Optus outage: Woman misses chance to say goodbye to dying mum
Once she heard of the outage the Aussie mum raced to the hospital, but it was too late.
As stories emerge from around the country of all the various ways Aussies were impacted by yesterday's Optus outage, a woman has revealed how the crash cost her precious moments to say goodbye to her dying mother in hospital.
Sydney woman Rachel, from the city's Northern Beaches, said her mother was being cared for at Mona Vale hospital — just a 10 minute drive from her home — and had been there earlier in the day by her bedside. After staff told Rachel that they'd contact her should there be any issues with her mum, she and her family headed home.
Aussie loses 'priceless' last moments with mum
Rachel said her daughter informed her via FaceTime that there'd be an outage, but when she checked her phone, she hadn't noticed any missed calls, so "the worry kicked in". The Sydney mum attempted to ring the hospital, but wasn't able to get through.
She quickly hopped in the car and raced down the street, but by the time she arrived, it was too late.
"Mum had passed away," she told the 2GB's Ben Fordham. "You can't get those final moments back.
"We thought everything was fine (then) to come back and find her passed away."
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Optus branded 'disgraceful'
Rachel slammed Optus for the "disgraceful" internal glitch that cost her those precious final moments with her mum.
"Once we got there and found mum has passed away they [hospital staff] were saying we tried to call you," she said. "Your phone is your life, when your mum is on her last legs or whatever, your mum needs you, I need them to be able to have faith that I can get a phone call about something this precious to me.
"You put so much faith in your phone these days."
The Sydney mum said there was no compensation the troubled telco could provide that would make up for losing those final moments with her mother.
" We can never, ever get that time back with our mum," she said.
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