By Lee Scanlon of 
Amy and her two children at Peter's grave. Photo: Supplied
Peter* messaged his wife in Westport from his Greymouth hospital bed at 8:20am on a Monday morning.
His text said: "I am in trouble."
Their daughter, Amy*, described what happened next.
"My mum rang him and he answered and she said: 'What's going on?'," Amy said.
"And he said 'I've rung the bell, I think I'm having a stroke. Nobody's come'.
"Mum could hear it ding dong.
"They talked for 13 minutes, and no one had come in. As they were talking he started slurring his speech and then she said she couldn't hear him at all.
"Just before that he said his arm had fallen off the bed, so he was having a stroke.
"Mum said: 'Wait there, I'm going to ring the hospital and tell them to come and help you'.
"She rang them and said: 'He's needing help, he rang the bell, he's having a stroke'.
"It wasn't until 8:40am they went in there - that's 20 minutes - it took them 20 minutes to respond to that bell call.
"To be honest, it might not have made much difference but someone's calling for help."
Amy and her family believe Peter would still be alive if he had been properly diagnosed and treated in the previous six weeks.
"We've been to the hospital so many times, to be sent home," she said.
The family has complained to the Health and Disability Commissioner.
They decided to speak out after reading about the death of Filipino carpenter Leo Lozano, 51, after an alleged misdiagnosis at Westport's acute stabilisation unit (hospital) last month.
Amy, a young mother with two young children, arrived at The Westport News with pages of handwritten notes. She was dry-eyed and determined as she went through them. She spoke of her dad in the present tense.
Amy said she first took her father to Buller Health on 11 April. He had sore legs and couldn't walk properly.
The diagnosis was leptospirosis - a bacterial infection caught from infected animals. The symptoms include fever, headache and body aches.
Peter, 66, was prescribed Panadol and an antibiotic. He had also been taking Aspirin to thin his blood since recovering from a stroke in 2018.
When they left the medical centre, Amy insisted he move in with her. (Her parents were amicably separated.)
Over the next six weeks, Peter's health steadily deteriorated. He was dizzy and had pain in his hands, legs and feet. He couldn't get to the toilet without help.
In the early hours of 22 April he fell trying to get out of bed. He was dizzy, his eyes couldn't focus and he had chest pain, Amy said.
"I freaked out and I called the ambulance at one in the morning."
Peter was admitted to Westport hospital, then transferred to Te Nīkau Greymouth Hospital, where he had a CT scan. His family was told the results were fine.
On 24 April Te Nīkau sent him back to the Westport hospital. He rang Amy to pick him up.
"He couldn't walk," she said. "He rang me up and said: 'I'm in the carpark in a wheelchair'. I said: 'What are you doing out here?'
Peter replied: "They've just pushed me out there and said I can go home."
When his family arrived to get him, they had to lift him into the car.
"The doctor stated he had 'ongoing pain but well for home'," Amy said. "I was frustrated, I was very angry."
On 30 April, Buller Health called Peter back for more blood tests. Again, the family had to lift him in and out of the car.
"I remember that day very clearly because I got my sister to come with me," Amy said. "I asked what were the last blood test results and the nurse said they were all good."
But Peter's hospital records show several of the results should have been a red flag for someone who had had a stroke which had left him with a small brain aneurysm.
Every time his blood pressure was checked it was high, she said.
Peter's health continued to deteriorate. He could barely walk on his swollen feet. "He described it as walking on barbed wire," Amy says.
He had a sore chest, headaches, pain in his legs and jaw, pins and needles in his feet and hands. His hands were turning white.
On 6 May, Amy phoned Buller Health for help. She was told: "No doctors available, don't bother coming in" and to call an ambulance if she needed to.
She continued to care for her father - a stoic man who liked no fuss. Panadol didn't dent his pain. A friend gave him some codeine, which helped.
"But in the night I'd wake up with him moaning and I'd run in there," Amy said. "I've never seen my Dad in pain, I've never seen him crying or anything. He was in so much pain, we got him heat packs - it was ridiculous really."
He also developed a large rash on his side.
Sceptical of the leptospirosis diagnosis, Amy and Peter scoured Google for a disease that matched his symptoms. "Me and Dad spent days and in the night Googling, we were trying to work it out ourselves."
On 24 May, Peter became so unwell his family took him back to Buller Health.
"My mum, my sister, my partner, we all had to literally carry him out of the house and drive him in," Amy said.
Buller Health did more blood tests and confirmed vasculitis, she said. It's a rare disease that inflames the blood vessels, restricting blood flow and damaging organs and tissues. There's no cure, but the outlook is good with treatment by anti-inflammatory medicines.
Peter was told he needed to go to Te Nīkau but there was no ambulance available - he would have to find his own way there.
"I was shocked, really," Amy said.
The only family member able to take him that day was her brother, who worked long shifts. Peter had to wait seven hours in Westport hospital. Amy said there was a vacant bed, but Peter was only given a chair next to it.
Peter and his son arrived at the Greymouth hospital at 6pm. There was no bed available, Amy said.
"They made him wait until 11.30pm to get a bed. He was lying down in the foyer - my brother had to wheelchair him in."
Her brother took a video of Peter talking to a doctor. The doctor said vasculitis wasn't confirmed. However, Peter's medical records showed it had been, Amy said.
"The doctor said: 'We don't know, we have to do more tests'.
"Then they made him wait the whole weekend for tests. They said: 'There's no tests over the weekend'. I thought, what?"
She called her father from Westport the following night. He told her a nurse helping lift him to the bathroom had dropped him.
"He told us: 'She bloody dropped me. She dropped me on the ground and my knees are sore'."
After that he was scared to ask for help to get out of bed, Amy said.
Her brothers spent most of the weekend at the hospital with their father.
Amy spoke to Peter again the next night, 26 May.
"He sounded pretty distant - this is a talkative man - he will talk your head off."
He told her he hadn't had much sleep and felt tired.
"I said, 'We'll talk to you tomorrow, we'll come and see you'. And my kids said: 'Bye Grandad'. And I said: 'Love you Dad'.
"It was the last time I ever talked to him."
Amy still can't figure out how the next morning, in the throes of a stroke, Peter managed to text her mother with fingers that had been numb for weeks. He texted a second time - to correct spelling mistakes in the first message.
By the time his family drove the 100km from Westport to Greymouth, Peter had had a CT scan and been given a clot-busting drug which has a high success rate. Unfortunately, three percent of patients suffer a haemorrhage. Peter was one of them.
"I got a really big shock," Amy said. "He had gone into a coma and he was breathing heavily… Then they pretty much told us straight away: 'He's on palliative care'.
"We didn't know what had happened, we didn't know a thing."
She said staff refused to tell them more, citing patient rights.
"They said: 'You're going to have to request the notes if you want to know what's happened'…
"I know now. I know half of it because they lost his notes. They sent us some notes but they'd lost the rest of them. Where are these notes?"
The family wanted Peter immediately transferred to Christchurch, as his brother had been when he survived a stroke several years ago.
"We said: 'We don't believe the care here is up to standard, we're not happy with the way things are going'," Amy said. "They said: 'No, we will not do that'."
The family sat at Peter's bedside until he died at 2:30pm on 29 May.
"I'm still in shock," Amy said. "I still feel like he's going to come through the door."
Peter had just retired as a contractor. He'd bought himself a motorbike and often took off to Nelson or Christchurch. He was so fit, he could spend a day on his feet pig hunting, Amy - the youngest of five children - said.
"My Dad deserves a bit of justice. He was a healthy man - never smoked or drank, a motorbike rider, a pig hunter.
"When he got to the hospital he was treated like he had been unfit for a long time…
"Our trust in the health care system has been eroded. We have lost a loved father, grandad, uncle and brother."
She said people need to remember health professionals are just ordinary people who can make mistakes.
Her father had told her: "When I get better I'm going to take this to the newspaper."
Health NZ West Coast declined to comment while a Health and Disability Commissioner's inquiry is underway.
*Not their real names.
