Kathie Gagne died 4,511 days ago.

Florida Department of Health
October 15th, 2012 @ 9:11 am

Florida Department of HealthThis morning when I got to work I called Shay Murphy, Medical Disability Adjudicator with the Florida Department of Health. 1 I called the (800) 821-8122 number on the bottom of the letter my sister was mailed on September 20th. 2

The letter, addressed to my mother — who died on August 12, 2012 — states:

We are currently developing evidence for your Social Security disability claim in order to determine your eligibility for benefits.

We have requested information from Halifax Health and Woodland Terrace (we must have these records even though she is deceased). These sources may refuse to send them since she is deceased and may require whoever has power of attorney to sign a new release. I am including 2 new releases o be signed by the power of attorney individual AND you should include a copy of the power of attorney paperwork. Thank you for helping. As of this date, we have not received this evidence. Therefore, we are unable to make a fair determination of your claim.

1 The website subdomain, appropriately, is “doh”.
2 The outgoing recording on her voice mail box confused me momentarily, because in it she states that she’ll be out of the office from September 24th through the 28th and not returning until October 1st.

Bill for Autopsy
October 11th, 2012 @ 8:25 am

Attorney Steve Phillips of Pincus & Currier, LLP emailed me on the morning of October 11th, 2012. He forwarded me an email he received from Dr. Wolf with a copy of her bill attached.

 
 

Continue reading …

Status Update Request
October 9th, 2012 @ 9:06 am

Here is an email I sent to attorney Steven Phillips at 9:06 AM on October 9th, 2012:

EmailHey Steve,

Has there been any progress at all with my mom’s case?

I am becoming increasingly anxious that as more time passes, it is more and more likely that records — especially ones from Woodland Terrace — are going to go missing or be altered.

Also, were you ever able contact Dr. Wolf about whether there was an opportunity to examine my mother’s brain to determine if she was suffering from Alzheimer’s or some other physical problem?

Thanks,

David Vincent Gagne

Steve replied to me via email at 8:31 AM on October 11th, 2012:

I have been in trial out of town for the last week so I have not had an opportunity to speak to Dr. Wolf. I will attempt to do so before the end of the week.

Please do not be concerned with records being altered or missing. Missing records are the death knell for a facility in court. The facility can be put out of business if they are caught destroying or altering records.

Hopefully they will cooperate and we will have the records soon.

Steve Phillips

I responded to him the same day at 10:42 AM and wrote:

Hey Steve,

Do you recall when you made the original request for the medical records? I know you said that they have thirty (30) days to comply and I am thinking they have either exceeded or are very quickly approaching the deadline. (Tomorrow will be two months since my mom died.)

David Vincent Gagne

At 12:18 PM Steve wrote:

I don’t know offhand but it is close if not past. My staff is following up on the requests.
Only the insurance disclosure is supposed to be provided by 30 days. They sometimes stall some and we have to harass them which we are doing now. There is not time set by law regarding the records but they are required to produce them. We should have everything soon.

An Issue
October 3rd, 2012 @ 11:46 am

I received the following email from Dr. Allen Cusack of Cusack Mortuary:

Good Afternoon,

I received a letter in today’s mail stating that there was an issue regarding a chargeback/stop payment regarding your bill. I needed clarification on this and wanted to know if you ever received the cremated remains of your mother and if your sister received hers as well.

Thank you,
Allen Cusack

I haven’t responded to him yet. I can’t think of any way I could possibly convey my frustration and disappointment.

Beyond the Brain
October 1st, 2012 @ 10:22 am

One of the featured Longreads last week is on the subject of schizophrenia.

In the 1990s, scientists declared that schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses were pure brain disorders that would eventually yield to drugs. Now they are recognizing that social factors are among the causes, and must be part of the cure.

Here’s the part that stabbed at my heart:

When psychoanalysis dominated American psychiatry, in the mid-20th century, clinicians believed that this terrible illness, with its characteristic combination of hallucinations (usually auditory), delusions, and deterioration in work and social life, arose from the patient’s own emotional conflict. Such patients were unable to reconcile their intense longing for intimacy with their fear of closeness. The science mostly blamed the mother. She was “schizophrenogenic.” She delivered conflicting messages of hope and rejection, and her ambivalence drove her child, unable to know what was real, into the paralyzed world of madness.

The complete article can be found in The Wilson Quarterly.

Any Update?
September 27th, 2012 @ 9:26 am

On the morning of September 27th, 2012 — a month and a half after my mom died — I sent this email to my attorney, Steve Phillips, of Pincus & Currier, LLP:

EmailHey Steve,

My sister (in Seattle) and I both received our mother’s ashes earlier this week. Both of them were poorly packaged and it was very disrespectful. It also took three full weeks for them arrive after the cremation, with me calling and emailing the mortuary almost daily and the mortuary promising me they’d arrive the next day. So I called Bank of America and told them I wanted them to reverse the credit card charge, which they agreed to do pending an investigation.

I just wanted to know if you had any updates for me. Have you heard anything from Dr. Wolf? Did Woodland Terrace provide my mother’s medical records and / or the physical therapy logs you needed? Have you discovered whatever it was you wanted to know about their insurance?

I know you had said you were going to be away from the office for a while, so I don’t want to pester you; I’m sure, though, you can understand my anxiety about all this.

Thanks in advance,

Steve replied to me the next day, September 28th, at 7:11 AM:

Sorry to hear about your experience.
We are still waiting on the records and insurance disclosure. As soon as I receive these I will let you know and the records will be forwarded to Dr. Wolf for her review.

March 8, 2013

I’m just now realizing that Dr. Wolf and Attorney Phillips told me repeatedly that Dr. Wolf would not be able to finalize her autopsy until she received copies of my mother’s medical records from Woodland Terrace.

To the best of my knowledge, Woodland Terrace has never provided those records to anyone, yet Dr. Wolf finalized the autopsy months ago.

Ashes
September 24th, 2012 @ 7:17 pm

My wife sent me a text message shortly after one in the afternoon to let me know that the ashes had arrived at the house. I replied and asked her if they had been delivered via FedEx and she told me they weren’t.

When I got home from the office I found a plain brown cardboard box wrapped in brown paper. It was sealed completely with clear packing tape and the shipping label showed that someone had paid $22.50 to the United States Postal Service on Friday, September 21 to send it to me.

Before I had a chance to open it — as I was standing in my kitchen, staring at the box, actually — I got a phone call from my little sister. She had also received some of the ashes.

Note: I had asked Dr. Allen Cusack at Cusack Mortuary if he could send them to us in four separate containers, and he said that was very common and wouldn’t be a problem at all. We wanted to disperse some of them in the Atlantic Ocean near Daytona Beach, Florida where we had placed both of my maternal grandparents. My sister wanted to put some in the Puget Sound, I wanted to scatter some in the Pacific Ocean, and I wanted to save some forever.

My sister asked me if I’d opened the box I’d received yet. I told her I hadn’t. She told me that hers contained, inexplicably, what appeared to be a discarded surgical dust mask. She also told me that the ashes were in a poorly-sealed plastic bag which seemed to have released some of its contents into the box. She was quite upset.

Fearing the worst, I carefully opened the box I’d been sent. A puff of dust greeted me. Inside were three separate plastic bags loosely held together by zip ties. I couldn’t tell — and didn’t investigate — whether any had actually opened, but it was clear that very little care had gone into the packaging of my mother’s remains. There was also a small envelope inside labeled Tri County Cremation Service, Deland, FL, which contained a sort of receipt.

Disgusted, I called the customer service line on the back of the Bank of America MasterCard which I had used to pay Cusack Mortuary. It took me over thirty minutes of being on hold and being bounced between departments, but eventually I was connected to someone who listened to my story. I explained that I wasn’t upset about the three-week delay between my mother’s death and her cremation, because that was entirely the fault of the doctor and the medical examiner and the fact that I wanted an autopsy performed. I said that I was upset about the three-week delay between the cremation and when I was delivered the ashes, and the repeated phone calls and emails and broken promises, and the apparent total lack of respect for my mother’s remains.

I said that I realized that all of this might be the fault of Tri County Cremation Service, but that was not my fault and it shouldn’t be my problem. The Bank of America representative said that he would reverse the $1621.00 charge and open an investigation. He said they would aggressively research what I was promised and that he and everyone in his office offered me their condolences.

I received this email from Allen at 7:51 AM on Tuesday, September 25th, the morning after the ashes arrived:

Hello Mr. Gagne,

This is Allen. I am sorry it was somewhat confusing for a few days. I was out and asked [name redacted] to send the email knowing I’d promised to make contact with you. For the most clear answer I can give, your mother should have arrived Monday, the 24th and she was shipped United States Postal Service. Our plan was to use FedEx knowing it would have been much faster. I since learned the problem with her being returned to us was that FedEx does not wish to take human remains/cremains any more; having had an issue with that. My hope is by now you and your sister have received your mother’s cremains and are now able to move forward.

I also thank you for your concerns. My blood pressure and migrane headaches have been a major issue for me lately. I do thank you for that. I will be out of town Thursday afternoon – Saturday night teaching in a music workshop. If you need me then, just tell the office you need to speak to me.

Take care!!

I haven’t decided whether I should reply to Allen.

Tracking Numbers
September 24th, 2012 @ 11:10 am

I sent this email to Dr. Allen Cusack at Cusack Mortuary:

Dear Allen and / or [name redacted],

I called this morning because the two tracking numbers [name redacted] gave me on Saturday night do not seem to work.

I tried using them on the FedEx website, the UPS website, and the United States Postal Service website and all three fail to return any information on those tracking codes.

When I called this morning, I think that Allen said that my mother’s remains were shipped via FedEx, but it was very difficult to understand him.

Can you confirm that my mother’s remains were shipped via FedEx? Can you tell me when they were shipped? Can you confirm that these are the correct tracking numbers?

Thank you very much.

Voice Mail
September 24th, 2012 @ 9:27 am

Late in the evening of September 23rd, I submitted a help ticket via the AT&T website:

My mother died on August 12, 2012. She was hospitalized in late November 2011.

Prior to November 2011, I had many, many, many voice mails from my mother. She would call and leave me voice messages all the time.

Is there any way to retrieve any of them? My mom’s phone number was [redacted] and she called me hundreds of times.

Please: If there is any way to retrieve even a single voice mail I would be grateful. I sadly have no recordings of my mother’s voice and it is breaking my heart.

I wanted to add something about how they could review my bill and they’d see that my mother and I talked almost every day of my whole life, or that she’d probably left me more voice mails than any other mother ever left for a son in the history of their company, or that I did not have a single recording of my mother saying my name and that I am overwhelmed with crushing sadness every time I try to remember the sound of her voice. But the form on the website only allowed a few hundred characters for some reason, so I had to be concise.

I received this response:

Dear Mr. Gagne,

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T regarding voice mail messages. My name is [name redacted], and it will be my pleasure to assist you today.

I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but once the voice mail messages are deleted we are unable to retrieve the messages. When messages are saved, they are only saved for 14 days. After 14 days they are automatically deleted, not unless you go back into your voice mail and keep resaving them before the messages are due to expire.

I hope that the information provided has been helpful and has resolved all of your questions. Should you have additional concerns or questions about this issue please reply to this email. If you need to contact us again regarding a new issue please send us another email via the contact link through your online account. I thank you for being a valued AT&T customer. We will do our best to ensure that your wireless experience is a success, and AT&T hopes to serve you as your wireless provider for many more years to come. We truly appreciate your business. I hope you have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

[name redacted]
AT&T National Solution Centers

Shipping Update
September 24th, 2012 @ 6:35 am

I called Cusack Mortuary while driving into the office today. The first time I called the 877 phone number and got a message about all the lines being busy. So then I tried again and it simply immediately started making the “You’ve been disconnected” tone. I called the local 386 number and it rang through.

A woman answered the phone and asked if she could help me. I asked her, “Is this [name redacted]?” 1 She said that, no, it was [name redacted]. I told her my name — I spelled my last name twice — and explained that I had received an email on Saturday night from [name redacted], Allen’s administrative assistant, and that the email contained tracking codes for my mother’s ashes. I told her that this email didn’t indicate which shipping service was used, and I couldn’t find any record of the tracking numbers at FedEx, UPS, or the United States Postal Service. She asked me to hold on while she tried to get someone who could help me.

About a minute later she returned and said, “Here’s Charles.”

I heard a faint, raspy breath say something like, “Hello, this is Allen.” I could barely hear him so I repeated, “Hello? Did you say this is Allen?”

I couldn’t understand his reply and had no idea if I was talking to Allen or someone else; I couldn’t tell if the person on the other end of the line was at death’s door or if I simply had a bad connection. I said, “Okay, I think this is Allen but I can’t hear you. I’m calling because I can’t tell which company you used to ship my mom’s ashes. The email doesn’t say.”

FedExI clearly heard him say the word FedEx, so I said, “Did you say FedEx?” and he said, “Yes.”

I said, “Okay. Thanks,” and hung up.

I just tried again to enter the tracking codes I was sent at the FedEx website, but they don’t appear to be in a standard FedEx tracking code format, and they’re not found when I search for them.

1 the name of the administrative assistant who emailed me on behalf of Allen on Saturday night

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