Table 3.
Effect of COVID-19 on mental and physical health—illustrative quotes
| Mental Health |
| Family-related stress |
| “[My] wife's a schoolteacher, so she's home […] I work from home; I'm used to being here by myself. […] So she's scrambling to try to figure out how to work from home, and it's a little chaotic. […] Two college-age kids who are back home now as well because of the situation. […] There's just more stress and more messes and it's just, you know, definitely been feeling the impact of that on top of the added anxiety about the illness itself.”—Jeff |
| Missing socialization and desire for a return to normalcy |
| “I'm tired of it. I want it to be over and, yeah, a little bit stressed because now I'm living with both mom and dad all the time, not getting out and just, yeah, there's some anxiety and I guess a little bit of depression just not being able to go see people like you would normally.”—Joseph |
| Physical Health |
| Impaired hand function makes it difficult to wash hands and put on masks |
| “My mom does it all for me. Puts the mask on. […] I had no hand function basically at all, so my mom—I've got, I've grown used to mom there, mom or dad or somebody doing all that for me.”—Ted |
| Canceling and/or need to continue attending medical appointments |
| “I'm due for a bone density test and my renal ultrasound and KUB, but I'm putting those off because I don't want to go to the hospital for that. My—I do go in there monthly or every 5 weeks for my tube change. That's an appointment where I have to go and my baclofen pump every 6 months, and I had to go like right near the beginning of quarantine for that, but those are the only medical appointments that I've gone to.”—Paul |
| Limited access to supplies affected ability to follow precautions and meet SCI-specific needs |
| “I put orders in for masks several months ago and it took them a very long time to come in, like right when the whole thing was starting. So that took a long time. Yeah, just general cleaning supplies whenever it first hit. All that was really hard to find. I use rubbing alcohol for cleaning out all my urinary bags and rubbing alcohol was very hard to find for a while.”—Paul |
Abbreviation: KUB, x-ray of the kidneys, ureters and bladder.