Colchester: A local man who survived Eastern equine encephalitis and then COVID-19 has returned home after more than a year in rehab centers, where he alleges he was neglected, mistreated and forced to try commit suicide.
In August 2019, Richard Pawulski was a 42-year-old healthy man and a successful physical therapist who had just moved into his dream home in Colchester with his wife, Malgorzata, and his teenage daughter, Amellia. . One summer day he was working in the garden when he was unknowingly bitten by a mosquito carrying the deadly Eastern equine encephalitis virus, commonly known as EEE.
Pawulski began to experience flu symptoms on August 22 and was soon taken to a hospital, where he fell into a coma that lasted two months.
On October 1 the mystery of what had made Pawulski ill was solved, but the prognosis was bleak. Pawulski had contracted the EEE virus, which had infected his brain. Doctors said he would probably never wake up. His family was preparing for his funeral.
But miraculously, Pawulski woke up. His occupational therapist called him “a phenomenal miracle.”
Slowly, he began to walk and talk again. But it required months of constant care. For 16 months he was bedridden in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. When he was finally able to speak, he said he felt he had “gone through hell” and “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Pawulski was one of four people to contract the EEA virus in 2019, and is the only one who survived.
Just before Christmas 2020, Pawulski finally went home to Colchester and reunited with his wife and daughter.
Although his family was glad to finally have him at home, his return home was not the joyous occasion they had foreseen.
Pawulski was supposed to be released from the Riverside Rehabilitation and Health Center in East Hartford just in time for Thanksgiving, but the process was halted by the bureaucracy with care insurance approvals. of the home. His release was delayed and Richard was devastated. He had already spent a whole year away from his family, isolated for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic – also fighting and beating the coronavirus last spring – and was ready to return home.
He wanted to bring his life back.
While Pawulski waited for insurance approvals to be approved in mid-November and early December, the chances of him returning home before Christmas were reduced, stealing the light of hope Pawulski had left behind.
Then one night, Pawulski said he was denied the most basic human decency: the staff in charge of caring for him at Riverside allegedly refused to change his diaper. He repeatedly asked to be changed, not to have to sit uncomfortably in a dirty diaper to be able to sleep. The staff, he said, mocked him for his weight and then ignored his requests for help. He had been removed from the call button, so he could not call for help and was ordered to return to his room when he entered the lobby for help. From his room, he could hear them laughing.
And at that moment, Pawulski lost all hope. He said he reached into the closet and pulled out a wire hanger. He unrolled the hanger and straightened it. He wrapped his arms around his neck and tried to end his life.
Pawulski was rescued by a staff member who finally recognized his first cries for help and was taken to Hartford Hospital. Malgorzata received a call that almost broke her heart: she was told that her husband, so close to returning home, had tried to commit suicide.
Sitting in her home in December holding her husband’s hand, her eyes burst into tears as her husband remembered the moment he secured the hanger around her neck.
“I just lost all hope,” he said.
When Malgorzata arrived at Hartford Hospital, he decided to take him home. He would not return to Riverside.
“Why would we take him back to a place that made him want to die?” she said.
Pawulski was in Riverside from May to December 2020. During that time, he said he was repeatedly neglected, that he sat on dirty diapers for hours and hours, that he was denied access to phones to talk to the his family, even during the height of the COVID. 19 pandemic, when visitation was not allowed. He said he was teased by staff members who made fun of him for his weight and told him that his wife would leave him because of his appearance.
Pawulski said he was stripped of his call button, the only way to signal he needed help while confined to a wheelchair where he can barely get in on his own. His family complained that he needed a way to ask for help, but he was never returned.
Towards the end of his stay, Pawulski said a male employee working the afternoon shift began beating him, hitting him in the arms and body. Her family still has photos on the phone of large yellow bruises on her body.
The Riverside administrator did not respond to repeated requests from The Day over allegations of abuse and neglect of Pawulski.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health is still processing a public filing application filed by The Day to request information on any reported abuse cases reported at Riverside or the Salmon Brook Nursing and Rehabilitation Center of Glastonbury, where Pawulski was before moving to Riverside.
At Salmon Brook, Pawulski said he was never physically abused, but was equally neglected. The Salmon Brook operator said he had no comment on his allegations of negligence or abuse.
Throughout 2020, Pawulski’s wife and daughter said they were so desperate that they called police several times for help and complained of negligence at the two centers. Richard also called police at rehab centers, they said.
Lt. Joshua Litwin, of the East Hartford police department, said the department had a record of a phone call about Pawulski’s attention in Riverside. Litwin said Pawulski’s daughter called East Hartford police in the fall of 2020 complaining she couldn’t reach her father. The office told him that unfortunately this was not a police issue because there were no criminal charges and suggested that he contact the facility management.
Litwin said in his twenty years with the police department he has never heard of Riverside-related criminal charges.
Glastonbury Police Department chief Marshall Porter said his department had no records of any phone calls alleging abuse or neglect in Salmon Brook.
Now that Richard is home, his wife and daughter say they are facing a new nightmare.
The family has been desperately trying for more than a month to get state approval to receive home care for Richard, who requires ongoing care to move, eat, and use the bathroom. His wife said they have been told approvals are delayed because she left the rehab program early. He was taken home early, she said, because he was so mistreated that he wanted to die.
His wife has spent a lot of time away from work at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown. Her co-workers have generously given her paid time off so she can take care of her husband.
But times run out and they feel frustrated. They said that for them, it is almost a full-time job trying to work with social workers and state officials to get approval for home care and SNAP benefits to help with their expenses now that they only have an income. . Amellia, a 10th grader at Bacon Academy, often has to drop out of her virtual classes early or skip them altogether to make phone calls and help her father when he needs something.
They call the social workers day in and day out, but have gotten no answers or any relief.
“My family has never asked for help for anything,” Malgorzata said through tears in December. “We’ve always worked hard and taken care of ourselves, and now, when we need help, no one is there.”