Your final moments with your loved ones will leave a lasting impression.
For Eleanor Suarez-Jimenez, visiting her friend Mary in hospital is a moment she struggles to get past because she was left in such a state of shock.
Mary was first admitted to Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin last September after struggling with intense pain.
Her concerned husband called 999 and she was taken to hospital by ambulance.
‘She was sent home in a nightie’
When he called at 5am he found out the 85-year-old had been assessed then sent home in a taxi wearing only her nightdress.
“He’d been calling the hospital every two hours,” Eleanor said. “Then he called and was told she was on her way home.
“He went downstairs to let her in and it was just her nightie that she had on.”
Days later the Elgin pensioner was taken to hospital for the final time.
In the month leading up to her death, she’d spent long periods of time in bed and didn’t have the energy to dress herself.
“Her husband would help her into a chair and she would sit there with her cover on and her wee dog by her side,” Eleanor, of Elgin, said.
Then Mary collapsed…
Eleanor was concerned about how much weight the Elgin pensioner had lost over the summer.
But an X-ray and blood test did not flag up any concerns about her health. It was not until September last year that she started suffering pain.
“The last time she went into hospital, her husband called to say Mary had collapsed on the floor and he couldn’t move her.
“I went over and I could hardly hear her and she was just curled up, there was nothing of her.”
The retired nurse spent two days in the hospital and died unexpectedly, shortly after her husband visited her there on October 6.
It turned out Mary was ill with lung cancer.
Eleanor recalls going up to the hospital with her friend’s husband and says she struggles to get the last image of Mary out of her mind.
‘I was shocked’
“I remember going to see my mum when she died,” Eleanor explains. “There was low lighting, they put a wee posy and a candle out and the beds were made perfectly.
“It just looked like she was asleep.
“But with Mary there was a fluorescent light and it looked like they had just dumped her and the covers on top of the bed.
“She looked absolutely terrible and she had her teeth out.
“They didn’t even shut her mouth. It was a disgrace.”
Eleanor said they were only in the room for about five minutes before two nurses came in and started emptying out Mary’s locker.
“They emptied her toiletries and nighties into the carrier bag and left it,” Eleanor said.
“It was like they couldn’t wait to get us away so they could clean it out and get somebody else in.
“I was shocked, I never said anything until I got out of the hospital and said then that it was a damned disgrace.”
Elgin pensioner’s death: The hospital apology
Eleanor, 70, lodged a complaint on behalf of the family about her friend’s treatment with NHS Grampian shortly after her death.
She has now received a letter from the general manager of the hospital apologising for the way staff handled the situation.
In the letter, Alasdair Pattinson said he was “truly disappointed” that Mary was left in a state of disarray after she died.
Eleanor hopes the complaint will help make sure other families do not experience the same treatment.
“It wasn’t a dignified presentation and there seemed to be no compassion whatsoever,” she said.
“She was a nurse all her working life and worked in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
“When she worked there she said the matron would find her in a cupboard crying if one of her patients had died.
“She was just one of those people who was there for anybody.
“I miss her.”
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