A 74-year-old woman believed to have died while in hospice care was found to be breathing after being transported to a funeral home, authorities in Nebraska said Monday.
The woman had been transported from a nursing home, where she had been declared dead at around 9:44 a.m. local time, to the Butherus-Maser & Love Funeral Home in Lincoln on Monday morning, according to the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities responded to the funeral home after an employee noticed the woman was breathing and “instantly called 911” at approximately 11:44 a.m., according to Lancaster County Chief Deputy Ben Houchin.
I was so lucky that my mother spent her last days at a nursing home seemingly unaffected by corporate greed. The staff were kind, caring and informative. I was alone with her when she passed and waited a minute or so before hitting the button to get a nurse to check on her. The Nurse Manager told me it is not uncommon for something like this to happen, so she would check Mom’s vitals multiple times over fifteen minutes and then call her doctor and the funeral home for confirmation before she would be officially pronounced dead.