Forgotten woman alone for 5 hours, then freed herself.

After being diagnosed with bone cancer, 67-year-old Elvira Tellez of Tucson was understandably stressed.
But that stress quickly elevated to panic last week when she went for a CT scan and was left in the machine for five hours after a technician forgot about her.

Tellez eventually freed herself from the scanner but found the medical office closed for the night with her locked inside. She called her son and then dialed 911. Sheriff’s deputies had her unlock the front door.

Routine procedure went awry (from the Arizona Daily Star)

It was supposed to be a fairly routine procedure, Ariel Tellez said of the scan. His mother had been recently diagnosed with cancer and her doctor referred her to Arizona Oncology, where it would be determined if the cancer had spread.

She was injected with a dye and was told to wait about 45 minutes, Ariel Tellez said. At about 4 p.m., Elvira Tellez was taken in for the scan, which she was told would last about 25 minutes and that she could then drive herself home.

She was placed inside the large machine, which scanned her body from the waist up. The lower half of her body was wrapped in what she described as a heavy blanket.  The technician told Tellez not to move during the scan and proceeded to turn off the room lights to help her relax, her son said.

"At some point, my mom lost track of time and felt like too much time had passed, but she couldn’t look at a clock or anything because it was dark," Ariel Tellez said.  When Elvira Tellez came to the conclusion that 25 minutes had definitely gone by, she called out to get someone to help her out of the machine. She got no response.

Soon enough, fear overwhelmed Tellez and she began screaming but still got no response because the office had closed and everyone had left for the night.  "I was going crazy and I was crying to God to get me out," Tellez said on Thursday. "I was thirsty, I needed to go to the bathroom and I was really scared."

After hours of working to free her legs from the heavy blanket, Tellez slid out of the machine and nearly fell on the floor but managed to grab a table, she said.

When she walked out of the room she found the office was dark and she was the only person there.  At about 9 p.m., she hysterically called Ariel, who lives in California. He told her to call 911 and at the same time he managed to contact the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies arrived and had her unlock the office door to let them in, said Deputy Dawn Hanke, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman. The deputies contacted the office manager, who was not aware of the situation.

Tellez was taken to a hospital where she was checked over and finally released around 1 a.m., Ariel Tellez said.
The following day, the technician who left Tellez in the machine called to apologize. At that time Tellez asked for a written explanation of what occurred, she said.  She has yet to receive anything.

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