“SHis last words were: don’t forget that I only loved you.” Éliane Dandelot, 85, bursts into tears when she talks about her husband.
René Dandelot was well known to the people of Grasse: for more than half a century, with his parents, Georges and Berthe, he ran the tobacco bar Le Celtic on the Cours Honoré-Cresp, also practicing, for twenty-seven years, the taxi profession in the city of Perfumes.
“He died on September 10”continues Éliane, who is fighting today to know if her death could have been avoided. The octogenarian had been a resident of the Maison Madeleine nursing home in Grasse for 16 months.
“I won’t live long without him.”
“The day before his death, when I arrived, he was not in the living room as usual. I found him in his room, he was being transferred to the hospital. When he was moved, he screamed in pain. His shirt opened, his stomach was misshapen.”
Transported to the emergency room of Grasse hospital, he died a few hours later.
“The doctor told me that he had died following an intestinal obstruction, that they could not do anything to save him because the matter was too calcified. When the nursing home sent him to the hospital, it was already too lateregrets Éliane. When I asked them for an explanation, they told me that my husband had died from a fall a few days earlier. But I didn’t even know he fell!”
At the beginning of October, she requested her late husband’s medical file, as well as a death certificate specifying the causes of death. “Because today I still don’t know for sure what he died of.”
The administrative procedures are still in progress… “I’m 85 years old, I don’t have the Internet, I can’t see well, I’m disabled by vasculitis and polyarthritis and I’ve been in a deep depression since his death. We could still have spent time together. We would have celebrated our 54th wedding anniversary on December 3. I won’t live long without him.”
The Maison Madeleine residence indicates that Mr. Dandelot “benefited from attentive care throughout his stay. He was hospitalized for the first time on Saturday September 7, without any link to a digestive problem. After a visit to the emergency room of Grasse hospital, he was returned to our establishment the same evening two days later, faced with a deterioration in his general condition, he was hospitalized again at our initiative; he unfortunately left us the next day.
The establishment further specifies that to date, “We have not received official medical information from the hospital that would clarify the exact circumstances of this death. For our part, we sent the medical file by hand to Mr. Dandelot’s widow. Her husband received treatment and follow-up consistent with his state of health. No alarming clinical signs had been diagnosed before the first hospitalization on September 7. Safety, well-being and follow-up. medical of our residents are at the core of our priorities.”
