TRAUMA AND ITS SEQUELAE…

 

Written months after my 4-week admission to the psychiatric unit, W-1, at New Britain General Hospital/ Hospital of Central Connecticut, in 2014 where I was “treated” and abused by Dr. Michael Edward Balkunas, MD

 

Nine days after your worst hospital stay ever

you are still wearing the shades

that protect others from you

though no one else believes they are in danger

Those staff however wrote you up

as “assaultive” and dangerous to self

and others. But they didn’t mean it the way

you do now and their description of your

behavior was neither accurate nor truthful

Often they lied, as liars do,

just for the sake of convenience.

 

Now you are a week away from meeting new “cousins”

who await your vacation in northeastern Vermont,

a place magically named the Kingdom

and the recuperation your mind-body badly needs.

Still unable to let go, you perseverate over

the half-nelson grip of sadistic guards

bent on eliciting pain.

What happened to the nurses’

“healing touch,”

their concern for “the dignity, worth,

and uniqueness of every individual”,

or their “primary commitment

to the patient?”

 

When the guards forcibly stripped

then four-pointed you to an bare mattress

they were just replaying their favorite rape

yanking each limb wide

to expose, degrade, humiliate.

Never mind the nurses’ vow to protect

the vulnerable. The official hands-off policy

protected only their own asses.

 

So how do Truth and Forgiveness Programs proceed

when so many refuse to acknowledge wrong?

The hospital broke every humane rule;

they only stopped short of murder

because you submitted,

nick of time. Yet they had the last word:

stuffing your screams

when they muted the intercom

and slammed the door between you

and the mandatory one-to-one observer.

 

No one ever is there to bear witness, is there?

That point has always been the point,

from Daddy to doctors.

and all the hairdressers and nurses in between.

They’ve made a religion of secrecy

and no one wants to know

what they don’t want to know.

 

Call it “our family’s business,”

call it “a private cut and shampoo,”

or just call it, discreetly, “treatment”–

but they can always do what they want to, to you.                          .

When they break you, they declare

you’re just “one of the family,”

no different from anyone else,

now that they’ve finally fixed you for good.