14 DAY TRIAL // A grieving husband had to watch his wife die twice after hospital staff failed to tell him the woman was still alive for three days after he agreed to have her life-support machine switched off.
Malcolm Greenhill only discovered his wife Marilyn was still alive when he phoned the Sandwell General Hospital, in West Bromwich, to arrange her funeral, three days after turning off the machines that were keeping her alive.
The 62-year-old man left his wife's bedside and returned home to tell the family the heartbreaking news, after doctors told him it would take just a few minutes for her to pass away.
“I was told it was only the machine keeping her breathing and there was no point prolonging the inevitable,” Mr. Greenhill said. “They told us there was nothing more they could do and she would only live for a couple of minutes once I turned the machine off so I said my goodbyes.”
However, when the family phoned the hospital three days later to make arrangements for her body to be released for burial, they were told that the 65-year-old woman had continued to breathe on her own and was still alive in her hospital room.
The family hurried back to the hospital, but they only could spend 24 more hours with Marilyn, as she died the next evening.
The grieving widower said during an inquest at Smethwick Coroners Court that he would have never left his wife's side if he knew she was still alive.
According to the Mirror, Marilyn had been hospitalized on Saturday, May 3, with bleeding on the brain after falling down the stairs of her West Bromwich home. Doctors told Malcolm there was no hope of survival for his wife of 41 years and advised him to switch off her life-support machine that same evening.
“Dad turned her machine off on Saturday Bank Holiday and we were told to call back on Tuesday but when we spoke to the mortuary at the hospital they told us they couldn't find her. It turned out she was still on the ward,” the couple's son Craig said.
Assistant Black Country Coroner Mr. Angus Smillie decided to adjourn the inquest into Marilyn's death for three months, so that deputies had enough time to investigate “exactly what happened in those intervening days.”
“It is an unexpected turn of events, you went home thinking she had passed away only to find out days later that she was in fact still alive. It would be inappropriate of me to conclude the inquest today because of the unusual circumstances,” he said.
The hospital trust also launched an investigation.