Gladys Rodríguez De Duarte: The Woman Who Woke Up In A Funeral Home
TV AireGladys Rodríguez de Duarte (left), pictured with her worried husband and daughter.
When Gladys Rodríguez de Duarte noticed a frightening spike in her blood pressure in 2020, the 46-year-old ovarian cancer patient immediately rushed to San Fernando Clinic in Coronel Oviedo, Paraguay.
But within two hours, de Duarte was declared dead by her physician Dr. Heriberto Vera — in an allegedly unprofessional manner.
“He assumed she was dead and handed her naked to me like an animal with her death certificate,” said the woman’s husband, Maximino Duarte Ferreira, according to the New York Post.
De Duarte was then placed in a body bag and transferred to the Duarte e Hijos funeral home, where it was soon clear that the physician’s declaration had been dead wrong — because de Duarte’s body bag was moving.
De Duarte was quickly taken to a medical facility of Paraguay’s Social Welfare Institute, where she was reported to be in a “delicate but stable” condition.
Colleagues of Vera’s denied any accusations that the physician had neglected to attempt reviving de Duarte, but her husband didn’t buy it.
He ended up filing an official complaint against Vera, claiming that he pronounced de Duarte dead because he no longer wanted to treat her.
