María Elena Rúa

Place of death: Arecibo

Official cause of death: Diabetes mellitus

Before the hurricane she was fine. She was dialysis patient. I have the machine at home, but it could not be used because there was no light, no water, no food, no light. I took her first to Pavía Arecibo, they did not give her treatment; they had her in the emergency room for several hours and then transferred her to a room, but they never gave her the dialysis. She was diagnosed with sepsis, and transferred. The next day they sent her to Doctor's of Manatí. She had an abscess in her arm to receive dialysis, a fistula, but in the hospital they never did that for her. There she was 10 days. I understand that it was not appropriate to have such a patient under such conditions for so long. She got sepsis because of what was happening in the country. It was a bad first-aid procedure for the patient. They discharged her in that condition. I had to take her to the house, without getting any explanation, and here she had respiratory arrest. We revived her because my granddaughters are nurses. We called 911, took her to Susoni, and she died there. There were problems getting to the unit because the river was grown. I was giving her manual dialysis in the house, but she began to deteriorate until she stopped eating. There was no telephone. Manatí is to blame for all this. No one came up to talk to us at any time. They make decisions for us over there and say nothing.

Source: Response to online survey

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