GASTRO DEATH VIRUS ?
Family say active and healthy 78-year-old’s health deteriorated because of campylobacter outbreak
We are angry now because Dad did have such a good life . . . and the last two years of his life has been hell.
Daughter Kathryn Sheridan
AHavelock North family are claiming their loved one’s recent death is a direct result of the campylobacter outbreak two years ago.
John Buckley, 78, died on August 29 at Hawke’s Bay Hospital, where he spent the last five weeks of his life.
He had been in and out of hospital for the past two years; spending long amounts of time, including over Christmas, New Year’s, Easter and his last two birthdays.
“We are angry now because Dad did have such a good life and was so busy and so active and the last two years of his life has been hell,” said daughter Kathryn Sheridan.
The family said John did not want to go to the media, but they now believe his story needs to be told for “awareness”.
“We are not attention-seeking people and there is absolutely no way in our mind that Dad died of anything else other than from that poison,” Sheridan said.
She believed there was “nothing they could have done” once he became sick. Their gripe is that “nobody has taken responsibility”.
John’s wife, Liz Buckley, recalls him becoming “noticeably ill” on August 10, 2016, coming home from work early.
“It was a horrendous two years for him and for me. He couldn’t eat his tea on that Wednesday night and on Thursday morning he absolutely could not move out of bed.”
Liz said she kept making John drink water in an attempt to make him feel better — unaware of any outbreak at that stage.
On August 12, Sheridan phoned to say the “water had been poisoned” and they stopped.
“We went to the chemist and they said half of Havelock was unwell and to feed them electrolytes.
“By Monday [August 15] he was still unwell and the doctor didn’t know about campylobacter. He said he had been advised to prescribe antibiotics. By the end of the week, he said John had atrophibulation due to the campylobactor,” Liz Buckley said.
He then spent three days having his heart monitored, but still went back to work.
For the next year he was prescribed a concoction of medication for various ailments, before having kidney troubles and heart issues as a result of the medication, as well as a “bladder bleed” and “prostate surgery”.
But before August 2016, Sheridan remembers her 78-year-old father as a “hardworking, happy person”.
“He used to always pick up my kids, loved working, and they were social, they went out to dinner a couple times a week.”
Liz Buckley said the last time John had been admitted to hospital before his 2016 illness was when he was 19 years old.
John Buckley’s cause of death has been documented as a stroke, something which they believe in “hindsight” they should have queried.
“The last thing that took him was a stroke, but would he have had a stroke if he had not had campylobactor?” Sheridan asked.
“They don’t know but they reckon he had a little stroke, fell out of bed, and had another stroke and that’s what ended his life.
“When the doctor said they were suggesting they would put stroke as the end of his life, we agreed with that but really it should have been campylobacter. He loved his life he did not want to die.”
A Hawke’s Bay District Health Board spokeswoman said the DHB had “not been notified of any new case [death] directly linked to the HN campylobacter outbreak in 2016”.