Funeral staff finds woman in body bag still alive

An Alzheimer’s care center in Iowa was fined $10,000 after mistakenly declaring a patient dead, according to a report from the state’s Health Department.

The patient, a 66-yearold woman who was not named in the report, was declared dead by staff members of the Glen Oaks Alzheimer’s Special Care Center in Urbandale, Iowa, on Jan. 3, and transported to a funeral home, according to the report.

But when staff members at the funeral home unzipped the body bag, she was alive and gasping for air, according to a citation from the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.

The woman was admitted to the special care center in December 2021 with early onset dementia, anxiety and depression. She entered hospice care in late December 2022 with senile degeneration of the brain and was treated with the anxiety drug lorazepam and morphine, a painkiller, according to the report.

Starting around last month, her vital signs and responsiveness worsened. She refused meals and had seizures. A doctor ordered an increase in morphine and lorazepam “due to active decline,” the report said.

Early on Jan. 3, a care center employee at the end of a 12-hour shift found the woman unresponsive and conferred with a nurse, who declared the woman dead. The nurse informed the woman’s daughter and secured orders from a doctor to release her to a funeral home.

Funeral home workers unzipped the body bag and noticed that the woman’s chest was moving and watched as “she gasped for air,” the report said. They called 911 and the hospice.

An ambulance transported the woman to an emergency room with a low temperature and shallow breathing. The woman had a do-not-resuscitate directive, so she was brought back to the hospice at the Alzheimer’s care center, where she died two days later.

It is not unheard-of for people to be declared dead only to be found alive hours later.

On Saturday, an 82-yearold woman was pronounced dead at a nursing home in Port Jefferson, New York, but was found to be breathing about three hours later at the funeral home where she was taken, according to the Suffolk County Police Department, which is investigating. The unidentified woman was taken to a hospital, police said.