KENDALL, Fla. – Jessica Perez says she got to Kendall Regional Medical Center as fast as she could after her mom’s doctor told her she was in her final hours and should come say good bye.
“I get there and I get all this, ‘You can’t go up,’ and then I told her the room number and then the receptionist is arguing with me and telling me, ‘That’s a COVID unit,’” Perez said. “‘Yeah, I know it’s a COVID unit, but she’s in hospice.’”
Perez’s mother, 81-year-old Gloria Balarezo, had been hospitalized for weeks with COVID-19.
But Perez claims because she was in hospice, she and her family had been allowed to see her.
“Now they’re calling, the security guard is trying to call upstairs to the nurses station -- OK, they say they’re going to call me back, and you know I’m sitting there and precious time is going by, and while I waited, I decided to do it on my own. I turned around on my own cellphone and I called the nurses station,” she said.
Perez was finally allowed up to see her mother.
“As soon as I got up, she had just passed away,” she said. “I didn’t get to see her, I didn’t get to hold her hand, I didn’t get to tell her, ‘It’s OK, Mom, I’m here. Don’t worry Mom, just go,’ and I didn’t because they robbed me. They robbed me of that chance by making me wait 20 minutes downstairs for her,” Perez said.
Kendall Regional Medical Center’s website says the hospital is currently not allowing visitors. They claim it’s due to an increase in COVID-19 cases.
But it also says circumstances may allow for exceptions.
Perez says she’s speaking out to Local 10 News in hopes no other family ends up in her position.
“I don’t know if she took her last breath knowing that there was no one with her, you know? And that’s what I didn’t want. I wanted to be there,” she said.