Colchester – A local who survived horse encephalitis in the east and then COVID-19 returned home after more than a year in rehabilitation centers, where he claims he was neglected, abused and forced to attempt suicide.
In August 2019, Richard Pawulski was a healthy 42-year-old man and a successful physiotherapist who had just moved into his dream home in Colchester with his wife, Malgorzata, and their teenage daughter, Amellia. One summer day, he was working in the yard when he was bitten unknowingly by a mosquito carrying the deadly eastern equine encephalitis virus, commonly known as EEE.
Pawulski began to feel flu-like symptoms on August 22 and was soon taken to a hospital, where he went 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 his funeral.
But miraculously, Pawulski woke up. His occupational therapist called it “a phenomenal miracle.”
Slowly but surely, he began to walk and speak again. But he needed months of constant care. He was bedridden in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities for 16 months. When he was finally able to speak, he said he felt that he had “gone through hell” and “no one would want that.”
Pawulski was one of four people who contracted the EEE virus in 2019 – and is the only one who survived.
Just before Christmas 2020, Pawulski finally left home for Colchester and reunited with his wife and daughter.
Although his family was happy to finally have him at home, his return was not the happy occasion they had anticipated.
Pawulski was due to be released from Riverside Health and Rehabilitation Center in East Hartford in November, in time for Thanksgiving, but the process was halted by bureaucracy with home health insurance approvals. His release was denied, and Richard was devastated. He had already spent a whole year away from his family, isolated for months because of the COVID-19 pandemic – fighting and beating the coronavirus last spring – and was ready to go home.
He wanted his life back.
As Pawulski waited for insurance approvals to be removed in mid-November and early December, his chances of coming home before Christmas became weaker, stealing the glimmer of hope Pawulski had left behind.
Then, one night, Pawulski said he woke up denied the most basic human decency – the staff in charge of his care at Riverside would have refused to change his diaper. He repeatedly asked to be changed, not to have to sit uncomfortably in a dirty diaper so he could go to bed. The staff, he said, mocked him for his weight and then ignored his requests for help. They had taken his call button, so he could not call for assistance and ordered him to return to his room when he entered the hall to receive 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 opened the hanger and straightened it. They wrapped him around his neck and tried to end his life.
Pawulski was rescued by a staff member who eventually acknowledged his previous cries for help and was then transferred to Hartford Hospital. Malgorzata received a call that almost broke her heart – she was told that her husband, so close to coming home, tried to commit suicide.
Sitting in her house in December, holding her husband’s hand, her eyes filled with tears as her husband remembered the moment he hung the hanger around her neck.
“He just lost all hope,” she said.
When Malgorzata arrived at Hartford Hospital, she decided to take him home. He would never return to Riverside.
“Why would I send him back to a place that made him want to die?” she said.
Pawulski was at Riverside from May to December 2020. During this time, he said he was repeatedly neglected, left to sit in dirty diapers for hours and hours, was denied access to phones to talk to his family. its – even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when visitors were not allowed. He said he was ridiculed 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 his call button, his only way to signal that he needed help while he was confined to a wheelchair he could barely get into on his own, was taken from him. His family complained that he must have a way to ask for help, but he was never given back, they said.
Towards the end of his stay, Pawulski said that a male employee who worked in the evening shift started hitting him, hitting him on the arms and body. His family still has photos of large yellow bruises on their phones.
The Riverside administrator did not respond to repeated requests from The Day about Pawulski’s allegations of abuse and neglect.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health is still processing a public record request filed by The Day requesting information on any abuse case reported to Riverside or the Salmon Brook Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Glastonbury, where Pawulski was previously to move to Riverside.
At Salmon Brook, Pawulski said he was never physically abused, but was neglected just as much. The Salmon Brook operator said he had no comment on his allegations of neglect or abuse.
Throughout 2020, Pawulski’s wife and daughter said they were so desperate that they repeatedly called police for help and complained of neglect in both centers. Richard also called the police at the rehab centers, they said.
Lt. Joshua Litwin of the East Hartford Police Department said the department recorded a phone call about Pawulski’s care at Riverside. Litwin said Pawulski’s daughter called East Hartford police in the fall of 2020, complaining that she could not reach her father. The dispatcher told him that, unfortunately, it was not a problem for the police, as there was no criminal complaint and suggested that he contact the unit’s management.
Litwin said that in his 20 years in the police department, he had never heard of a criminal complaint involving Riverside.
The head of the Glastonbury police department, Marshall Porter, said his department had not recorded any phone calls alleging abuse or neglect at Salmon Brook.
Now that Richard is home, his wife and daughter say they are facing a whole new nightmare.
The family, for more than a month, is desperately trying to get state approval to receive home care for Richard, who needs non-stop assistance to move, eat and use the bathroom. His wife said they were told approvals were delayed because she left her rehabilitation program early. He was brought home early, she said, because he was so mistreated that he wanted to die.
His wife took a lot of time off from her job at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown. Her colleagues generously donated her paid time off so she could take care of her husband.
But they ran out of time and are frustrated. They said it is almost a full-time job for them to try 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 have a single income. . Amellia, a 10th grader at Bacon Academy School, has to leave virtual classes early or pass them perfectly to make phone calls and help her father when he needs something.
They call social workers every day, but they have not received any response or relief.
“My family 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 for us.”