It's Hard to Forget those who wanted me to die

It plays on my mind every now and then, how I would have died at the hands of doctors when my neck was ruptured. The lies they told, the inhumanity some of them showed. Why? Because I was a nothing person, somebody who didn't count and they could get away with it.

After I was beaten at Portland Adventist, I had severe symptoms. My head had been slammed over and over into the concrete floor of an isolation room by staff at Portland Adventist. There was a metal half ring on the floor, used to tie restraints to. My head kept hitting that, when they'd slam it against the floor, and I'd pull my head up when it hit that ring. I begged for my life.

A neck disc ruptured into my spinal cord, compressing it by half. But when I returned to Corvallis, I was told over and over again, my extreme pain, my increasing limb disfunction, my inability to even lift my head without shudders of shocks and pain inundating my body, were merely symptoms of mental illness.

I cannot tell you the horrors I went through, how I tried to survive, as my body began to shut down. I cannot even describe the anger and rage, that not only had I been beaten savagely by staff on a psyche ward, in utmost brutality, then released into a snow and ice storm of that year, without shoes, coat or transportation, but now, the symptoms of the injuries caused by a beating were being attributed to mental illness. I was denied any pain medication also. I resorted to packing my body in bags of ice, to be able to sleep.

I had also come to realize at this point in my life, that for the last two and a half decades, I'd been lied to by shrinks, that I possibly wasn't crazy at all, and how on earth could this have happened? Doctors are supposed to be good people with your best interests and health at heart. How had 25 years of my life been stolen by really lousy medicine? Not only had most of my life been stolen by bad medicine, but I'd experienced so much more abuse in those awful years, received labels I would never shake and been plunged into state sponsored poverty that I knew I'd likely never escape. How could this have happened to me? I'd believed them all.

Be careful who you believe.

I knew I was going to die. I'd try to get groceries and be unable to carry them inside the duplex where I lived. I couldn't even make it to the door at times, and would be on my knees, then my face in the yard, sometimes in pouring rain, unable to even raise my head. Anger would get me in eventually. I would crawl.

The pain was unbelievable. I was told nothing was wrong. I finally got an MRI. I wasn't told one was scheduled. I had gone to a neurologist who was rude as they come. She was only interested in why, if I was diagnosed with so many psyche illnesses, I would suddenly choose to take none of the medications. That was her sole interest. She was flippant. The walls of her office were lined in drug pushing posters.

She had ordered an X-ray and that was it. The X-ray results never reached me either. They were sent to an old address. But out of the blue, Corvallis MRI called and said I had an MRI scheduled, that day in fact. I don't know who was responsible. But I did have to go back to that rude neurologist for the results. She was vague, late for lunch, and finally said I had a disc ruptured but only to the left. I was looking at the images myself. I knew what a spinal cord looks like in an MRI and I could see a dark cloud in that cord, and it went almost halfway through it. I said "What is that?"

She finally conceded that I had a mass in my spinal cord, a disc ruptured into it, consistent with a traumatic neck injury. I said "What do I do?" She said, "Well, one day you'll be laying on the floor pooping and peeing your pants and hopefully someone will call 911." Then she walked out. I couldn't believe it.

I hate that bitch to this day. She told me this in that manner because I was a nobody, a mental patient, who deserved a painful decline and death, I suppose.

My PCP didn't believe she'd treated me that way. She did. My PCP finally referred me, reluctantly, to a neurosurgeon. I was warned by some nurse's aids that he was arrogant beyond arrogant. I was not prepared for how he would treat me, however.

He lied to me. Just flat out lied to me. He told me the disc was ruptured only to the left and he would do a nerve block on the nerve root to the left, then when I still had symptoms, I'd know I was nuts and that the symptoms were caused by mental illness. He said that to me and he had seen the MRI. He knew the disc was in my cord.

Thing is, I wasn't nuts and I wasn't a dumbshit. And I was fed up with doctors trying to kill me. I knew what he was pulling. He was hoping I had such low self-esteem, I'd get the nerve block, still have symptoms because the disc was actually in my spinal cord, and kiss his feet and say "Yes, you're so right. I still have symptoms because they're mental illness symptoms." Then crawl off to die painfully and slowly somewhere with the glow of him granting me a few moments of his royal time still in my eyes.

The guy had a god complex. And he disliked poor people very much. I called him an arrogant bastard. I knew he would not see me again already. He'd dismissed me like a worm. So I called him an arrogant bastard who thought every poor person was stupid and that I wasn't stupid and he should just say he hoped I'd die but because he didn't have the guts, he just lied instead.

He needed to be called more than an arrogant bastard. He needed to lose his license to practise.

I had to take my case to then governor Kitzhaber, a doctor himself, and I sent the MRI to a doctor in southern Oregon, who took one look and began making some really nasty pointed phone calls to doctors at Good Sam. I believe there was swearing involved. I believe there were threats about medical licenses being pulled. He used phrases, my brother told me later, like "A two year old could tell she needs surgery now, so you guys, what, you're just toying with her life, or trying to kill her?"

I was instantly referred to a Eugene neurosurgeon. Good Sam tried one more trick last minute. Since I was going to get the surgery, they wanted the money out of it, and tried to deny me surgery in Eugene by sending a letter to the neurosurgeon who had scheduled my surgery only a few days before the surgery, stating it would have to be done in Corvallis. The letter was addressed to me, but I never was sent a copy by Good Sam. It was a dirty trick again.

The Eugene surgeon showed me the letter and I said "What should I do?" I was there for the pre-surgery appointment. He said "don't worry about it." So I didn't. He made some not so nice calls, I was told later, and I had surgery one week later. That disc was sucked out of my spinal cord. I have a metal plate to remind me how evil Portland Adventist was to me and about doctors who kill or deny treatment for sport or, because their bosses, who just happened to be Good Sam, because I was on the Oregon Health Plan HMO owned and operated by Good Sam, tell them to "let her die".

They have a god squad there at Good Sam, I got told, for their OHP HMO, to decide, basically, who gets to live and who gets to die. I was told this by nurses in my doctors office and the office of the neurosurgeon later on. I don't know if they were messing with my mind more or not when they told me that. They said the god squad, with obvious conflicts of interest, since the doctors at Good Sam are working for my insurer (then the Intercommunity Health, the HMO for Oregon Health Plan patients Good Sam owns), had decided I would not get treatment and die.

I couldn't walk the streets of Corvallis anymore and look into the faces of people I'd pass without thinking, "Is that person on the god squad? Did that person vote to let me die?"

I still think about it. I distrust Good Sam and their HMO's very much.

But I also think about the neurosurgeon who saved my life down in Eugene and the one later on who saved my back in Corvallis (not Dorsen). There are a lot of great caring doctors out there. A few rats just stink up the mix every now and then.

I have pulled some stupid stunts. Once I was riding my bike with pepper spray in my pocket and it somehow fired off. Only I didn't remember I had pepper spray in pocket. I thought it was a bunch of bees or something in my pants stinging me. I ran into Darimart and asked to used their restroom, all desperate and they said it wasn't public. So I ran behind their dumpster and ripped my pants off. I had a huge blister forming in a very tender area. The doctor laughed and laughed. It was funny.

Then there was the time I reached into my car in the dark for a water bottle and got ahold of a bottle of clorox and water. It was labeled. I used it for cleaning traps, but I couldn't see the label in the dark and took a big swig. Boy, talk about burning ones' mouth and throat.

Then there was the time I was trapping cats and sleeping in my car and mixed up vaginal anti-yeast cream, that was for some reason in my car, with a tube of toothepaste when trying to brush my teeth. And I swallowed it, having no water. When I realized my mistake I called the doctor's office, to see if I would suffer any harm from that. The doctor couldn't stop laughing, then kept apologizing for laughing. I said "It's ok to laugh. It is funny." I suffered no ill effects.

Then there was the time a guy whom I'd known in the mental health system said he'd help me fix my old car. I went out to his place, but he was in some mood. He said he was only eating bread, was into buddhism, and then suddenly said he had to go put some soup on. He came back, pulled out a small stungun and zapped me with it. I shoved him away and he began zapping himself. At this time also huge clouds of toxic fumes overcame his apartment. He had put antifreeze in water and was boiling it. I pulled my shirt up over my face, grabbed his cat and got the hell out of there. I should have called the cops but I didn't. I should have. The fucking asshole. The doctor told me to watch for certain signs of anti-freeze poisoning or respiratory problems, but I never got anything more than slight difficulty breathing for a few days. The guy was a meth freak, who burned his brains out on meth and would have flashbacks and relapses for the rest of his life, sadly.

I have to say I've had some wonderful doctors over the years. I've had some bad ones too, like the doctor who ended up with his license revoked because he'd have women patients suck his dick in his office. My next doctor was accused of having a doing something sexual to a quadripeligic, but it never went to trial because the guy could only blink to communicate or something and I guess would have made the trail real lengthy. Because I'd had trouble with that doctor, a friend of mine sent me the article about the accusations to make me smile, when I was at Oregon State Hospital being electro shocked.

I could not believe I'd lived through all that with the beating and neck injury, for which I never got justice, and a lot more, in one year alone. I could not believe that all the stress I endured, including the deaths of more friends, homelessness too, arrest for yelling at a river barge in defense of my cats, would not lead to a heart attack, stroke or cancer. I"d been through hell, so much abuse. I went through it all alone. Except for the cats. The river cats were all I had to cling to. My family.

I still get made fun of over calling a colony of feral cats living in the rocks of the river bank my family. To me, when people hear what I've been through, then make fun of me still, I know they're nuts and cold as stone so it doesn't bother me.



Well, maybe I shouldn't try to move back to Corvallis. I lived through hell there.