In Magnitogorsk, 89-year-old pensioner Andrey Bonko waited more than a day for hospitalization due to the lack of a correct diagnosis and, as relatives are sure, the negligence of doctors at two hospitals.
After several conflicts and waiting in endless lines, the man in pain was finally operated on. However, on February 11 Andrei Bonko died. The pensioner’s family intends to appeal to the prosecutor’s office. The regional health ministry said they were investigating the incident.
As Andrey, the grandson of the deceased man, said on social networks, on February 7, his grandfather was taken by ambulance to the city hospital No. 1 of Magnitogorsk with severe pain in the abdomen. There, the man was tested, a metal catheter was placed, an injection of analgin was given, prescriptions were given and he was sent home. However, the next day the pensioner became much worse.
“When I came to visit him in the morning, I found him in a terrible state,” Andrei said. “I can’t imagine how he survived the night of February 7-8, he was hooked from pain, he immediately asked to call an ambulance, re-explaining with obscenity that neither the pills nor the injection, and even more so this catheter, did not pass and did not help.”
By that time, grandfather, according to relatives, could hardly talk. The family again called an ambulance, the man was brought to the same hospital. Already another urologist said that it was not necessary to put a catheter at all and the elderly person may need surgery. However, the surgeon Sergei Goryachikh, who was invited for a consultation, did not find any violations and concluded that the operation was not needed. The patient was only given an anesthetic injection and again tried to be discharged.
“When my grandfather was taken out of the office by my mother to the emergency room, where I was waiting with things, I was horrified. Grandfather was put on a couch, and he immediately, crouching in pain, collapsed on the battery behind him, ”Andrei said.
The grandson of the pensioner notes that some of the hospital staff behaved unprofessionally. “I want to say right away that I am not trying to give a special emotional color to all events, moreover, I write softer and try to convey the essence,” Andrei clarified. So, according to him, one of the nurses could not find the manager and answer his questions, and the surgeon “irritably commented that there were places to put them, but he did not find any reason for this.”
The family was asked to go to city hospital No. 3. On the way, the relatives contacted the insurance company, where they were told that with acute pain, medical institutions are obliged to accept all people.
Nevertheless, in another hospital, the man, who was tired of moving, was also not placed in a hospital. As Andrei said, the paramedic on duty, Irina Post, was very dissatisfied with the patient who arrived.
“Why did you bring him here? What difference does it make to me that you were sent here? Whether vaccinated, not vaccinated, I sent those just vaccinated to the red zone, ”the doctor greeted the family with these words. At the same time, the pensioner had no symptoms of the disease.
Relatives still managed to insist on hospitalization, and the surgeon examined the grandfather, who immediately stated that he needed an immediate operation. The man was given preliminary diagnoses – a detached blood clot that got into the intestines, or an obstruction associated with a large tumor. The paramedic Post was instructed to process the patient, who, according to Andrey, was in no hurry at all, talking on the phone on personal topics.
“I was filled with anger and rage. <.> Her answer, why she still hasn’t registered her grandfather, was this: “I’m hungry and I’m going to eat, and I won’t register anyone now.” I swear I sign my every word and do not write anonymously. I had to intervene in the lawlessness of this paramedic, being far from medicine and oaths, I could not believe anyway how this person could even be in this institution. The surgeon tried to calm her down, while she, literally bulging her eyes, screamed at me how harmful she could be, in a very, to put it mildly, impudent manner, ”said Andrei.
As a result, the paramedic took a rapid coronavirus test from the man and, as her grandson recalls, happily announced that there would be no operation, and the family needed to return to the red zone. At the same time, the surgeon gave the family recommendations, conclusions and pictures so that the man would be operated on as soon as possible.
Returning to the first city hospital, the family waited another hour and a half for the man to undergo a CT scan. Then the grandson and daughter were informed that the patient’s lungs were clean and that he would soon have an emergency operation.
On the evening of February 8, the man was finally hospitalized. On February 11, he died.
All these days, the relatives tried to get any information about the patient’s condition. Information was very fragmentary. Andrey was even forced to post in the city community with a request to Magnitogorsk residents to help with information about the condition of his grandfather.
Meanwhile, the insurance company said that they did not carry out the operation, since CT showed a 25% lung lesion. On the morning of February 9, the neurological department clarified that the man was in intensive care. The next day, the family learned that the patient was on a ventilator “in a state incompatible with life.”
As it turned out, the man was operated on by the same surgeon Sergei Goryachikh, who had previously refused to hospitalize him, and did not notice anything in the pictures and in the patient’s condition that required immediate surgical intervention.
Andrei Bonko, according to his grandson, was born in 1933. At the age of 10, his native village in Belarus was captured by German invaders. A great aunt saved the boy and other children at the cost of her own life, and he managed to see enough of the horrors of the war. After school, Andrei Bonko entered a military school, then went into aviation. After graduating from the service, he got a job on the railway, where he worked until retirement all his life.
“I have never met retirees of his age leading such a healthy lifestyle,” says Andrey. Everything is in order, everything is on time. Until the age of 85, my grandfather rode the morning bus to his plot every weekend. He is stubborn, and always sticks to his habits and rules. No cell phones, no “we’ll go, I’ll take you, grandfather, by car”, an old wall calendar with Lenin, darned shoes with new ones bought for him, and stuff like that. We often gathered before the pandemic with him. My grandfather now has five great-grandchildren. They all often came to visit him, he always gave them useful advice from the past, and they, being already modern teenagers and children, played along without offending him, and accepted gifts. Whether it’s the simplest cheap chocolate bar for the younger, or an old-fashioned new coat with some Belarusian old knitwear for the older. On January 19, my grandfather turned 89 years old, despite vaccinations and full compliance with covid prevention, he forbade even coming to congratulate him on the threshold. He does not hear well, but despite this, he accepted all congratulations, including from all great-grandchildren.
Now the relatives of the deceased man are going to appeal to the prosecutor’s office and seek justice in court. They believe that the pensioner could, if not be saved, then at least not be forced to endure unbearable pain for a whole day and suffer from waiting in hospital waiting rooms.