what would happen the next day, what we would do, and then a tacit understanding slowly formed:
A volunteer has done more coordination work, from getting up to work until 12 o'clock in the evening, the dispensing of medicine is mainly for me to assist him to complete; there is a young man who can do data; a mother is responsible for group purchase; and there is an organ worker, the writing is good, and the notice is drawn up by him. It's not the same as the previous assignment assigned to you at work, it's something you want to do spontaneously, and the atmosphere is good.
After the closure of the building, one morning, I saw the circle of friends repost, calling on everyone to take care of the elderly living alone.
I remembered that there used to be an old man in our family who also lived alone, and he had been cared for by his neighbors in his life. I have lived here for 20 years, and there are a few elderly people, and many of them are still familiar with the situation, which is not around the children.
So, I asked the neighborhood committee teacher I knew to bring the community resident registration form, considering that it involves personal information, may be more sensitive, I spent an afternoon alone to screen out the pure old family: our community is relatively simple, two high-rise buildings, nearly 240 households, more than 40 families of elderly people over 60 years old living alone.
I called as a volunteer to ask what they needed.
Originally, in the imagination, the elderly would say, "Oh, we can't do this, ask you to help us serve" and so on, but I didn't feel this way at all.
Some elderly people are relatively closed in information, do not use smart phones, and are very happy at home. Ask them if they have anything to help with, and they say, "I don't know when you're going to go to nucleic acid, so you can just let me know."
There are also some elderly people, mobile phone operation is very slippery, the information in the society is very clear, but also very calm, said to me, "try not to add trouble to you, we can solve it ourselves."
But later, I found that this kind of calmness may also carry some embarrassment and troublesome psychology.
I had been asking about the needs of some elderly people before, they didn't say anything, and one day they suddenly came to me and said that the food was going to run out and the medicine was running out.
Or sometimes when we talk about something, they say, "I just want to ask you, but I don't know how to ask."
For example, once I casually asked an aunt if she had any medicine to dispense? She said, I didn't want to bother you, but my medicine was gone, and I really didn't sleep well last night. It turned out that she had problems with esophageal reflux. I asked the neighbor in the group and helped her dispense a box.
In the community group, everyone will inevitably vent the psychological pressure on the epidemic. Many elderly people tell me that they can't get enough of watching so much news every day, and they often can't pay attention to the information they should pay attention to.
I added them ToChat, before each nucleic acid or when there is an important notification will send them private messages, no WeChat will call to notify. Some old people do not know how to set the message do not disturb, "the mobile phone is constantly calling, the vibration is not stopped", can only rely on the night shutdown to solve.
What kind of elderly people need help? In fact, it is not easy to define, not only to see "age" and "whether to live alone", but also to see the specific situation.
Some families are two elderly people with a child, or the elderly live with a nanny, they do not know how to buy vegetables online, the first batch of screening these people were ignored.
There are also 60-year-olds who have strong living ability, and they will say that they belong to middle-aged and young people and do not need special care.
Contact with older adults requires some patience.
As small as the details of mobile phone operations, such as changing group nicknames, they generally do not, and sometimes "one-on-one" teaches them for a long time. Buy vegetables in the group, they will not collect money in the group, only send red envelopes. Some elderly people's mobile phones set up the function of automatically grabbing red envelopes, obviously someone here sent money to buy vegetables, and the old man over there took the money away.
The mother who is in charge of group buying is also quite methodical, she will tell everyone, "You all don't talk, I want to collect money", and when everyone stops talking, she teaches the old people step by step to operate group collection.
Help the elderly find medicines and dispense medicines
A person may spend two or three hours
For older people, I mainly consider two issues:
One is not enough to eat?
This time, our neighborhood committee responded in advance, and before our ordinary residents first distributed supplies, they had already sent two batches to pure old families over the age of 60, with vegetables and meat and eggs.
At first, everyone didn't know that it would be sealed for so long, and later they were still a little nervous about buying vegetables, and they wouldn't buy in groups. I helped to pull the children of the elderly into the group buying group, so that it was more convenient to operate.
The second is whether there is a chronic disease in normal times, and what drugs do you need to dispense?
Helping the elderly dispense medicines, our other volunteer did the most, and he worked very meticulously.
He would ask the old man for photos of the outer packaging of the drug: there are several different brands of the same drug name, and the effect may be biased. Many elderly people have no shell for a long time, can only give you a name, this volunteer will go to the US group one by one to search, the relevant pictures screenshot to the elderly to confirm: you see which one you often eat?
Both buildings in our community are positive, everyone "stays at home", what was originally a very small thing has become very complicated, and time is spent on communication.
Usually, an old man may need three or four kinds of drugs, if you look for pharmacies on the Internet, the medicine is often incomplete, then we have to find three or four stores to buy a person's medicine, and before placing an order, we must first give each other to see if the amount is acceptable. Sometimes, dispensing medicine for a person can take two or three hours.
Small high volunteer work computer folder
Courtesy of respondents
In our case, there is a greater demand for drugs for common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
At the beginning, the neighborhood committee did not have the service of helping residents to go to the hospital to dispense medicines, and everyone bought medicines online.
At that time, nearby pharmacies were also open, and as long as you could find errands, you could buy them. But recently, I and two other volunteers have sensed that the success rate of buying medicines online is getting lower and lower.
This morning, when I selected all the "jingle fast medicines" and was ready to pay, I saw that it was 30 to 60 days to arrive, and I could only let the old man slow down first, and he replied "OKAY". After a while, a friend said to me, "Hurry up, Meituan can buy medicine", and he just successfully placed an order. I went to see it at once, but there was not a single medicine needed.
Fortunately, the neighborhood committee freed up manpower before the Qingming Festival to help us dispense medicines at a nearby hospital.
After the opening of the nearby top three hospitals, the variety of drugs is much more complete than that of community hospitals. Now, all the residents' money for dispensing medicines is privately advanced by the cadres of the neighborhood committee, and we will let the elderly write a letter of commitment by hand, and then settle the money after getting the medicine.
Some residents' requests may not be met by us as volunteers. There was an old man in the community, nearly 90 years old, and one day, his son said that the old man felt uncomfortable and asked me to help find a nurse in the building to hang a water to relieve it. He said that the elderly had been sent 5 times for critical illness notices, and had just had myocardial infarction surgery before the epidemic, and some of the buildings had been closed before the potion was prepared.
I know that there are residents in the building who are medical staff, but this operation is not standardized, and people also bear a lot of risks, after all, in the hospital to hang water to open an injection certificate.
I finally suggested to him that if the elderly really have symptoms, we must contact him as soon as possible, and we will arrange an ambulance to go to the hospital through the neighborhood committee. Later, I have followed up to understand that the old man's situation is still quite good.
I haven't dealt with medical evacuation yet. Residents need to seek medical treatment, will directly call the relevant contact person of the neighborhood committee, he will help to call the 120 transfer queue, the neighborhood committee to give a transfer ticket, on which there are you to go to the hospital, what disease to see, ambulance again. Neighborhood committees also hit 120 through normal channels.
If an emergency occurs, in fact, it is not something that our volunteers or the neighborhood committee can solve, the key is to see how 120 is determined.
Many times, it is still inseparable from the mutual help between neighbors.
There was an old man in the group for help, and in two days, the drug to lower the cholesterol would be stopped, and he asked the attending physician that the drug could not be stopped.
Volunteers helped him buy it online, but received a notification that the courier station was blocked. In a hurry, we put the information of this medicine in the group, and just when a resident said that he had it, he borrowed a box from the old man, which could last for seven days.
But after the Qingming Festival, the old man's medicine was not enough, and on the same day, the neighborhood committee cadres helped him run to the nearby third-class hospital to ask, but because the nucleic acid test of the neighborhood committee cadre exceeded 48 hours, he could only do nucleic acid first, and then go in a day to ask.
Fortunately, there was an old aunt in the group who saw it and said that she was willing to give him a box for free.
Neighborhood committees also have no way to allocate medical resources
Because of some reasons at home, I have not gone out to work in the past two years, and usually participate in the public welfare services organized by the Women's Federation of the Neighborhood Committee with a few mothers.
After volunteering, I can especially appreciate that grassroots work is not easy. The neighborhood committee stands at the end of all the instructions, they just convey the above orders, and then convey the voices below, in such a handover process, the time will be relatively long, but it may have an impact on decision-making and judgment.
Volunteers and the neighborhood committee are a cooperative relationship between the two sides, the neighborhood committee needs to coordinate the affairs of more than 5,700 people in the entire precinct, and the volunteers focus on residents with special needs.
Many times, people only see the flaws in grassroots work. Some people will always @ the neighborhood committee in the group, and have not received a reply, at this time you may only see that the neighborhood committee does not reply at the first time, but what you do not see is that they may be busy with other more important things.
I had more contact with the teacher in charge of medicine in the neighborhood committee this time. At the beginning, the residents of the 6 neighborhood committees went out to seek medical treatment and dispense medicines by herself, and later she sent a person. Usually, when there is an emergency, I call her, or she makes a voice in the group, and I can hear that she is walking or running, panting. These days, the weather in Shanghai is still quite hot, and she has no means of transportation, all with her feet.
One day, she originally said that she was going to dispense medicine, and suddenly, the notice came, to do antigen in the morning, to do nucleic acid in the afternoon, and the residents kept asking her when to dispense, and she also responded helplessly, "I definitely can't go today."
Later, the volunteer who listened to our dispensing medicine mentioned whether we could find someone and the hospital to contact it at the designated point.
I realized that when this neighborhood committee teacher went to dispense medicines, he was only a resident. After a long time of sealing and control, everyone's dispensing needs have increased. Once, I saw her take a large bag with at least 10 or more Medicare cards.
When she spreads out a stack of Medicare cards in front of the doctor, do you know what she's going to face — being complained about by the people who line up behind her to see a doctor? We hadn't thought about these details before, and she never brought them up to us.
As far as I know, some of the staff of the neighborhood committee are also sealed in the community, and there are now 9 people in the neighborhood committee. Vegetables, medicines, protective equipment and the like, they all carry them themselves. Now some of them do not go home, eat and live all in the neighborhood committee, a few days ago they still have a box lunch fixed point supply, and later, eat fast food.
Now, many of us are saying that the neighborhood committee is like a needle, it has a lot of threads on it, and now, a lot of threads have to go through this needle at the same time.
After sealing and controlling the community, in addition to organizing nucleic acid, many residents themselves have done before, dispensing medicines, seeking medical treatment, distributing dishes, and even some people see that the property has not collected garbage in time, which is also reflected to the neighborhood committee.
In short, many of the problems encountered by the neighborhood committees are not in their former business scope. Nor are they able to allocate medical resources.
Volunteering is busier than working full-time
I originally thought that in this lockdown, the family stayed at home and did a big cleaning in the new season. As a result, as a volunteer, I didn't even have time to cook. I was in a state of tension every day.
Now I am also like a person who works from home, there is a place to eat at home, specially reserved for the computer, and the web version of WeChat is opened.
The communication group of 449 people in our community can see residents send messages from 7 a.m., and it has been busy until 8 or 9 p.m., and the problems in the group have gradually become less and less. The day before I did the nucleic acid, I still needed to reply to the message in the early morning.
In the eyes of the residents, it may only be a nucleic acid, but for us volunteers, it is like a battle.
The nucleic acid was decided at 8 p.m. the night before, and the volunteers' meeting was almost 11 p.m. Nucleic acid starts at 6 a.m. the next morning, and volunteers go downstairs to assemble at 5 a.m.
In order to minimize contact, volunteers go upstairs and knock on the door one by one, residents take the family as a unit, one floor after another down to do, take the elevator is also a household ladder immediately disinfected. From the doorstep of the residents to the gate inspection point of the community, the entire entry and exit process has been designed with a moving line, and all the volunteers at all points have exercised in advance.
We have also optimized many details. For example, it would have been arranged for a person to block the elevator door to prevent the elevator from running up and down. In practice, I took a stool to Carmen. In this way, you can ensure that you can call which household to go out, and you can directly enter the elevator and speed up.
I maintained communication with residents and volunteers at home, informing them of the progress and reminding them not to forget to bring the keys.
Volunteers distribute supplies
Courtesy of respondents
Sometimes, we volunteers communicate with each other while cooking and making voices. When I cook, I take my phone to the kitchen, the screen remains on, and my eyes glance at the group from time to time. I even have my phone when I eat because a lot of things are sudden.
My husband used to be very much against me eating and looking at my phone, and now he doesn't talk about me. These days, he sees me busy and slowly wraps up all the housework. Because there are some things on the Internet that I don't quite understand, I encountered helping residents buy medicines and the like, how to call running errands, where the success rate is high, which one is faster, which is cost-effective, all of which are my husband's help to get it.
The neighborhood committee also pays great attention to the protection and safety of volunteers, after the nucleic acid abnormality in the community, we changed from blue protective clothing to large white clothes, a set of more than 200 yuan, sometimes, a dish can only be thrown away for a while.
Some people say that we should give selflessly as volunteers, and I don't agree with this view. In fact, our psychology also needs to be cared for, and we don't need to say how sacred we are.
Spring is here
After doing the last nucleic acid, when I woke up, the volunteer group became active, thanked each other for support, and agreed to go out for sports and running together when the epidemic was over.
Before that, we hadn't talked about anything personal, we were all busy discussing work, and when we talked, we found that we all had so many common hobbies.
Everyone is wearing protective clothing at home and going downstairs, and we also agreed that after the epidemic, we must take off our masks to see what the parents look like.
In the past few days, a volunteer has made a very warm little move and secretly sent a big package of flavored chicken to each of our team. But because these two days, one family's things in the group were mistakenly sent to another family, so everyone did not dare to move when they first received this gift package.
The bag says "Aunt Wang", and we find the source layer by layer like Conan solved the case - it turns out that this "Aunt Wang" is the mother of a volunteer.
The volunteer said that everyone spent a lot of time on volunteer work, and there was no time to cook rice and cook at home, so they opened a group purchase.
Every day when I open the circle of friends, I can see who is volunteering, or whose family members are doing on the front line, and who is wearing a big white dress today. There is a joke that says, "Life without nucleic acids and being sealed off in the community is incomplete." I now feel that it would be incomplete if you didn't have a friend around you who had volunteered.
When I got up this morning and looked at some of the things forwarded in the circle of friends, I thought, how did Shanghai become what it is now? Sometimes it feels very unreal.
One afternoon, a resident of the opposite building asked in the group, "Can anyone personally photograph the scene of the current Nanpu Bridge?"
I opened the window to take a picture, and a gust of wind blew in, it was very comfortable, the sun was not so strong and warm. There is no noise of cars, and birds can be heard chirping below. I stuck my head out and felt it.
The Nanpu Bridge photographed by XiaoGao
Courtesy of respondents
In the group, everyone snapped photos up.
Someone said: I can only shoot the road, she sent a video, the empty road four or five white riding through. Someone photographed the trees in the park, "I also came to a piece of greenery, I hope we are all yin." Others photographed the sky under the setting sun and the wisteria blossoming in their homes.
Residents of the lower floors also joked about "finding beautiful views in the cracks in the floors."
At that time, I suddenly felt that different perspectives have different landscapes, and these pictures are such beautiful things.
(In order to protect the privacy of respondents, Xiao Gao is a pseudonym)
Written by: Tamia
Producer: Su Weichu
First image source: Courtesy of respondents
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