A family GP who wrote out a death certificate for a 91-year-old woman was stunned when she returned from the morgue after 11 hours and ordered soup and pancakes.
Janina Kolkiewicz was declared dead – but morgue staff noticed movement inside a body bag.
When she was unzipped, she said she felt terribly cold but otherwise was ‘fine’.
The police have launched an investigation.
The family doctor had taken the woman’s pulse after she stopped speaking or moving, and wrote out a death certificate.
Preparations were made for a funeral two days later.
‘I was sure she was dead,’ said Dr Wieslawa Czyz.
‘I’m stunned, I don’t understand what happened. Her heart had stopped beating, she was no longer breathing.’
The death certificate has now been declared invalid, and Ms Kolkiewicz appears to have no recollection of her morbid ordeal, as she has late-stage dementia.
