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"Beware how you take away hope from any human being." Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
I thought I was crazy. This is how it felt. Of course we know a crazy person never thinks they are crazy. I now have a huge amount of information about workplace bullying. It causes psychological injury which is not the same as a mental illness. The first night during the period between getting home and before the police came I called one person who worked at the hospital I thought I could trust. I told him what had come to pass and how the psychologist at the hospital was so nasty and wanted to have me admitted to the hospital, but Colleen Meyer said she would not allow me to be admitted. It was a bizarre situation. I explained to him that I had become addicted to the medication I had forgot I brought with me. He contacted a doctor and got me enough methadone for a three week wean off the narcotic. This is an extremely short wean, but worked considering it had just been a short amount and low dose that I had been on. I did manage to go to the hospital and pick it up. That was very difficult. I spoke to no one else. This person told me he did not think the DA would charge me with a crime when it was clearly a mental health issue. He said, "He has better things to do." I told him that the clique at the hospital would make certain he charged me. He did not believe it would happen. I was sure it would. I had been viciously psychologically tortured by them for months. I knew they made up their own truths when they felt justified to do so. I had no idea how much control they had on the DA and the court system in Nome. I could have never imagined such a thing could happen. Corruption in Nome is how they conduct business. It took several months before I realized the truth and found information about workplace bullying.
I did call a friend of mine who was the DA in a large city in California for several years. He was upset because in most states this would not be a criminal issue. The board of licensing usually deals with this kind of thing in California (This is true of 48 of the states)and helps the nurse go back to work ASAP. He did some research and called me. He told me to pack, leave most of my things behind and get on a plane. He said the judicial system in Alaska is corrupt and there was no telling what they would do. He told me there was no need to contact a legislator for help. This was in 2005, way before the Corrupt Bastards Club was known about. I do not think either of us had any idea how bad it could really turn out to be. I do not think anyone knows the full truth about the corruption in Alaska even now. To tell the truth I did not really believe him. He said word was Nome was worse than most places in Alaska. I did not take his good advice. I did not agree that leaving was the right thing to do. I could not have imagined that people could be this evil. I believe in the judicial system in the United States. I am not a coward. I do not turn and run when I have a problem. I believed I should stand and be accountable for what I did. I did not really understand what had happened yet. I was still very bewildered. I believed in truth and justice nonetheless. I actually had the belief that the truth would come out in court. I just knew the justice system was going to help tell the truth. What a silly, naive ass I was. There is no justice in Nome. They make their own truth up in that court. One of the reasons I am telling my story is I want my country back. I demand my court system back. Justice has been replaced in our country by big money. I vow to help change this. Norton Sound Health Corporation is not that big in the whole picture, but it is in Nome.
I stayed home in so much emotional distress that I do not know how I survived it. Nothing anyone could have said to me or done to me would have made me feel any worse. I could not eat or sleep. I was curled in a ball. Most of the time I just felt numb. If someone had come in my apartment to kill me, I would have been grateful. I was very physically ill before that day even happened. That is one of the results of psychological torture. It was difficult to even make it to the bathroom or kitchen. It all just kept playing in my head over and over. All the things they had done to me at the hospital. They had gotten my friends to turn their backs on me. The lies and manipulations were cleverly designed to make me sick. The emotional pain was too much to bear, but somehow I survived. I do not know how. I managed to not kill myself. Perhaps this was Colleen Myers plan when she refused to allow a suicidal mentally disturbed person to be admitted to the hospital. If I was dead I could not tell my story.
It was very clear that I did what I did because I was mentally disturbed at the time. On the police tape when the pharmacist showed up he said after looking at the situation it had been done by a person who was not sane. His comment was clearly ignored by the way. He was also a victim of workplace bullying during his two years at NSHC. They did their best to discredit him any way they could. He was right about almost everything he tried to do.
One of the symptoms of PTSD is reliving the events which produced it over and over in one’s mind. Confusion dominated the picture at this time considering the whole thing made no sense to me. How could I do this thing. What happened to me while I worked there? Why did my friends slowly desert me? I went over the lies. Most of them were from Colleen Myer. Of course later on I figured out the real puppet master is Karla Homelvig. I was promised obstetrics training in Anchorage after 6 months. She started making up all kinds of rationalizations and lies about why I could not go. The real reason was I would learn how things were suppose to be done and then recognize they were not doing what they were suppose to. Of course I would have known this before I left even with no experience in OB. When I complained about the heavy work assignments I received and the clique sitting in the break room she told me she would do something about it. She always had the same response for everything, "They aren’t suppose to be doing it that way". Then she would say she would do something about it. I had no idea she was one of the ring leaders and directed them in this behavior. She lied when she said I could go work in the ER so I would, "not have to work with them", "You can just stay down there away from them", "They don’t like to work in the ER anyway". Later she said the board of directors determined everyone should work in the ER. This was her justification for lying to keep me from leaving so she could torture me a little more. By then I was strongly entrenched in the community and it was much more difficult for me to make the decision to leave. I decided at one point to take part in the community play, Oliver. I already knew all of the songs and I just wished to be in the chorus. I told Colleen I did not need to go to all of the rehearsals. I knew the songs already, I just needed the dates of the play scheduled off. This was not much to ask considering the members of the clique got pretty much any schedule they wanted including one who got vacation every year at Christmas. She assured me this was not a problem. I gave her the official form requesting the dates off and then even reminded her when it came time to make the schedule for that time period. When the schedule came out I was working every day of the play. She went out of her way to schedule me during the play they were not days I normally worked. I did not even bother saying anything to her about it. I knew it would only give her pleasure and she would feign she had forgotten about it. This example is just the tip of the ice berg.
Before I came, I made sure I took Advanced Cardiac Life Support, which teaches the basic, standardized skills for saving a life in an emergency. There is a counterpart to this for children called Pediatric Advanced Life Support. I was promised several times over a two-year period that we would soon have this course. I even went to administration and explained that it is dangerous for us not to have it. This was promised on the telephone before I came to Nome. They finally had a class just at the time I was losing it. I also told her I have no pediatric experience and do not feel comfortable taking care of children. She said this should not be a problem as they have a lot of nurses with pediatric experience. They all took pleasure assigning me to take care of children to watch me squirm.
I was stunned to find out that not only did they dump most of the work on those who were not members of the elite clique they would then refer to us as the "dirty girls". This was because we were assigned all the patients with infections, diarrhea, vomiting, etc. The manager of the inpatient unit would just say, "They aren’t supposed to do it that way," and then do nothing about it. She did announce one day after much complaining on my part that they were not suppose to call us, "dirty girl" anymore. I believe that was as a result of my going to the middle manager and complaining. At this point I started getting glaringly hateful looks all the time from some of them. Oh, the dirty looks were nothing new. The intensity just picked up.
Some of the other things that were going through my head during this time was the exclusion. Myself and others were not allowed to go on Medevacs as promised. They even went so far as to post a schedule for us to sign up on. They never picked anyone to go but the clique and they were not usually even signed up or even qualified to be a flight nurse.
Remember I knew nothing about workplace bullying. My thoughts were so confused around what the heck this all meant. What had been the reason I was treated so poorly? I should have been a very prized nurse. They should have been very glad to have me. Instead they tried to discredit me at every turn, just as they had done to so many before me.
1/14/08
I did call a friend of mine who was the DA in a large city in California for several years. He was upset because in most states this would not be a criminal issue. The board of licensing usually deals with this kind of thing in California (This is true of 48 of the states)and helps the nurse go back to work ASAP. He did some research and called me. He told me to pack, leave most of my things behind and get on a plane. He said the judicial system in Alaska is corrupt and there was no telling what they would do. He told me there was no need to contact a legislator for help. This was in 2005, way before the Corrupt Bastards Club was known about. I do not think either of us had any idea how bad it could really turn out to be. I do not think anyone knows the full truth about the corruption in Alaska even now. To tell the truth I did not really believe him. He said word was Nome was worse than most places in Alaska. I did not take his good advice. I did not agree that leaving was the right thing to do. I could not have imagined that people could be this evil. I believe in the judicial system in the United States. I am not a coward. I do not turn and run when I have a problem. I believed I should stand and be accountable for what I did. I did not really understand what had happened yet. I was still very bewildered. I believed in truth and justice nonetheless. I actually had the belief that the truth would come out in court. I just knew the justice system was going to help tell the truth. What a silly, naive ass I was. There is no justice in Nome. They make their own truth up in that court. One of the reasons I am telling my story is I want my country back. I demand my court system back. Justice has been replaced in our country by big money. I vow to help change this. Norton Sound Health Corporation is not that big in the whole picture, but it is in Nome.
I stayed home in so much emotional distress that I do not know how I survived it. Nothing anyone could have said to me or done to me would have made me feel any worse. I could not eat or sleep. I was curled in a ball. Most of the time I just felt numb. If someone had come in my apartment to kill me, I would have been grateful. I was very physically ill before that day even happened. That is one of the results of psychological torture. It was difficult to even make it to the bathroom or kitchen. It all just kept playing in my head over and over. All the things they had done to me at the hospital. They had gotten my friends to turn their backs on me. The lies and manipulations were cleverly designed to make me sick. The emotional pain was too much to bear, but somehow I survived. I do not know how. I managed to not kill myself. Perhaps this was Colleen Myers plan when she refused to allow a suicidal mentally disturbed person to be admitted to the hospital. If I was dead I could not tell my story.
It was very clear that I did what I did because I was mentally disturbed at the time. On the police tape when the pharmacist showed up he said after looking at the situation it had been done by a person who was not sane. His comment was clearly ignored by the way. He was also a victim of workplace bullying during his two years at NSHC. They did their best to discredit him any way they could. He was right about almost everything he tried to do.
One of the symptoms of PTSD is reliving the events which produced it over and over in one’s mind. Confusion dominated the picture at this time considering the whole thing made no sense to me. How could I do this thing. What happened to me while I worked there? Why did my friends slowly desert me? I went over the lies. Most of them were from Colleen Myer. Of course later on I figured out the real puppet master is Karla Homelvig. I was promised obstetrics training in Anchorage after 6 months. She started making up all kinds of rationalizations and lies about why I could not go. The real reason was I would learn how things were suppose to be done and then recognize they were not doing what they were suppose to. Of course I would have known this before I left even with no experience in OB. When I complained about the heavy work assignments I received and the clique sitting in the break room she told me she would do something about it. She always had the same response for everything, "They aren’t suppose to be doing it that way". Then she would say she would do something about it. I had no idea she was one of the ring leaders and directed them in this behavior. She lied when she said I could go work in the ER so I would, "not have to work with them", "You can just stay down there away from them", "They don’t like to work in the ER anyway". Later she said the board of directors determined everyone should work in the ER. This was her justification for lying to keep me from leaving so she could torture me a little more. By then I was strongly entrenched in the community and it was much more difficult for me to make the decision to leave. I decided at one point to take part in the community play, Oliver. I already knew all of the songs and I just wished to be in the chorus. I told Colleen I did not need to go to all of the rehearsals. I knew the songs already, I just needed the dates of the play scheduled off. This was not much to ask considering the members of the clique got pretty much any schedule they wanted including one who got vacation every year at Christmas. She assured me this was not a problem. I gave her the official form requesting the dates off and then even reminded her when it came time to make the schedule for that time period. When the schedule came out I was working every day of the play. She went out of her way to schedule me during the play they were not days I normally worked. I did not even bother saying anything to her about it. I knew it would only give her pleasure and she would feign she had forgotten about it. This example is just the tip of the ice berg.
Before I came, I made sure I took Advanced Cardiac Life Support, which teaches the basic, standardized skills for saving a life in an emergency. There is a counterpart to this for children called Pediatric Advanced Life Support. I was promised several times over a two-year period that we would soon have this course. I even went to administration and explained that it is dangerous for us not to have it. This was promised on the telephone before I came to Nome. They finally had a class just at the time I was losing it. I also told her I have no pediatric experience and do not feel comfortable taking care of children. She said this should not be a problem as they have a lot of nurses with pediatric experience. They all took pleasure assigning me to take care of children to watch me squirm.
I was stunned to find out that not only did they dump most of the work on those who were not members of the elite clique they would then refer to us as the "dirty girls". This was because we were assigned all the patients with infections, diarrhea, vomiting, etc. The manager of the inpatient unit would just say, "They aren’t supposed to do it that way," and then do nothing about it. She did announce one day after much complaining on my part that they were not suppose to call us, "dirty girl" anymore. I believe that was as a result of my going to the middle manager and complaining. At this point I started getting glaringly hateful looks all the time from some of them. Oh, the dirty looks were nothing new. The intensity just picked up.
Some of the other things that were going through my head during this time was the exclusion. Myself and others were not allowed to go on Medevacs as promised. They even went so far as to post a schedule for us to sign up on. They never picked anyone to go but the clique and they were not usually even signed up or even qualified to be a flight nurse.
Remember I knew nothing about workplace bullying. My thoughts were so confused around what the heck this all meant. What had been the reason I was treated so poorly? I should have been a very prized nurse. They should have been very glad to have me. Instead they tried to discredit me at every turn, just as they had done to so many before me.
1/14/08
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