A 90-year-old grandmother in Brazil faced a harrowing ordeal when doctors declared her dead at Sao Jose Regional Hospital on Saturday, November 25, around 11:40 pm local time.
Norma Silveira da Silva’s family, already in grief, encountered an unexpected twist as a crematorium worker preparing her body discovered signs of life—she was breathing, and her body remained warm, contradicting the earlier pronouncement.
The shocked employee promptly returned Norma to a hospital bed, but despite this intervention, she passed away just over a day later in the early hours of November 27. Her cremation took place on the same day, marking a somber conclusion to this perplexing incident.
Compounding the family’s distress, Norma was issued two death certificates. The initial one, published erroneously, attributed her death to an infection.
This unusual turn of events prompted investigations by hospital officials, Brazil’s Medical Ethics Committee, and the Death Commission. Authorities are now probing the circumstances that led to Norma being sent to the morgue despite being alive, as reported by local media.
Jessica Martins Silvi Pereira, a friend who accompanied Norma to the hospital, expressed the family’s profound shock and revealed their intention to pursue legal action against the hospital.
She emphasized the neglectful nature of the incident, stating,
“It’s a case of neglect that I would not wish on anyone.”
Describing the distressing moment when Norma was found in the body bag, Jessica recounted,
“When he opened the bag, she was breathing very weakly. And, as she was no longer conscious, she couldn’t ask for help; she tried to breathe and couldn’t. I mean, from 11:40 pm until 1:30 am, she was inside the bag almost dying asphyxiated.”
As the family grapples with the emotional toll of this unusual sequence of events, they have not yet received a cause of death for Norma.
| LIB
