Hospital inaction led to untimely death of leukaemia patient, wife insists
It has been four years since the passing of her husband, who had leukaemia, but Lau Tung-miu - who has since moved 9,600km from the place she called home - still grieves for her beloved.
"My husband and I were childhood sweethearts," Lau said. "He used to pick me up [in his taxi] when I got off work."
The agony returned afresh recently, when Lau and her son had to continue with an inquest into the death of Sung Hoi-chau, 51, which had been adjourned for a year after she accused a lawyer of telling a doctor witness to shut up about the case.
Now that a coroner had ruled Sung died of natural causes following "unfortunate events" at two public hospitals, all she wanted was to leave this "place of sadness" and go back to Canada, where the family migrated last year - three years after Sung died.
The plan was to fly to Edmonton as early as today, she said.
Time had not erased Lau's memories of the hours leading up to her husband's death on November 1, 2011, as she indicated to the ahead of her flight.
The day before, he had called to tell her he had to be discharged from Princess Margaret Hospital as it was running out of beds.
At the time, the inquest heard, his immunity was virtually non-functioning as his white blood cells could not even be counted.
Asked if she had been warned about the precarious state he was in, Lau said: "I was not informed of the danger." The inquest found no evidence she had been told.
The next day, Lau called an ambulance after Sung turned feverish at home in Wong Tai Sin. But the paramedics would not take him to Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung - as per doctors' advice should things go wrong - as she lacked the necessary reference letter.
"Where is the letter?" a dumbfounded Lau was asked by the paramedics.
They were driven instead to the nearest hospital, Queen Elizabeth in Yau Ma Tei, where Lau obtained a letter before boarding a taxi with Sung bound for Princess Margaret Hospital.
But the letter, which was to tell medical staff the case was urgent, did not work. The couple waited and waited - in desperation Lau even jumped in the way of a doctor at random and cried for help.
When their turn finally came, she claimed, a doctor said: "You think you can do what you want."
Even as a coroner yesterday ruled Sung had died of a natural cause, Lau insisted the hospitals had deprived him of a chance to live because of inaction. "It could have been a different story."
