Achi news desk-
On the night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec’s Lorraine region says she had to clean up after her husband died in a Montreal hospital.
Isabelle Granito is now fighting to make sure other families can grieve with dignity and respect.
Jacques Richard was 52 when he died suddenly of a heart attack last year.
“My son contacted me. He said, ‘Dad is dead.’ He said, ‘Come quickly, there’s no one to help us,'” she said.
Richard was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where Granito found him, an hour after his death. According to her, her partner was lying on a stretcher in the resuscitation room.
“His body was completely covered in biological fluids, and a tube was still there, and nothing was cleaned,” she said.
Granito worked as a nurse for 26 years and said she was shocked to see that his body had not been cleaned. When she asked for a supervisor, Granito said she was told there was none.
“I asked him, ‘Please, can you send someone to clean it up?’ They say, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll send them, you go do it with her.’ So I switched husbands with her,” she said.
It was her last memory of her husband of 23 years.
“I was robbed. I was robbed right now,” she said.
Jacques Richard was 52 when he died suddenly of a heart attack last year (photo by Dr)Granito said she suffers from post-traumatic stress and while not yet 50, she believes her career may be over.
“I’m traumatized. I haven’t returned to work, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to return as a nurse,” she said.
In a statement to CTV News, a spokesperson for McGill University Hospital Center wrote, “We are sorry to hear that a patient or family member had an unpleasant experience at MUHC.”
Without referring to the specific case, the spokeswoman added, “It can also happen that family members enter the room when resuscitation efforts have just ended, and inadvertently find themselves face to face with a patient who has not been cleaned.”
After losing the father of her children, Granito plans to file two formal complaints: one with the MUHC and another with the Quebec Sisters’ Order.
“I fight for people like me who had no help,” she said.
