Dear Reader,

This is only part of what i have not been able to write about for months. And there is a great deal more. Now that “Mike” is formally being charged with Assault, i feel i can share this much. In the future i will say more. But for now, at least i will share this statement that i wrote for the police, some weeks later, which is only a second statement, as they already had the statement I originally wrote the very day the assault happened.

Alas, I do not have a copy of that statement, which another ER nurse had to transcribe for me as I was not permitted the use of an ink pen at the time. It was also after I had been illegally but forcibly administered IM Haldol, despite the fact that the record itself shows that I was lying on my bed in my room with my headphones on and the lights off. The record also shows that  an order for PRN 4-point restraints was entered into my chart at that same time. And this PRN order was kept there for the entire 8 days that I was held captive in that Emergency Room, a matter that the lawyer’s grievance deals with but for which a mere grievance seems hardly adequate.

Let me start at the sort of beginning, which is to say only that I had been hospitalized by force at R— at the State Hospital Unit there — and I will talk about that experience in a whole different post. But after 6 weeks I was discharged to a step down facility largely because I had so alienated the hospital doctor that he wanted to get rid of me…Let’s face it. I told him each time I saw him, “Get lost, I do not want to talk with you, You are useless!” Needless to say, this did not go over well, useless though he may have been. And though I found the Social Worker very helpful and so too many of the nurses and mental Health workers and the Occupational Therapist was wonderful as well, but ONLY THE DOCTOR mattered. At least in his own mind, and so he arranged to discharge me somewhere I would no longer get under  his skin or on his nerve i.e. anywhere but in his hospital!

That this step down facility had no medication supervision, beyond opening a safe and having a resident take whatever she or he wanted, this mattered little to the doctor, apparently. Despite his insistence that I needed the medications to such an extent that I have been on a so-called ONH or “order of non-hospitalization” for months now, meaning that wherever I am, I can be hospitalized if I do NOT take the meds, as contradictory and gobbledigoookish  as that sounds! SO I was sent off to  R–, Vermont, to await a bed first at Alternatives and then a more or less long term placement at MRR in Brattleboro, where I am today. (Though how I got here was not via that route as it turned out.)

But in R, Vermont, I did not last longer than a week at the step-down facility as I failed to take the meds and I suppose this is why I ended up trying to set my hair on fire, after receiving commands from “on high.” That is also why I was at the ER when what I describe below occurred.

I knew when the staff member left me alone in the ER, after she walked away and left me there, that I was sunk, that I was going to end up back in the hospital, and with that realization, my heart plummeted. I did not want this, I did not want it. I  decided then and there to do all i could to be compliant  with the doctor and the crisis team, even more so than I already had been, which was plenty. I asked if I could take 10mg of Zyprexa. I even suggested it before the Crisis Team could get there. But it did me no good. They took one look at the report from the step-down facility staff member, who told them about how I had waved lit cigarettes near my just-washed hair and singed it, and they decided — in the lingo of Emergency Crisis teams, that I was “a danger to myself” and could not leave and had to be hospitalized against my will. This would not do. I said as much. I said,”I do not want to go to any hospital. I do not do well in hospitals. I want to go back where i was. Please do not make me go to a hospital. I want to leave”. And with that. I got off my gurney, as I recall, and I am sure the hospital chart can correct my memory if faulty for details now, and proceeded to walk slowly towards the door. I walked slowly because I did not want to trigger an assault by the goon squad. And I did not want to scare anyone into thinking I was doing anything besides deliberately and consciously choosing to leave. But as I did so, a man, a nurse, followed me. I walked slowly out the main door, still dressed in hospital pajamas, since where was I going to obtain any clothing? And I took about 10 steps when he yelled at me, “You go any farther and  I am calling the police!”

Now I will let my statement take over the account.

“I want to scream to someone that i saw in the eyes of the nurse who attacked me someone who recognized Satan and that was why he started screaming at me so uncontrollably before i did anything as “Pam” to “deserve it.” Do you understand this? This should have been obvious to anyone watching the video, but i do not yet know where we go off camera…i only know these facts: that he told my body that if it took another step away from the hospital (i had already walked slowly out the main hospital doors) he would call the police. I believe i shrugged and said, “Go ahead and call them.” Then i decided, remembering the Springfield VT police brutal tactics not to trust them in R—– and so i turned around maybe fifteen feet from the double doors deciding to return and proceeded, again slowly, back towards the entryway. It was then that this nurse started to scream at me. i was shocked at this, because i had already reconsidered and was returning under my own steam. i objected to his screaming and i asked him, likely also loudly, why he was screaming at me when i was already complying. He continued screaming even louder and then he grabbed me and bear-hugged me in a suffocating restraint hold that set me off big-time. He is a big man, and i could not get away from him. He dragged me into the hospital lobby, where, desperate for release, i kicked backwards at his shins.

This must be what so enraged him that his reaction was to throw me forcefully to the ground and jump on top of me, mashing my face into the carpet in such a frenzy that i feared he was going to kill me. I could not breathe or even scream for several long seconds as he continued to grind my face into the carpet. I was terrified for my life and did not know when or whether he would stop. Finally –i never knew what made him stop – maybe someone came out of the nearby ER and saw him attacking me? Whatever was the case, he hauled me back to my feet. At this point i was breathless and extremely frightened, but i nevertheless screamed at him in fury, “You rapist!” I may even have screamed, “You fucking rapist!” I really don’t know. I only know “rapist” was the worst thing i could think of to call him as he had violated every ethic of nursing and emergency care-giving possible and as far as i was concerned he had raped me just as completely as any man who violated my sexual parts.

Unfortunately for me, this only served to further inflame a man already too out of control for explanation, except as someone who felt face to face with Satan: his reaction was to haul off and slap Pam’s face, to shut her up, grabbing my mouth so i couldn’t scream that word any longer.

Maybe someone came out and helped her at this point but I do not recall, even though it might have happened. The next thing i remember is screaming from inside my room in the Emergency Department for a long while and when the police officer appeared, begging him to listen to what the nurse had done. He clearly did not believe me. All he did was leave a statement form for me to fill out –i repeatedly informed him that the Emergency Department staff did not permit me access to pens — and he told me i would have to somehow transmit my statement, signed and notarized, to the police station on my own.

In the meantime, i overheard the same nurse, who i believe was called Mike, telling falsehoods about how i had run into traffic while heading towards the train station. I objected loudly and vociferously. All i got for this was to be restrained yet again, this time by the same police officer among others, and despite my repeatedly asking what medical emergency justified it, to be forcibly injected with Haldol, a medication that my Advance Directive — which the ED had noted and logged in that very night– explicitly directs is never to be administered. This same drug was given to me against my will and over my strenuous objections, even though i lay on the bed the whole time. I was not overtly agitated by this time. At no time was i was more than tearful and most certainly never out of control.

I later complained of ribs (left ) pain — from how hard Mike had compressed me either in his restraint hold or when jumping on top of me, and knee abrasions (right) the latter from being dragged on the carpet. i told the ED personnel several times that night and over the next few days i spent in the Emergency Department. They never looked at my ribs or my knee to appraise these injuries, not until a few days later when Dr Sandy C——     ordered x-rays.
Because no one would document these injuries i was forced to photograph them myself in the mirror.