A GRANDMOTHER who died of sudden liver failure while embarking on the trip of a lifetime in Singapore may have been poisoned, an inquest has heard.
Sandra Bushby, 64, was struck by the fatal condition while enjoying a four-day stopover in south-east Asia on the way to Australia last October – a trip she had been planning with husband, Graham, ever since her retirement just four years earlier.
But despite more than seven months of tests, toxicology reports, and correspondence with Singaporean medical teams, the cause behind the mother-of-two's liver failure remains unknown.
"There is a number of causes which can include poisoning of some form or a drugs overdose," said coroner Caroline Beasley Murray at the inquest last Wednesday (June 5).
"However, this court is unable to pinpoint exactly what the cause has been and so I will record that Mrs Bushby died of massive hepatic necrosis of an unknown cause."
Mrs Bushby, from Hatfield Peverel, had been out for a stroll in the Asian city on the morning of October 17 when she suffered severe stomach pains. The pensioner was rushed to Raffles Hospital where within an hour she had grown delirious as doctors attempted to treat her.
"Within another 30 minutes she was in intensive care where she had to be resuscitated, and from then on it was a downhill battle as her organs failed," the inquest was told by Mr Bushby, Sandra's husband of 45 years.
"The next morning we took the decision to turn off her life-support."
The ultimate cause behind Mrs Bushby's death may never be known, however, although Dr Davis, of Broomfield Hospital, told the inquest at New Bridge House, Chelmsford, that causes could include an overdose of drugs such as Paracetemol, a spider bite or even food poisoning.
"My abiding memory is particularly the last four years with Sandra where, as a retired couple, we thought we had our lives stable and would be able to do what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it," said Mr Bushby after the inquest. "We had planned out our long-term travels and Australia was to have been our last long-haul holiday before we moved on to South America and Europe, ending up with our Zimmer frames in the UK. Sadly those plans are now only past dreams as Sandra has been so suddenly taken from us."
It was not the first time that Mrs Bushby had been to Singapore after spending the first 18 months of her married life in the city, as she accompanied Graham throughout his career in the Army.
But after 13 moves the couple had settled in Hatfield Peverel, devoting much of their time to fundraising toward life-changing surgery for grandson Fraser, who suffers from cerebral palsy.
"Sandra made £2,000 just selling keyrings she had cross-stitched by hand, and we held events in the village hall, with all the money raised going toward the spinal surgery in the US," said Mr Bushby, a parish councillor.
"Fraser and the family went out to the States in March this year and he's doing fantastically well. He has walked for the first time and is even riding his first bike. At least when she died she knew there was most of the money for the treatment raised."
Mrs Bushby was buried in a traditional Singaporean coffin last year to acknowledge the support offered by doctors in the "horrendous days" surrounding her sudden death.
