An elderly grandfather whose family had just been told by doctors that he had died got the shock of their lives – when he walked into a room and shouted ‘dead man walking’.
Dennis Freeman, 81, had been admitted to hospital after suffering from dizzy spells.
The grandfather of 12 was kept in hospital overnight to monitor his blood his blood pressure and his breathing but was told by hospital staff that he would be leaving shortly.
He said: “I wasn’t really worried because by the time I got to hospital I felt alright, I actually felt a bit of a fraud being there.
“They gave me a blood test and said if everything was alright I’d be going home and someone came round later and said everything was alright.”
Mr Freeman had previously suffered from a triple bypass and had three lumps cut off his lungs from asbestosis 15 years ago.
While in hospital, a patient lying in the bed next to Mr Freeman died and arrangements were made to tell the deceased’s family.
But Mr Freeman’s wife of 60 years, Ursula, arrived at King’s Lynn hospital to with her daughter and grand-daughter to take her husband home.
When she arrived at the ward, she was taken to the side by two doctors and escorted into a waiting room.
Mrs Freeman, 79, said: “These two doctors were there, the main one was standing at the side of me and he said ‘I’m afraid to tell you your husband is dead’.
“Then my daughter got up and said ‘you mean to tell me my Dad has just died? I can’t believe it, he’s not dead’.”
“So they said he is and that was that, I was in so much of a state, I couldn’t breathe with my asthma, I went all shaking and everything.”
“My daughter was saying come on Mum, breathe, and then of course he walked into the room.
“Then they turned around and said I think we’ve made a mistake, it wasn’t the right person but it was like a bereavement.”
Mr Freeman had noticed his wife and family being taken into the room and had wondered what was going on.
He said: “I said about a terrific film we used to watch, The Green Mile, and the bloke walking along the corridor, dead man walking.
“She was crying her eyes out and shaking so I went in there and said dead man walking.
“She must have thought she wasn’t going to get that insurance money after all.”
As the family walked out of the hospital, they passed the wife of the deceased man who had been lying next to Mr Freeman, who could have been sent into the ward had she arrived earlier.
Mr Freeman added: “You shouldn’t joke about things like this but if this happened to somebody else then it could have been fatal.
“Why couldn’t the doctors have just asked who she was or who she was going to see?”
Mrs Freeman revealed that since the incident on November 11 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Norfolk, she has been struggling to sleep and follows her husband around the house.
