This should have been chapter one, it was actually the beginning of the whole thing. They call them nursing homes for a reason.
Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation is like most nursing homes, they have an administrator, a director of nursing and an assistant director of nursing. The administrator was Cookie ( Maude ) Romeo, the director of nursing was Susan Habel RN, and the assistant director of nursing was Anette Corn RN. I had the misfortune of having to deal with each one of them.
Ms. Romeo was all business, she had no compassion at all. When I met her I was trying to obtain a copy of Mom's medical records from Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation. She tried to refuse my request, but being that I was the legal administrator of Mom's Estate , she had no choice. The first set of the records was copied by the medical records clerk, but when I showed up to get them, she said that they were sending them from the corporate office. The clerk , Jennifer Thomas had copied them already, but she said Ms. Romeo did not want me to have that copy. I asked Ms. Thomas why she could not provide me the ones she had copied and her reply was that Ms. Romeo did not want her to waste the paper! She had already printed them, but Ms. Romeo found out that she was going to give them to me, and stopped her. I would guess that those records would have told the real story of what happened to Mom. The set of records I have were sent from the corporate office, which is two exits away on the interstate. It took over three hours for them to get to me. I wonder what records they changed in those three hours. My suspicions began to grow every time I spoke to a representative of Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation. Once I got the records I can understand why they were trying to keep them from me.
Annette Corn RN was the first person I spoke to after Mom passed. I'm sure her job was to make you feel like the staff was devastated by the loss of your loved one. When I asked her what exactly happened the morning Mom died, she actually called the nurse that was on duty that morning. Tammy Mace RN was the one who found Mom in her bed that morning. The whole time she was telling me about what had taken place, she never looked me in the eye. She mostly stared at the floor the entire time. Not what you would expect from a person who was telling the truth. Her story only added more confusion as to what actually happened. As I told the story to my brother and sisters that afternoon, it only added to the list of questions.
The next member of the compassionate nursing staff of Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation that I had the pleasure of meeting with was Susan Habel RN. Ms Habel was the Director of nursing while Mom was a patient there. Our meeting was not quite as cordial as the meeting with Ms. Corn. As soon as I started asking questions, Ms. Habel got down to business. According to her the staff had done a great job that morning. She went so far as to tell me that the EMS crew that responded, had complimented the staff on how they handled the situation. Next she asked me if Mom's body was still warm when I saw her in the Emergency Room at Pardee Hospital. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation, Ms. Habel then took me to Cookie Romeo's office. Obviously I was not going away and it was now up to the front office to deal with me. Ms. Romeo basically informed me that I was not welcome there and it was time for me to leave.
In the mean time we had been going through the hundred plus pages of Mom's medical records. The one thing that stood out the most was the MAR's ( medication administration records). First of all they had the wrong room and bed number on them as did most of the records in the file. There was also an issue with a prescription for Ativan. It seems that Mom had gotten upset one afternoon and asked for something to calm her down. The nurse on duty that afternoon and evening was Lara Mooney LPN. Nurse Mooney filled the prescription and according to records and family members she administered one dose that evening.
Early the next morning, Mom fell in her room. When I visited that morning, Mom made a joke about the fall. However she had a bandage on her right arm. The staff advised us that Mom had fallen, but never any detail about the fall. Turns out that Lara Mooney LPN was the nurse on duty at the time Mom fell.
This is where things got really suspicious. According to Lara Mooney, she had actually witnessed the fall. Her statement was that she was standing at the foot of the bed as Mom removed her personal alarm and slid to the floor before she could get to her. That means that at three in the morning, Mom was able to reach up and remove a clip on alarm and attempt to stand up before nurse Mooney could take the three or four steps to stop her. Hard to believe that while still under the effects of the Ativan, and with poor vision, Mom was able to accomplish this.
The only account of this was a late entry in the nurses notes, dated a month after Mom had passed. This version of the story was never told to the family after the fall. It also does not come close to the story told by Mom's roommate at the time. According to the roommate, she was woken by Mom's voice asking for help, while lying face down between the beds. The roommate stated that she pulled her call cord and waited for someone to help. She said that after several minutes she saw two CNA's walk by. Although the call light was on, she had to call out to them to get them to respond. They entered the room and called for the nurse on duty. Lara Mooney LPN came into the room and told them to take her vital signs and get her back in bed.
It turns out that Lara Mooney LPN, had been disciplined by the NC Board of Nursing before. She was actually cited for practicing nursing without a license. At the time she was working for Hendersonville Pediatrics. It appears that nurse Mooney likes to work with the most vulnerable of all patients, the children and the elderly. It's no surprise that she was able to get a job at Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation. They like to hire the ones that really need work, and will do whatever thay are told to keep their job.
