The family of a legally blind 90-year-old woman is outraged after she says she was sent home from a B.C. hospital in the middle of the night bleeding from her arm, in only her socks and pajamas.
Vivian Fitzpatrick was taken to the Delta Hospital emergency room in an ambulance Monday night with high blood pressure.
After being examined and her blood was drawn, staff said there was nothing wrong and said she could go home.
Wearing no shoes, someone wrapped the senior in a sheet, and she was put into a cab at 2:30 a.m.
“I just had my pyjamas on and I didn’t have any shoes or a coat or anything,” Fitzpatrick said.
Fitzpatrick said she noticed she was bleeding from her arm after she returned home.
“The white sheet was soaked in blood,” she said.
Her daughter, Paddy Munro, is listed as the senior’s emergency contact, but she was never contacted.
Munro says she feels appalled by what’s happened: “There’s no excuse to be putting her in a taxi at 2:30 in the morning.”
Fitzpatrick feels she was rushed out of the hospital.
“Why didn’t they just leave me for a few hours and Paddy or someone could come and get me?” she told CTV News.
Fraser Health declined an on-camera interview about the case, citing patient confidentiality, but issued a statement to apologize.
“This is a very unfortunate incident and Fraser Health has apologized to the family for any inconvenience and distress this may have caused,” the statement said.
Fitzpatrick said she will never go back to the hospital after the incident. Her daughter says she is now left worrying about her mother’s health, if her blood pressure rises again.
“This is horrendous,” she said. “This should not have happened.”
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Scott Hurst
