Forgotten Body

After suffering from fibromyalgia and primary biliary cirrhosis, Marlene Newhook passed away at age 66.  Yet, before these diseases took her life, the Dartmouth woman helped others who also battled health issues.  Her last wish was that her organs be harvested for donation and that her body be given to science. “Maybe I can help someone to understand and find some solutions,” she wrote in her will in 2009.

Marlene’s son, Ray Desjardins, wanted to make sure her final wishes were fulfilled.  So, one week after she died he called the Dalhousie University Medical School to see if it had received her body.  That is when he discovered her body was not there—the school’s body donation program had no record of Marlene’s death.  Desjardins says he and one of his sisters, her power of attorney and legal executor respectively, had signed the necessary paperwork the day before she died.  Yet, he was told those documents were missing from her file.  A call from the school forced the hospital to then find her body. 

Staff soon discovered Marlene was still in the hospital morgue, forgotten.  “To me it feels like she was left alone, you know.  It feels like they diminished her in some way,” said Desjardins.  “Knowing that she was lying in that morgue . . . and I could not do anything about it.  I think that’s what hurts the most.”

Shortly thereafter, Capital Health issued a statement apologizing for the “communication breakdown that resulted in a delay in notifying the patient’s family that the donation process could not be completed.”  Despite the apology, Desjardins says this whole experience has left him without closure as he struggles to grieve and honor his mother’s memory.

See Elizabeth Chiu, Capital Health Apologizes for Failure Over Donated Body, CBC News, March 6, 2015.