Her husband and her seven nephews have mourned the death of Rogelia Blanco for exactly 10 days.
Not one more.
This 85-year-old Galician fell ill with coronavirus in a nursing home in Xove (Lugo) and on January 13, her family was told that her body had not resisted.
He received a sad burial in the San Pedro de Xuances cemetery in a coffin sealed with whitewashed by health prescription.
But last Saturday a nervous voice on the phone from the old woman's residence left her nephew Julio speechless: "Your aunt Rogelia is here."
"So who did we bury the other day?" He asked.
Indeed, Rogelia is alive, she has defeated the virus.
To the chill of the staff, she walked through the door of the nursing home where her husband Ramón, believing himself a widower, continued to cry over the irremediable absence of his life partner.
This return to the world is not a miracle, but an unusual confusion.
And the unexpected joy that overwhelms his family has struck others in the form of disgrace.
Conchita, her roommate during the illness, did perish from the covid.
And it was her that Rogelia's loved ones buried in the family niche on January 14.
The San Rosendo Foundation, which manages the San Bartolomeu de Xove residence where the destinies of the two elderly women crossed, regrets what it describes as an “unfortunate incident”.
The identities of the patients were exchanged in some way still without clarification when on December 29, after testing positive, they were transferred from the nursing home in Xove to another in Pereiro de Aguiar (Ourense) where the entity, created by the priest Benigno Moure and With 70 centers in Galicia, it concentrates its infected residents.
Rogelia and Conchita shared an ambulance during a bumpy 220-kilometer journey in which they had to change vehicles due to a breakdown.
Upon arrival, they were installed in the same room.
The confusion of identities led Pereiro de Aguiar's doctors, who had just met them, to report Conchita's poor evolution to Rogelia's relatives, and vice versa.
"I think they were confused after a few days because, at first, I'm sure they were talking to me about my aunt: they told me that she sang when she was happy and Rogelia is like that!", Says Julio, the nephew who talked to him every afternoon nursing home staff and who, along with his brothers and cousins, have not yet assimilated what happened.
The tremendous error was discovered because the woman who they believed Conchita but was Rogelia survived the covid.
Early in the morning of last Saturday, after being discharged, she returned by ambulance from the center of Pereiro de Aguiar to the Xove residence where she was recognized.
Conchita was expected there, but Rogelia got out of the vehicle.
After being notified, his nephew Julio ran to the nursing home to explain to Ramón that he was no longer a widower, happy news, but so shocking that it was given to him with a doctor present.
“I didn't assimilate it.
He said it was impossible, that Rogelia couldn't be there because we had buried her, ”he says.
Of his aunt, so far, he has only seen one photo.
Rogelia's family criticizes the “lack of professionalism” of the San Rosendo Foundation.
The entity has announced that its legal services will take care of the complex paperwork so that Julio's aunt will once again be recorded as alive in the official archives and Conchita's body will be transferred to the niche of her real family.
Sources from the foundation add that from now on, residents who are referred to the Pereiro de Aguiar center will be identified with a bracelet similar to that of hospitals.
The organization defends in a statement that what happened "is a specific event among the more than 100 transfers that have been made since last December."
Rogelia's family is assailed by doubts.
“This has been uncovered because my aunt survived.
Who knows how many families have strangers in their niches? ”Julio wonders.
Information about the coronavirus
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