Sam Condello died in January.
Thirty-four days after they took away his wheelchair.
He had terminal, metastatic lung cancer, he was 77 years old, a father of four and a grandfather of seven, and a United States Marine.
And he only had one leg.
And he liked to sit out in the Garden Lobby at Monroe Community Hospital and smoke a cigarette while he read the paper.
“He was friendly and loved,” a hospital staffer remembered yesterday.
In the state Department of Health report that looked into the abuse he suffered at the hands of the hospital director, investigators found that Sam Condello was free of “behavioral symptoms” and that he “liked to choose his bedtime, really enjoyed going outside to get fresh air in good weather, and used a wheelchair for mobility.”
Specifically an electronic wheelchair -- a scooter.
He went all over with it.
For example, two weeks before the hospital director confined him to his bed, Sam Condello and another patient took their scooters – and a couple of transit buses – to Wegmans to spend the day. It was Thanksgiving. Sam’s last Thanksgiving. And he and his friend spent it happily rolling through the aisles of a supermarket.
He was vital and funny and the staff and patients liked him.
But it was the newspaper that got him in trouble.
He was outside, in the Garden Lobby, reading the morning newspaper when, from a distance, the hospital director saw him.
Specifically, the hospital director saw him flicking the burning cherry from a cigarette.
That’s against policy.
In the rules of Monroe Community Hospital it is considered a fire hazard to smoke while reading the newspaper.
The director walked up to Sam and told him there would be hell to pay.
That was December 5.
The next morning, a Thursday, some committee met and decided that Sam Condello would, as punishment, lose his electronic wheelchair, not be allowed outside to visit with fellow patients, and face a curfew of 3 p.m.
When they yanked his electronic wheelchair, they gave him a manual wheelchair equipped with a tracking device, like they put on paroled sex offenders.
Manual wheelchairs are hard to use. They require upper body strength that Sam, a 77-year-old man accustomed to using a scooter, no longer had. They also require a cardiovascular capacity that Sam, in the last stages of terminal lung cancer, no longer had.
A manual wheelchair for a man in that condition is a mockery, and a ball and chain. It dooms a man who had previously gotten up and about to the confinement of a couple of rooms and a hallway.
Nonetheless, a little bit after 3, that Thursday, security called up to the nurse’s station to report that the alarm had gone off on Sam’s tracking device.
He had gone outside for a cigarette.
The director was waiting for him when the elevator brought him back to the floor.
Sam had just smoked the last cigarette he would ever smoke.
In his room, the director raged. An aide was called in and told to put Sam in his bed. The director stood above him and angrily shook his finger in the face of that former Marine and yelled at him like a little child. Sam, the director shouted, had lost “wheelchair privileges.”
A man who could not walk was being denied the use of a medical device that allowed him to have a life.
Stunned and afraid, staff clustered outside the room, listening in horror. One nurse openly wept. Two patients, seemingly frightened, whispered back and forth that Sam was in trouble. Another nurse, reflecting on what she had seen, cried as she drove home that night. Another staffer would be haunted for nights and unable to sleep.
The next day, at least one – and possibly several – hospital employees called the state Department of Health hotline to report what they considered to be the abusive treatment of Sam Condello.
But not one of the employees challenged or stopped the director. Neither did they talk to him later about it or report him to superiors in county government.
Why?
Because they were afraid. Because such an environment of intimidation existed that nine separate employees told state investigators that they feared losing their jobs if they said anything.
Sam had been independent, happy and social. Without a wheelchair, he couldn’t even go to the bathroom by himself. He became angry, agitated and profane. One nursing report described him drawn up into a fetal position in his bed, unresponsive and withdrawn.
The director took the chair on Thursday. On Sunday, a notation in the nursing record showed that Sam pleaded, “This is cruel and inhumane treatment. This punishment is too extreme. I really want a cigarette.”
He had smoked for some 60 years.
It was all he had left. It was a powerful, lifelong addiction. It was his comfort and normalcy.
And on what would turn out to be his deathbed, he was forced to go cold turkey.
He was allowed to have the manual wheelchair back on Monday, after four days in bed. Four days to potentially get compression sores and to accumulate liquid in his lungs and to let the light of life go out in his eyes.
He got the manual wheelchair back, but in his condition, he didn’t have the strength to go anywhere in it. Not to visit friends around the hospital, not to go out in the fresh air, not to read the paper in the Garden Lobby.
Staff members said he never recovered from the four days he was bedbound, and that he declined rapidly.
As Christmas approached, he begged staff members to let him have a cigarette, to relieve the overpowering craving. Some staffers discussed sneaking him some cigarettes, but none actually did, fearing for their jobs, fearing to violate the order of the hospital director.
Staffers whispered to Sam to hold on, to wait for state investigators, who they presumed would come. But they never did, even after at least one follow-up hotline call was made.
Nine days into the new year, Sam Condello was dead.
He left this life dispirited and dehumanized.
Patient #394 is no more.
But the hospital director is still there. And when he took away another patient’s wheelchair, the calls to the state hotline were dramatically more frantic, and included the report that Sam was dead.
Investigators were in the hospital the next day.
And they forbad the director to be alone with patients.
And that’s the Monroe County Hospital.
Maybe your mother is there. Maybe someday you will be there.
And maybe someday there will be justice for a dying Marine who was pushed on his way by some bastard who stole his mobility and wouldn’t even let him have a cigarette as he faced the agonies of a cancerous death.
You may have noticed that I haven’t told you the director’s name.
That’s because you don’t need to know it.
You only need to know his boss’s name.
Maggie Brooks.
