An elderly woman who lives in the south Florida high school was ordered by her husband to relocate to the hospital because of a stroke.
Carol, 68, has had chronic pain and chronic fatigue since the hurricane swept through her community in 2005.
She has been told by her doctors that she should stay at home with her children and her husband, but she said she was told to stay with the family for the time being.
Her husband, Jim, said she should have waited for the stroke, but it would have been worse.
“I don’t think I was ever really told to move,” he said.
Caroline, a nurse, said her husband has a stroke, and he told her to stay in the house, but he couldn’t make it work for him.
He was told he would need to go back to work.
“My husband has had a stroke in the past, and we’ve had strokes,” Caroline said.
“I thought he was going the hospital.
He just said, ‘If you don’t want to leave, we’re going to move.'”
Caroline said her mother and her brothers moved into a hotel for the night.
She said her brother-in-law was told by his wife to go to the emergency room to be examined.
Jim said he was told his wife would have to be sent to a nursing home, but when he got there, he found her in the hospital bed, with a head injury.
“It was like a shock,” he recalled.
“They were not even making her comfortable.
She had her head down, her hands behind her back, she couldn’t move her legs.
It was like something out of a horror movie.”
He said the nurses who treated her told her she needed to take three or four weeks off work to rest, but Caroline said she wasn’t allowed to have any time off.
Jim was given a discharge notice for the emergency, and the next day, he was ordered to move out of the house.
“He was ordered back to the house because they thought he’d have another stroke,” he recounted.
“He was taken out of his home, put in the ambulance and taken to the ICU.
They told him he had to go home.
He couldn’t go home.”
Jim said his wife was allowed to take some time off work, but the nurses told her not to be on the job, and that they were worried she would die from her stroke.
He said he is now working two jobs as a nursing aide to help support his wife and their two children.
Jim, who has lived in the neighborhood for 30 years, said he wants to help people like his wife who are struggling with health issues.
“When you get the stroke and you’re in the emergency department, the nurses are trying to help you, but they’re not the same as when you’re out of your home,” he explained.
“They’re trying to save your life, but what they’re really trying to do is to save the life of a woman, and I don’t have any of that.”
