I was fighting for my life in ICU when a cruel thief STOLE cash out of my wallet next to my bed
A CANCER patient said he had £120 stolen from him when he was fighting for his life in intensive care with pneumonia.
Simon Colbeck, 49, was bed bound, tied up to lots of machinery and finding it “extremely hard to breathe” when the cash was nicked from his wallet.
The former facilities manager, of Halifax, West Yorkshire, had been in and out of hospital since being diagnosed with treatable but incurable blood cancer last year.
He has been on the mend but caught pneumonia after getting the jab and was rushed into intensive care.
But two days later they realised the money was missing from his wallet when his newly-wed wife Colette, 44, came to visit him and take home his belongings from the Royal Calderdale Hospital.
Dad Simon told The Sun: “It’s extremely stressful. The last 12 months have been very mentally draining. I have had to take in a lot.
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“How can someone steal money off someone who’s on their last legs in a bed? It beggars belief.”
The wallet with £120 was recorded by the hospital among his possessions when he arrived, meaning it has been confirmed that he definitely had it on him.
He said it was put in an unlockable drawer behind his bed and that “anyone could have gone into it”.
But there is no CCTV to catch the culprit because of privacy reasons of it being in a personal health setting.
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Simon’s condition was so bad when he went to hospital in June that medics had considered putting him in a coma.
He said: “I couldn’t breathe. It was extremely hard to breathe.
“My right lung had stopped working. My body was only taking approximately 40 per cent oxygen.”
The hospital conducted its own internal investigation but no one owned up and the money was not recovered.
West Yorkshire Police then launched an investigation but identified no suspects.
Simon said he was reimbursed by the hospital but insisted: “That’s not the point in my eyes.
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“I’m more concerned about who else it could happen to.”
A spokesman for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust said: “We were made aware of a situation and investigated and the matter has now been resolved with the patient.”