|
Anita Cameron
ADAPT member for about 15 years.
Was “placed” in an institution 19 years ago today. She is angry and bitter still about the circumstances that took away her freedoms.
|
| My seizures were out of control so I went to the hospital; they suggested I go to a
Psychiatric Hospital. I was told when I was taken that I would only be there a couple of weeks. The judge said 60 days at most, but it turned out I
spent a year with them. |
|
|
|
Dan Smith
|
|
 |
Dan Smith
In a nursing home for 1 year.
I watched the way people in the institution are dehumanized and people that have never been there, I don’t know what they think goes on in there. Some of it is the simple things like no choice in what you ear or what time you go to bed. I saw other things like medical restraints and the profiteering.
|
For example, they say: ‘We only get one dollar a meal to feed you.’ But that was their budget, not Medicaid regulations. I had dietary needs that were never met. You ask to speak to the dietitian and it takes a month. Then they negotiate with you to do nothing. If they make a change, they will get it wrong and it will be another month to talk with the dietitian, so you may never actually get any adjustment.
I remember this guy Clearance. He had purple feet. It took them a month to get him a pair of socks. My roommate had a nurse visit. I heard him order the nursing home staff to provide ‘immediate and aggressive treatment’ for the wound on his foot. A week passed and they did nothing, until they said they had to ‘take his leg.’ |
|
|
|
Sheila Dean
|
|
 |
Sheila Dean
In a nursing home for 2 years.
This March means a lot of things – I’m fighting for people locked inside of institutions because I have been there. Shit, I don’t know how to word it, I don’t want to come out sounding stupid. I know I am empowered by this march.
|
| When I went AMA (Left a nursing home ‘Against Medical Advise’), I worried that I couldn’t make it for a while. I was railroaded by the hospital; they thought I couldn’t live by myself. But because I did it myself, I knew that I could make it. |
|
|
|
|
