At the weekend, Mr Andrzej, a resident of Bolesławiec, called us. As he put it, he had “an unpleasant matter connected with the provincial hospital”. Mr Andrzej recently buried his wife, Zofia. The woman died just after the Christmas holidays. “I am alone now,” the man confessed.
Mrs Zofia and Mr Andrzej had been married for 53 years; they had even received the Medal for Long Marital Life, from President Bronisław Komorowski.
For more than a dozen years, the Bolesławiec resident’s wife suffered from a serious illness; she had a stroke caused by a ruptured aneurysm. A doctor at a hospital in Wrocław told Mr Andrzej that perhaps six people in a thousand recover from such a complicated case.
Mrs Zofia survived, but required care. Her husband looked after her. And he cared for her until he himself suffered a heart attack. (The woman was then taken to a facility in Chojnów).
Mr Andrzej’s wife worked for 27 years in the laundry at the Provincial Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill in Bolesławiec. It was hard work, says the deceased woman’s husband; Mrs Zofia had a great deal to do. Her hands became deformed from the work. At a certain point, she had to go on a disability pension. (The hospital did, indeed, help its employee, most recently in 2015).
When his wife died, Mr Andrzej went to the provincial hospital with an obituary notice. He hoped that the facility would provide him with one-off financial assistance, because the burial costs turned out to be considerable. “I wanted them to help me out a little, to give me at least something toward a wreath,” says the Bolesławiec resident, who has a low pension.
The man spoke both to the personnel officer and to the director. He was turned away empty-handed. As he claims, he was told that the hospital had no money and that he should go to MOPS. “I lowered my head and left,” the 77-year-old tells us. “I was treated dismissively, like rubbish.”
“I guarantee that Mr Andrzej was not treated badly,” Janina Hulacka, director of the Provincial Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill, stresses in a conversation with the istotne.pl service. Janina Hulacka “I received Mr Andrzej, spoke with him and explained the entire situation to him.”
As J. Hulacka explains, when Mr Andrzej’s wife was ill, she received benefits from the social fund: “She was one of our long-term pensioners. We help our former employees as much as we can, because we know that people face various tragedies. But the institution has no legal basis for providing benefits to the families of deceased employees.”
She adds: “This is not the result of our spite. We did not refuse to help because we did not want to, but because we could not. It would be different if Mr Andrzej had been our employee, but he never was. I deeply sympathize with Mr Andrzej, but following this line of reasoning, anyone could come to us for assistance.”