Vietnam Veteran Dies Days After VA Sent HIm Home

Veteran dies two days after VA hospital visit, widow blames poor treatment as cause
Times Leader
By Jerry Lynott
Last updated: June 29. 2015

Something told Olga Pryjmak to be with her husband on his final doctor’s visit, and it wasn’t him.

Stephen Pryjmak was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, and a Newark, New Jersey police officer who retired after 25 years on the force.

He had been diagnosed with a blood clot in his heart. His wife was at his side during a visit with a cardiologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Wilkes-Barre on Aug. 27, 2013.

“Normally my husband didn’t want me to go in with him to see the doctor, but this time I insisted,” she said of accompanying him that day.

He had been complaining of shortness of breath and chest pain, signs of a serious problem to his wife, who started her nursing career in the U.S. Army and continued it for nearly 40 years in intensive care units in New Jersey hospitals.

The doctor prescribed medication to strengthen his heart and scheduled a follow-up visit for a month later instead of sending him immediately to a hospital for the cardiac catheterization his wife said he needed.

Two days later, her 65-year-old husband suffered a massive heart attack at home and died in a Hazleton hospital.
read more here