The odyssey of a family to see a Covid patient: "My grandfather died alone and tied"

Two years and six waves later, there are Covid patients who continue to die alone without a family member by their side or someone who can hold their hand at the fateful moment.

Mariano Vacas, 91, is one of those patients who died alone in his room tied to his bed, despite the desperate struggle of his family to try to see him and accompany him.

But, like many others affected, he came face to face with

, which prohibit visits to coronavirus patients.

"Given the current situation

nor companions are allowed in the hospital," reads the sign located at the entrance to the Covid plant in the Puerta de Hierro hospital center, located in the town of Majadahonda.

Mariano Vacas entered the emergency room at said hospital last Saturday, January 15, because they thought he had internal bleeding.

After doing various tests they did not detect anything, but that same night they did an antigen test and

.

From there, the ordeal of the family began, which could not see the grandfather again, according to the story of his granddaughter Nydia G. Vacas.

Mariano, who suffered from kidney disease, went from the ER to the Covid floor, while the family insistently called him on his mobile, without

.

Nydia's mother went to the hospital on Monday, January 17,

.

She was told that she could not pass or deliver objects to her, since she had to leave them in a locker and that they would send them to her.

The family called the room several times, but she jumped to voicemail and hung up at the first beep.

Without news

At 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Nydia went to the hospital's Patient Services to complain

since Sunday night.

There she was told that she had to wait for the doctors to call her.

After counting

Mariano's room, Nydia decided to sneak into the Covid floor.

«I felt like when at school you do something bad.

At the nurses' station I told them that I wanted to see my grandfather and they told me that it couldn't be because he was in a shared room.

I told them that his cell phone no longer had a battery and they told me that they didn't have time to charge the phones or put them to the patients' ears », Nydia recounts indignantly.

At 3:45 p.m., he received a call from a doctor who informed him that his grandfather was in very serious condition and that he could die at any moment.

She also warned him that the ICU had been ruled out because of his advanced age and that he

.

“They had bound him with white cloth handcuffs.

.

They did not ask us for permission to do it and they told us that they did it so that the oxygen would not be removed », he narrates.

Nydia asked to take her grandfather home, but the doctor replied that the patient needed 15 liters of oxygen and at home they could only provide him with 7 or 9 liters.

Nydia insisted on seeing him, but her doctor told her that when she got worse, they would notify her.

Sign in Puerta de Hierro.AN

So, he decided to go to Leroy Merlin to buy a mobile phone with a platform and headphones so he could talk to his grandfather.

He went back to the Covid floor and

to send him the cell phone and to take the call.

The nurse agreed.

“I managed to talk to him for 10 minutes.

He was lucid.

He didn't understand why he was tied up.

He complained that

.

I tried to cheer him up.

Do you know what it's like to be asked for help and being wall to wall you can't do anything?", he asks angrily.

At 8:00 p.m., they received the call: their grandfather had been found dead because he had dropped it or had taken off his oxygen.

Nydia was shocked: “If the nurses aren't watching,

I did not ask that they save his life, but that they not leave him alone in a bed dying.

I only asked to see him."

Ironies of life, once he died, Nydia, her mother, her aunt and her cousin were able to calmly go to the Covid floor and they were provided with a hat, a gown and some masks to enter the room.

system hole

After the death of her grandfather, Nydia wrote several emails to the hospital to ask for explanations and, when she reproached them for why they left the patients alone if no one could watch them later, the doctor confessed that it was a hole in the system: "Then she I answered why they didn't let the families fill that hole.

She told me that the only thing she could

Nydia cannot hide her helplessness: “My grandfather died alone and tied to a bed in great suffering.

Who is guilty?

There is a great obscurantism with this topic because you don't know what you have the right to and what you don't.

It is urgent

.

From the Hospital de Puerta de Hierro they allege that the protocol of accompaniment and visits depends on the epidemiological situation and the clinical criteria of the health professional.

The Ministry of Health specifies that

, depending on the patients and the epidemiological context.

In the sixth wave, this restrictive policy is not understood.

now we have resources

Gabriel Heras, doctor

Complaints from people who have lost a family member without being able to say goodbye follow one another on social networks.

«Before he died, when my father was hospitalized, he only told us crying like a child:

.

I will never forget it, "criticized Anabel.

Pharmacist Yolanda Tellaeche has launched a petition on change.org entitled: "No to death in isolation of Covid patients in our hospitals."

“In the name of the protocols, I have spent the cruelest 48 hours of my life,” said Tellaeche, who begged to see his mother and even

in which the Ramón y Cajal Hospital was exempt from responsibility. but he didn't get it.

Some doctors also criticize these practices.

From the Hu-ci project, a group that tries to humanize intensive care, they recall that

and that, at present, the health system has the necessary protection resources.

“In the first wave, it could be understood, but in the sixth

.

The family must be part of the patient's care team.

Before there was no material, but now we have resources to avoid getting infected.

It is easier to access a soccer field with 60,000 people than to go to the hospital to see your mother, ”says Gabriel Heras, a doctor and director of the Hu-ci project.

Mónica Lalanda is another of the doctors who fights "against this dehumanization" and encourages family members not to abide by these rules:

.

Reaching the end alone, dying alone is a cruel nonsense.

The incredible thing is that relatives accept it submissively », she concludes.

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