Wheeling Family Calls On Hospital To Change Policy After 96-Year-Old Matriarch With COVID Dies Alone

GLENVIEW, Ill. (CBS) — It was a heartbreaking decision – a Wheeling family sent their 96-year-old matriarch suffering from COVID-19 to the hospital, knowing she’d likely be alone.

As CBS 2’s Marie Saavedra reported Friday night, what that family didn’t know is that Madelyn Calabrese would die days later – with no one there to hold her hand. Now, through grief, and two years into the pandemic, they’re asking the hospital to reconsider its visitor policy so no other families feel their pain.

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“On her birthday, January 8th, my grandmother passed away at your hospital – surrounded only by God,” Margaret Sundstrom wrote in a letter.

It was the opposite of the way Calabrese lived – a woman always surrounded by at least one of her six kids, 16 grandchildren, or 40 great grandchildren. Instead, she left the world that loved her all alone.

“She should have been with one of her children or grandchildren,” Sundstrom said, reading from the letter. “She deserved that.”

Sundstrom and her mother, Jean Graf, say their matriarch developed COVID and pneumonia early in January, and was admitted to NorthShore Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview – where due to the virus, no visitors are allowed with few exceptions.

“Every day, we kept calling and saying: ‘Can we visit? Can we visit?’” Graf said. “They just kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’”

Calabrese wasn’t improving, and the family begged. It’s a challenge for any hospital to balance safety with sentiment.

NorthShore does allow visits in extenuating circumstances, which includes “being very close to the end of life,” to be determined by the care team. Calabrese’s doctors finally approved visitors for a short time on a Friday. The next day was her 97th birthday.

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“They allowed us to stay for about 30 minutes, and, you know, then they said we had to leave. The 30 minutes was up,” Graf said, “and that was about, I don’t know, 8:30 at night – and she died at 11.

Not one person from the family Calabrese built was there to hold her hand.

“That’s all we wanted was someone to be with her the entire time,” Sundstrom said, “and not just her, but we want that for anyone who’s in the hospital.”

That is why Sondstrom wrote that letter, sent to the hospital’s board, to ask that the visitor policy be changed.

We asked NorthShore Glenbrook for comment, and a spokesman shared sympathies – but said, “Our visitor policies have been in place to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of our patients, visitors, and team members – and this remails our highest priority.”

Calabrese’s family knows the pandemic has stolen many people’s chance to say goodbye to loved ones. But they are challenging that policy with the hope Calabrese’s lonely death is one of the last.

“We can’t change what’s happened to us, but we can change what’s happening in the future,” Graf said.

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The family says after sending their letter they heard from a patient advocate at the hospital. They say that person told them the hospital’s board is planning on taking another look at the visitor policy. We reached out to confirm that, but haven’t received an answer.