No one believed her when she told them he was still alive.
Michael Cleveland was visibly breathing. His eyes were open. He was kicking his legs, raising his knees and fighting with a tube in his throat.
Was he alive? The doctor said no, but it turns out he was wrong.
A year ago this week, Cleveland died once — but was pronounced dead twice — at DeGraff Memorial Hospital near Buffalo after suffering a heart attack at a Tops grocery store. According to a lawsuit by his widow, a doctor there erroneously declared him dead then ignored his family's pleas for help for nearly two hours as Cleveland fought for air through a punctured lung.
Three times, Dr. Gregory Perry and nurses assured Tammy Cleveland, of Webster, that her husband was in fact dead and that he just "had a lot of energy to expel from his body."
"A part of me was thinking, '(the doctor) should know what he's doing better than me,'" she said. "But he kept showing more and more signs, so we just kept trying to get help."
"The doctor told me that it would appear like he was breathing, but he really wasn't," Tammy Cleveland said. "I said, 'But he's responding to me. ... He (tried) to hug me.' "
Twice, the coroner entered the hospital room to conduct a postmortem examination, but told the doctor to call him back when Cleveland had died.
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Michael Cleveland was visibly breathing. His eyes were open. He was kicking his legs, raising his knees and fighting with a tube in his throat.
Was he alive? The doctor said no, but it turns out he was wrong.
A year ago this week, Cleveland died once — but was pronounced dead twice — at DeGraff Memorial Hospital near Buffalo after suffering a heart attack at a Tops grocery store. According to a lawsuit by his widow, a doctor there erroneously declared him dead then ignored his family's pleas for help for nearly two hours as Cleveland fought for air through a punctured lung.
Three times, Dr. Gregory Perry and nurses assured Tammy Cleveland, of Webster, that her husband was in fact dead and that he just "had a lot of energy to expel from his body."
"A part of me was thinking, '(the doctor) should know what he's doing better than me,'" she said. "But he kept showing more and more signs, so we just kept trying to get help."
"The doctor told me that it would appear like he was breathing, but he really wasn't," Tammy Cleveland said. "I said, 'But he's responding to me. ... He (tried) to hug me.' "
Twice, the coroner entered the hospital room to conduct a postmortem examination, but told the doctor to call him back when Cleveland had died.
SEE LINK FOR MORE
