So sorry to every one for disappearing so unexpectedly. I was sent to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital Emergency Room on December 31, 2015, largely because MRR was short on staff, and there i was brutalized for 6 days before Rutland Regional Medical Center took me in, on their state hospital PICU unit.
In the ER not only did they restrain me as i have depicted, but they injected me with 15mg of Haldol and much more over the course of those 6 days, despite my advanced directive, signed by four people and notarized, that explicitly states that under no circumstances am i to be given Haldol!
The ER doctor admitted that he violated, knowingly, my advanced directive. Due to facebook supporters calling the local newpaper in outrage, the newspaper called not the hospital–that would have violated my privacy, so they claimed, even though i had alerted the paper myself to their treatment of me! No, the newspaper, the Brattleboro Reformer, called my twin sister, Carolyn Spiro MD and asked her if this treatment of me, her sister, and her twin, was proper, and her amswer was, Absolutely!!!!
So you see where she stands on the issue of the torture of both psychiatric patients and her own twin sister! I have had nothing to do with her for years because of this.
Meanwhile, i have many many good words to say about the Rutland Regional Medical Center PICU but i don’t have enough time on my iPad tonight to say them all. So i will just end with this other artwork. I hope tomorrow i can tell you more about RRMC where they are trying, in a very small constricted place, to do things right, at least in terms of seclusion and restraints.
WAGblog: Dum Spiro Spero 
Pam,
Good to hear from from you although sad to learn how some things haven’t changed. Miss taking jewelry making classes with you. The students are still enjoying all the wonderful materials you donated and “In her Hands” has a permanent place at BHS. Hope you will visit soon. Sending healing and happy thoughts your way…
RoseMary Stewart
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Yes, you were very clear about that. I was just reading on a website about how families change. All families change. Not just those subject to the brutality we have been through, but all. The site pointed out that people grow, age, relocate, marry, divorce, grow old, die, and all that’s pretty much to be expected as far as I’m concerned. Oddly, as soon as money gets mixed in, it gets exponentially worse.
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Yes, I fully agree! I am honestly disturbed that there is a way and a place for recovery or rehabilitation, humanely and apparently successfully, yet my son (or you), can’t access this because of money. Sigh… I don’t read much about that particular place anymore for that reason, but I still find the website moving.
I recently read about a new program they integrated that compared psychiatric recovery to getting a college degree. I think the folks may even get college credits for participation. That makes sense to me. This idea that medication is a one for all fix and, the only fix, is absurd.
I wish we could build our own place. Cooperiis did, you know?
Please stay in touch and I will try to be present more often too. I moved and have a different number. I will send you an email with my contact info.
Love, your friend,
Michelle.
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Like Marie said, I wish I could be there for you, with you. I am so, so sorry that you have been through this trauma again.
When your text messages on my phone stopped during the height of our Goliath blizzard, I knew something had happened. Oh dear Pammy.
A quarter mile from our house, three gigantic grain silos were blown over during that post Christmas blizzard. A freight train was blown off the track four miles from our house, another freight train was derailed by the wind thirty miles away. And over 35,000 cattle were killed in our area by the hurricane force blizzard winds that blew for most of two days and two nights. Our whole town was without power for 21 hours. With the outdoor temps in the teens, we got very cold. The roads and highways were impassable for days after the storm. A National Security snowcat could not get through the snow to rescue stranded motorists. Four wheel drives and snowmobiles could not reach these people. When the wind finally died down, a helicopter was used to save the stranded motorists.
It was all so terrifying. The damage to our property was extensive. We have a new roof now, yay…
But through it all, when your encouraging caring texts stopped, I worried about my friend Pam. You helped me through the scariest part of that scary storm. I owe you. I thank you. And if there is anything I can ever do to help you in return, please let me know and I will do my best.
PS- You will probably have to moderate this, as I have a brand new WordPress account now with a brand new blog and new gravatar, although I am using the same picture and have kept my pen name the same. Bloggers were longer being notified of my comments on my old WP account, and WP help couldn’t seem to help me.
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Thank you Michelle. The price of Cooper Riis was the problem, not the philisophy…M(UCH MUCH too expensive!!!! But oh, I agree with so much else they had to say…
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YEAH! Me too! Hears to Absolute Prohibition!!!!
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Dearest Julie, I nearly almost laughed out loud at the I am not dead comment….Sorry, but bitter laughter…My twin was not on my advanced directive and has not been for many yuears. My BROTHER is…..But hte paper did not care. they went by the book literally nad called her via information on the book jacket! Thank you for yuour comment. I always love that you follow my blog! Pam
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Thank you mArie, for thinking so kindly of me…I too wish you could come and visit. Maybe one day I will again have a place of my own, and we will cook together and journey through this lovely state of vermont to see it together!
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Pammy, am so sorry. I am glad you are still here. I wish I could come visit and take care of you some again. Love, Marie
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Pam, I wasn’t sure what was going on with your sister. I remember seeing you had a blog on what used to be schizophrenia dot com. That site had forums and such where I met cool people but I am not schizoaffective even though they had me totally convinced I was for many years. I truly bought into it. I always wondered why the diagnosis didn’t “fit.” Either way, I asked to blog for them and they refused over and over and also refused to make any mention of my publications. That was about when they went more and more pro-Torrey and pro-establishment, nothing else. Yeah, I once was a NAMI poster child, too. No more. You know my family barely speaks to me, too. Well, no, they make themselves out to be the greatest. But…I highly doubt their actions have quite matched up to their claims. Undoubtedly, if I were in similar situation, the same thing would happen, which is why I do not allow my family, who does not know me, to speak to my “doctors.” Wow, that was an unfortunate mixup for you, too that should not have happened. What’s ironic is that in medical literature it is written that the patient should be consulted first, if not possible, without an advanced directive, depending on the nature of the emergency, or if it was one (who determines this?) they would consult the family.
When I was first hospitalized (you can see this in my book) in 1983, which was not a life-and-death emergency at all for me, but a FINANCIAL crisis for the hospital, the hospital ER staff at Putnam Memorial Hospital (now Southwestern VT) immediately violated my confidentiality and called my parents. I was 24 years old, financially independent, recently laid off, living out of state, three hours drive away. I finally challenged the doc on what he had done. He claimed they were my nearest living relatives. I said, “I am not dead.”
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Good to hear from you Pamela, and see your visions. Were very concerned that those evil white-coats got hold of you. They always destroyed my picture-making, and happy that’s not happening to yours, which speak so clearly.
The pain you’re suffering from the psychiatric regime’s torture is horrific. There should be no denying that, forced neuroleptics and mechanical holds are not ‘medicine’ and should never be called ‘medicine’. It’s like calling capsicum spray and tazars, or bullets ‘medicine.’
‘Better than’ places that harm, are still not good enough. We’ve got to have #AbsoluteProhibition on forced treatments and involuntary commitment. It’s outrageous if the psychiatric regime continues beyond 2016. All my best wishes for you – keep up the visuals, we love them. Stay strong, and with the people you know you can trust enough to tell the truth, and what you’re trying to makes sense of to.
I’m on the other side of the world, but will love to meet up one day. Perhaps at a conference on Absolute Prohibition? We’ll see…
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I’m sorry that you were treated so wrongly. You know, even if Cooperiis isn’t for you, I wish your sister would explore their work. Perhaps she might see the new and better approach to mental health! I wish my son could go there. Your story only reinforces the fear (that experience forced upon me), of hospitalization.
Bless you dear Pam. I hope the place you are now will help you feel better! I love you.
Your friend,
Michelle.
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