The Oberammergau woman tried everything.
But she could not and was not allowed to visit her mother at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Clinic before her death.
The reason: Corona.
But there was a possibility, she says, and is making allegations against a chief doctor.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- They carried their mother out of the hospital in a body bag.
No one in her family has ever been put in a body bag.
Nobody has ever had to walk this way.
Everyone was allowed to die at home.
Accompanied by close relatives.
Yet her mother - died alone.
“She was always there for everyone,” says the daughter, who doesn't want to read her name in the newspaper.
“And I couldn't be there for her in the end.
That was taken from me. "
Man - she doesn't talk about Corona.
The virus, she sees it, was perhaps one of the reasons for all the sleepless nights that she cannot deal with.
But "Corona or not": It shouldn't have come to that, she says.
If "one" hadn't ignored humanity.
“Man”, in their eyes that is the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Clinic.
More precisely: a doctor there.
The Oberammergau resident raises allegations against Alexander Gangkofer, chief physician of geriatrics.
He defends and justifies his behavior - with the virus.
What this case certainly shows: Corona has made death sadder and lonelier.
Corona quarantine: The long time in the hospital begins on December 2nd
On December 2, the woman from Bosnia, who had been visiting her daughter for a few months because of the difficult Corona travel rules, came to the clinic.
Vascular occlusion on the leg.
The operation went well.
Then complications arose.
Up to pneumonia with sepsis.
“I thought she wouldn't survive,” says the daughter.
She already asked the community about a grave.
But the mother struggled.
“My mom didn't give up so easily.” After ten days, she left the intensive care unit.
On January 10, her daughter saw "light at the end of the tunnel": When her mother sat down alone on the edge of the bed.
Now, thought the daughter, things are looking up.
Three days later, her mom tested positive for Covid-19.
"Since then I don't really know what happened."
Your own corona test was also positive, 14 days of quarantine.
On the phone, the daughter, who was also the legal guardian, learned that her mom was getting better and better.
You could already run with the Wagerl.
As of January 13th, she personally stopped speaking to her mother.
The phone card probably didn't work, nobody on the ward wanted to bring her the receiver.
Suddenly it was said: You refuse to eat and drink, the kidneys are failing.
The call followed on January 20, which pulled the floor from under the Oberammergau woman's feet.
“Your mother is seriously ill.
She no longer has the will to live.
She will soon die. ”This is how she saved the sentences.
Corona quarantine: daughter does not understand "why my mother should die all of a sudden"
Why?
Why suddenly?
The worst was long over.
The woman understood and did not understand "why my mother should die all at once".
The daughter demanded answers - she felt that no one wanted to give them to her.
Chief Doctor Gangkofer blocked everything.
She asked the magistrate how to contact her mother.
He proposed a video call to her.
Gangkofer refused.
One reason: massive stress due to Corona.
Maybe nobody can imagine how big it actually was.
In the Tagblatt conversation, Gangkofer speaks of a "huge exceptional situation".
The geriatric ward was a Covid ward, the virus had broken out.
Caregivers, nurses and doctors were constantly under tension - even more than in the pandemic.
In this situation, no one can afford to walk into a patient's room on the phone every day or several times a day, says Gangkofer.
He denied that the daughter was not informed or not informed enough.
While she still feels that she has been betrayed as a legal guardian and that the clinic is trying to cover up something, he expressly emphasizes: There is nothing, nothing to hide.
And no one has ever tried that.
He has not had so much contact with any family member in the past two years.
“We talked on the phone for half an hour almost every day.” At a time when everyone in his team was at the limit.
Corona changes dying - a palliative care specialist tells (video)
Geriatrics was a Covid ward: employees experience scenes "they tear your heart apart"
Nothing was working normally anymore.
Working in protective suits, fully masked.
Keep your distance where you are actually looking for closeness, give support, comfort, cheer up with a smile that disappears behind masks.
You had to define completely new rules.
Also for a question that no doctor wants to answer: How lonely do patients have to die?
“It's so fucking difficult,” says Gangkofer.
He experienced dramas.
Scenes that "tear your heart apart".
A daughter who had to wait downstairs while her mother died upstairs.
Because only one family member was allowed in the room.
The hospital had decided on this rule in close consultation with the health department: in exceptional cases, as soon as a patient was dying, a relative was allowed to visit the loved one, and in the best case to accompany him to the end.
This was the same for everyone.
Corona Quran: No visits allowed for ten days, then the mother dies - alone
The procedure in the case of the Oberammergau woman ran as Gangkofer described it: She was informed on January 28th.
It could end with her mother, she should come.
The daughter sat by her mother's bed for four hours.
Then she said goodbye and promised to come back the next day.
Only: she was no longer allowed to.
“How can someone lie dying for just one day - then suddenly not anymore?” Asks the woman from Oberammergau.
For ten days "suddenly it was no longer acute", the mother's condition was stable, she heard every day, a visit in this case not possible.
She would have accepted any compromise, the daughter emphasizes.
To see her mother at least every other day, if only for half an hour.
"That would have had to do with humanity." Her mom waited for her every day, she is convinced of that.
At 8:08 a.m. on Monday morning, February 8, the phone rang.
Her mother fell asleep peacefully.
At 77 years of age.
Alone.
Senior doctor contradicts allegations of the daughter - patient "always well cared for"
Despite the corona outbreak, attempts were made to avoid precisely that in every patient, emphasizes Gangkofer.
But sometimes it is not possible to determine exactly when the patient will die.
He speaks of a process with better and worse days.
“It is simply not possible for someone to be there every day.” Every family member could endanger others.
Especially in geriatrics.
Some family members have no understanding for this, says Gangkofer.
It remains general - confidentiality.
But he emphasizes one thing specifically about this case: The patient, "It never went bad for us, she was always well looked after, so I don't have a hint of a guilty conscience".
The woman from Oberammergau demands answers about the course of the disease, asked for the treatment protocol, excerpts of which are available to the editors, and - in their eyes - discovered inconsistencies.
And notes she could hardly believe.
"Another very pointless phone call made with daughter", it says on January 25th, 9.49am.
At 10.55 am the next entry for another phone call: “The daughter still does not understand why she is not allowed to see her mother.
In the current situation, this is not possible under any circumstances. ”The calls“ disrupt internal processes ”.
Exactly the point of view that Gangkofer takes in the Tagblatt conversation.
Exactly the attitude that the daughter cannot understand.
Questions remain for daughter - humanity was missing
But she also emphasizes: It is not primarily because of the course of the disease and the complications including pneumonia, sepsis and delirium that she addresses the public.
All the unfortunate circumstances that led to the death of her mother: "Maybe that could have happened in any other hospital too." Only: Why was nothing explained to her?
And: The human treatment, that is out of the question for her, was missing.
At least, she says, the carers opened the window after her death.
"Then at least her soul came out of the terrible hospital room."
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