I do not know the race of Mr. Titus which of course should not matter in how anyone is treated. Whatever his race is I address some of the issues with the Native health care and lack of it at the DOC.
“I’m very committed to making sure there is an actual change,
Dean Williams.” We have been hearing that, but just what changes were made to
the health care system? Have any appropriate staff been hired? Do they have the
right kind of experience to do their jobs? Has anything been done about the
incompetent, abusive bullying and impaired nurse in Kenai at Wildwood? The
state of AK has known about that problem for many years. Is Laura Brooks still
working for the DOC or has she been replaced by someone who can gut the system
while still delivering care to make the needed changes. Why is Laura Brooks
still at the DOC while the problems and deaths continue? The current DOC medical
director committed malpractice against me in Nome, it was very strange and
quite cruel. I guess it doesn’t really look like you are all that committed or
you would have taken actions long ago that have not been taken.
The DOC has known for a long time and so has Mr. Williams as
they read my blog quite a bit during their investigation that the DOC really
had no health care system, instead they just abused people. It was most
certainly known that the people with chemical dependency issues were being
treated in a very dangerous way. It seems that has not been dealt with. One of
the problems is health care in Alaska for the poor, the homeless and the
chemically dependent is in general abusive and incompetent by intent. The
health care corporations do not want the patients who are drunk or addicted to
drugs in their ERs so they make decisions that get rid of them and cost very
little money dumping them back on the DOC which does not have the staff or
probably the equipment for alcohol withdrawal. They do the same with the
homeless, even those who are not intoxicants. The reasons for this are very
ugly and involve racism and hateful thinking.
The problems in the prison system are a part of the overall
system of horrible health care for the Native people and anyone who is poor.
Certainly the homeless are treated like they are non-humans in emergency rooms
in Anchorage. I experienced that myself. My health problems include ME/cfs
which most doctors know nothing about so they dismiss us. There are thousands
upon thousands of research articles that describe ME/cfs as a very complex and
serious illness but the doctors don’t read this instead they read the lies from
the corrupt federal agencies who have harmed us for decades including giving
the disease an idiotic name, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Chronic fatigue is a
part of a huge number of illnesses, it means nothing. ME/cfs is probably caused
by a virus and may turn out to be Post Sepsis Syndrome. Research money was
diverted to other projects. All we have gotten for decades is abuse and
physicians participate. It is so bad patients actually get PTSD from the
physician abuse and become suicidal. Others stop telling doctors they have
ME/cfs, I don’t because my mission is to educate them or let them abuse me so I
can file a complaint to make changes. Yes, that is very difficult, stressful
and does take courage to do. So I went to the ER with this health problem with
the added reason for them to abuse me of being a homeless person.
Staff at Brother Francis Shelter had tortured me daily by
making me stand in the entryway because this psychopath they had in charge on
the evening shift did not like the things I said in response to his abusive
comments (psychopaths never do) and they always have at least one co-bully
sidekick who assists them. Administration staff did nothing when they found out
nor did they respond appropriately to the over 200 grievances I filed and large
number of voice mails I left them.
ME/cfs has as a component, POTS, Postural Orthostatic
Tachycardia Syndrome, sometimes mild in me and sometimes severe depending on
what is going on. After carrying a backpack and pulling a suitcase with ME/cfs
all day which is nearly impossible but I had no choice, I could barely even
think or breathe and had very severe edema to my feet and ankles. Then their
staff made me stand for long periods of time. I finally crashed and ended up in
the ER and then he contacted the staff and told them false information to
intentionally sabotage my health care and of course to continue the bullying. That
resulted in more abuse and lack of health care at Providence Hospital which
then affected care I got at a senior clinic where I was grossly misdiagnosed
and treated horribly by staff. I even had a nurse chase me down the main hall
yelling my name and by the front desk of the hospital with all the people
around ask me if I had stolen the hand sanitizer. Yes, that really happened. My
response was shock because it was so absurd and I asked her to call security to
come and search my things due to her false accusation. I had my own non-toxic
sanitizer and even if I had seen theirs would not have used it due to the
mitochondrial dysfunction in ME/cfs making it hard for my body to clear toxins.
I did wash my hands which is something that nurse might want to try BTW. She
said she didn’t have time to call security she had patients to take care of. I
asked her why she accused me and she said, “You know how you are.” Yes I do and
I would never take their damn hand sanitizer or anything else. She had time to
bully and slander me, but when she was about to be proven wrong, oh gotta run.
That was how I was treated at Providence Hospital and it got
worse when I went to a clinic that was not supposed to be affiliated with them,
but it was. I had worked at other Providence facilities as an agency nurse and
worked years at a facility they purchased in Yakima Washington before the
purchase, we did not treat people like this. The first time I worked at
Providence in Seattle in an ICU I was given a trial by fire assignment and
passed with flying colors, “You did great, please come back and work here any
time.” They found out I had the skills and knowledge the nursing agency reported.
At Alaska Regional ER a Libertarian nurse told me he wished
all the homeless intoxicants would just die. I was the wrong person to say that
to. Then they made me wait outside in the freezing cold for a bus that was not
coming for several hours. I do not have to imagine how a homeless person would
be treated there, I know. I did complain about my treatment. As a former RN I
can articulate my shock at their abuse which may help other people. Of course
that makes them even more horrible to me. The second time I went to this ER
they treated me well, I had been exposed to second hand Spice smoke due to the
lack of law enforcement in Anchorage and it made me very ill.
Recently a Deputy Director of the IHS came to Alaska and
wants to extend the Health Aid program that is used in remote villages to the
lower 48 Native/Indian health care systems. That is a program where health care
providers get 3-4 months of training then give doctors assessments, take
orders, make medical decisions, deliver emergency health care, etc. That is the
health care the Native Alaskans get, so the system of inadequate health care is
a systemic problem that extends to the prisons where the Native people are
incarcerated at much higher rates than the rest of the population. But in
Alaska everyone says how wonderful this system of care is, especially IHS which
was not even overseeing what went on at the stunningly incompetent hospital I
worked at in Nome and had facilities all over the country that were a shit show
on steroids. The decision was made not give the Native people the health care
they were promised and they did not.
The principal provider
of health services at the village level in Alaska is the community health
aide/practitioner. Chosen by the village council, the community health
aide/practitioner is responsible for giving first aid in emergencies, examining
the ill, reporting their symptoms to a physician, carrying out the recommended
treatment, instructing the family in giving nursing care and conducting
preventive health programs in the villages. Community health aides also store
and dispense prescription drugs with physician instructions:
About 3-4 months of training, no college, no degree. It takes a long time just to gain experience to do a physical exam/assessment let alone the judgment needed to work along as a health care provider.
The lack of trauma-aware programs of health care for the
traumatized among the Native populations and others is causing more trauma. The
prison is a situation where they take traumatized people or mentally ill
people, intellectually impaired people and traumatize them more intentionally
in a large number of cases. I know because of my own experiences with this
while dealing with very severe PTSD. They take a person who is an alcoholic or
have another chemical dependency issue and treat them as if their life does not
matter rather than as if it does. That dehumanizes the individual and they get
sicker, drink more, use drugs to numb themselves, to commit slow suicide. In a
large number of cases they get no treatment at all. I knew what I needed to
stop the development of the PTSD and was denied help several times. Then I
asked treatment in many places and in many different ways and was met with
ugliness or unreturned phone calls. This is SOP.
Having never been to Fairbanks I can’t make specific
comments, but I know the overall general attitude of the health practitioners
in the prison system. Remember my post where it was discussed that a nurse in
the mental health unit which I was in because the prison abruptly stopped my
Trazadone and Neurontin which were high doses secondary to very severe and
complex PTSD while I was very upset due to wrongful arrest/imprisonment, knew
my cat was being starved/tortured and my property certainly stolen, said “These
are not patients, these are inmates.” I can’t even imagine treating people how
myself and others were treated.
I worked with mentally ill legal offenders while going to
college, they certainly are patients first because most of the time they should
not be in the prisons to begin with, but instead should have gotten the help
they needed long ago. They should have a place to live where they get
assistance for their basic needs to be met and strategies are used to keep them
out of trouble keeping to help keep them out of the prison system that makes
them far more ill than when they arrived. For many, many people the help should
have come in the form of preventing the child abuse they suffered.
From the Newsminer in Fairbanks:
“I’m concerned about the level of care Mr. Titus got, and I think
there’s historical reasons and maybe past practices that explain some of this,”
he said in a News-Miner interview. “But I’m not trying to explain something that
doesn’t make sense to me, because there’s parts of what happened in this case
that don’t make sense.”
There are historical reasons and not just at the Department of Corrections it is state wide, part racism and part corruption/incompetence.
I assume the medication Mr. Titus who had a blood alcohol of
.39 was given for outpatient treatment was Librium the standard alcohol
withdrawal medication. People may need to have medication adjusted while in
alcohol withdrawal and of course may also have a deadly arrhythmia. Without
SaO2/respiratory rate monitoring one does not know if the patient is being
oxygenated adequately. Without a cardiac monitor one does not know what rhythm the
person has. When a patient is in alcohol withdrawal people trained to do
Advanced Cardiac Life Support should be on staff along with emergency equipment
and a crash cart stocked with drugs and other necessary things. There can also
be safety issues due to weakness and hallucinations. One of the articles I read
said Mr. Titus was being monitored every 30 minutes and some of us know how
those checks go on those kinds of units. Without strong supervision, they may
not happen. Mr. Titus should have been in a unit with continual monitoring, but
it sounds like he was just in some unit where they check a couple times an hour.
This has not been acceptable for a long time, well never and I still want to
know if the woman in the cell next to me in Kenai lived or died or was brain
damaged. How many have died since I reported the problems at the DOC so long
ago and then took abuse from the administrative staff for years and had lies
told about me. How many?
The issues with the DOC and others in Alaska that I told the
truth about are on my list of reason I was run out of Alaska about one year
ago.
1 comment:
Wonderful
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