Amber Bazile: A Daughter's Fight for Her Mother’s Dignity in Hospice Care

Amber Bazile was adopted at six weeks old by her parents, Margaret and Wayne Mimbs, and raised in Macon, Georgia, where she still resides today. Amber lost her mother, Margaret, in May of this year after months of mismanaged hospice care. Amber shared, “we believed she would be cared for with comfort and dignity, but that’s not what happened. The care was disjointed, neglectful, and inadequate.”

Amber’s parents had been married for 51 years and built a life together that reflected Margaret’s joy and creativity. They lived in a log cabin he built by hand, complete with ponds and gazebos. Inside, every room carried its own theme, from rabbits in the bedroom to cows in the kitchen. Margaret filled her home with antiques, collections, and hummingbird feeders that Amber and her father still refill today. “Anything my dad, anything that she asked my dad built, he built it for her, just like the house. That’s why she wanted to go home there. That was her home.”

Margaret worked at YKK also for 51 years. Amber said, “She is one of the only people I know that loved her job…The day before she died, she said that she was going back to work.” Amber described her mother as “a really, really special person” who wanted nothing more than to keep working, enjoy her collections, and spend time with her family. But when her health began to decline, everything changed.

At first, the family thought she just needed her pacemaker battery replaced. But when she remained weak and fatigued after the procedure, they suspected worse. Then, Margaret suffered a severe hypoglycemic episode when her blood sugar dropped to dangerously low levels. That marked the beginning of a rapid and devastating decline.

She was hospitalized at Atrium Health Navicent, where doctors performed major surgery for ovarian cancer. Amber said, “She should have went on palliative care or hospice care from January. But instead, they put her under a major surgery that had major complications. She had never been the same. And I believe it inevitably made her die quicker because they gave her six months. She died in about three after that surgery.”

Amber described the surgery as the point when everything changed. She said her mother was never strong enough to receive chemo after the procedure. “It took her three or four days in an induced coma after surgery. She had three blood transfusions when she actually went into respiratory failure. Nobody ever called me or my dad. So, I luckily got an alert on the patient portal that there was a significant event…I went up there at one o’clock in the morning and the nurse accidentally let me into the room in the ICU where her room is glass all the way around. So, when I walk in there’s seven, eight doctors working on her and I was being told basically that I would be put in jail if I didn’t leave. And I have that on video.”

Amber later posted the video on Facebook, where it quickly went viral. Staff at Atrium identified the nurse in the recording by her shoes, and the CEO personally called Amber. But instead of addressing the deeper failures that had put her mother through such trauma, Amber said she was told only that the nurse would be required to take anger management classes. To her, this response felt wholly inadequate for the gravity of what had happened.

Margaret spent more than three months in and out of the ICU. After she finally came home on May 14, 2023, she entered Enhabit Hospice. From missing medication to neglectful providers, it was here that the family witnessed the worst quality of care they could imagine at such a delicate time.

“Her medicine bag, it was missing the morphine and the pain medication. I believe it was Valium, so I immediately called the nurse, and I called Enhabit Hospice. I let them know. They said that they were going to try to work it out, and they were going to see what they could do. Never heard back until the next day when I had to call on May the 15th.”

That morning, Margaret’s blood sugar dropped to 21. “It was the early morning hours, maybe five, six a.m. She went into glycemic coma. Still then, no pain medicine, no morphine, no nothing.” The nurse who came stayed only briefly. “Basically, said there was nothing more that she could do, and to call when it was over.”

Hours later, Margaret began groaning in pain. “You could see the tears coming down her face, so I immediately called the nurse. I let her know. She basically asked, did anyone in the house have pain medication, so I was like, you know, my dad’s had cancer for 17 years. He’s got hydrocodone, so she advised me to then crush it up and put it into a syringe and put it into her cheek.” By instructing Amber to give her mother medication that was not prescribed, the nurse acted in a way that was not only unethical but also unlawful. Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), it is unlawful to administer or distribute a controlled substance to someone for whom it was not prescribed, even if a medical professional instructs it.

Hours passed and the family had still not heard from the hospice nurse or received the prescribed morphine. When the hospice nurse finally called to check in hours later, she had not yet sent the morphine prescription to the pharmacy. Once the family went to pick up the medication and administered it to Margaret themselves, she passed a few minutes later.

Amber shared, “I did feel very alone and…I had never heard of anything like that happening before to someone through hospice. I always heard the good things.”

She added: “No one should have to watch someone die like that — not without support, not in suffering, not in confusion. I want accountability — not just for Enhabit, but for a system where hospice oversight fails families. What I hope comes from this is public awareness about hospice neglect, stronger hospice oversight in Georgia, accountability for Enhabit, and honoring my mom’s name by protecting others.”

After her mother’s death, Amber filed complaints with CMS, the long-term care ombudsman, the Georgia Department of Community Health, the Attorney General’s office, and the Georgia Board of Nursing. “I wrote to just anybody and everybody. I wrote to the hospice themselves. There’s an active investigation right now through the Georgia Department of Community Health.” She has also spoken with reporters from WMAZ, NBC, WXIA, Georgia Recorder, and ProPublica.

Despite the pain of those months, Amber carries her mother’s legacy forward. She spends every day with her father and has started volunteering with a hospice in Gray, Georgia. “I’d like to sit with people that are actively dying just in case something were to happen like what happened to us so I could at least say, ‘hey you’re okay, everything’s going to be okay, I’m here.’”

Amber said she knows this is what her mother would want. “She was the nicest, sweetest person that I know. She’s looking down and she’s like, that’s my daughter.”