The 76-year-old Ecuadorian woman who woke up during her wake after earlier being declared dead has now actually died. There were no typos in that sentence.
Allow me to refresh your memory.
Retired nurse Bella Montoya was taken to hospital on June 9 after suffering a possible stroke and cardiopulmonary arrest.
A doctor on duty declared Montoya dead after attempts to resuscitate her failed, and he even provided her family with a death certificate which listed her cause of death as cardiorespiratory arrest, per news.com.au.
Montoya’s son, Gilberto Barbera, told The Associated Press her family brought her to a funeral home and organised a wake. It was at the ceremony that they started to hear sounds coming from … the coffin.
“There were about 20 of us there,” he said.
“After about five hours of the wake, the coffin started to make sounds.
“My mum was wrapped in sheets and hitting the coffin, and when we approached we could see that she was breathing heavily.
“It gave us all a fright,”
I cannot even fucking begin to fathom how terrified that poor woman would’ve been, and how traumatic it would have been for all involved.
Barbera said his mother was then rushed back to hospital but, this time last week, doctors weren’t hopeful about her prognosis. She was in the ICU at the Martín Icaza Hospital in Babahoyo, according to a statement by Ecuador’s health ministry.
Montoya actually died of a stroke on Friday.
“This time my mother really did die,” Barbera told the newspaper El Universo. “My life will not be the same.”
Montoya suffered from catalepsy, a condition where you lose sensation and consciousness and the body also becomes rigid, as per news.com.au.
The ministry launched an investigation into the incident, and a technical committee has been formed to assess how the hospital provides death certificates. A good plan, I say.
We don’t know anything more about the doctor who incorrectly declared Montoya dead (the first time), but I’m going to go out on a limb and say they won’t be certifying further deaths anytime soon. Just a little hunch I have.
