RE: OAH Case #2012c-BHS-0338-DHS The Evolution Of A Grievance: Wherein, following over one full year of systematic suppression of my right to due process in relation to a criminally imposed sequence of administrative abuse of authority at The Arizona State Hospital, I prepare to go to hearing.

THIS ARTICLE DIRECTLY RELATES TO SEVERAL PRIOR ARTICLES CONCERNING THE EVER EVOLVING DISPOSITION OF THE ABOVE REFERENCED CASE. 

     Yesterday, August 30, 2012, was the deadline for any further submissions of supplemental disclosures or motions (challenge) relating to the thus far submitted evidence and testimony in this case. The presiding administrative law judge in the case, Kay Abramsohn, is due to present her findings in the matter by close of business today. At that point in the process, her findings will be submitted to the office of Arizona Department of Health Director Will Humble, who has the authority and directly related obligation to determine- within a period of no more than 90 days- the final ruling as the case stands at that time.

     In other words, Will Humble has the final word, and the role of the administrative court is to issue findings by which he is obligated- as per his title as the head of the state heath care system- to render a fair and unbiased ruling on the matter deriving of established law and policy. 

     What are the chances of this occurring? Scarce to nil, in my opinion. For, as the appellant in this case and client-consumer of the state of Arizona's public health care system, I no longer have a positive relationship with Will Humble. This has become clear via his patent unwillingness to grant me open expression of my concerns about statements and data that he has presented in no less than three articles presented by him on ADHS blog site, an issue that I have written about in several of my own recent articles here in this blog. It is a sad state of affairs when the man entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing the state's entire public health care system won't open his door to civilly submitted expressions of concern that I have about the state's only long term public mental health care facility, The Arizona State Hospital (ASH), where I spent 13 long months of counter-therapeutic time being "treated" for major depressive disorder and associated traits. And it is equally disturbing to me as a person/citizen, client-consumer, and former patient of ASH, to have to rely on this man in terms of meaningfully addressing my very well documented allegations specific to legal proceedings as critically important as I feel this case represents. Classic "fox watching the hen house" type stuff, and every bit as substandard in terms of legal procedure as the conditions at ASH are in terms of patient care and practice. 

     That said, and this being the only non-litigated manner for someone such as I to seek basic relief and redress, case #2012c-BHS-0338-DHS stands as nothing more than one more small step for the patients at ASH, for it will, as such, become part of the larger picture, yet to be displayed, as I continue to fully document my experiences as a mentally disabled human being who had the drastic misfortune of seeing medical care in the state of Arizona.  

     Therein and herein, I will now await the final ruling on this case, and I have already come to a decision about whether or not I will appeal that matter should that ruling fall short of my very reasonable expectations and hopes. I will not share my decision at this time as a matter of preserving the integrity of my status as the appellant in the case, but I will update my blog about any other developments that come up, as they appear. 

     On a related note, I am disappointed that the staff at The Arizona State Hospital have, to my knowledge, taken no further action in the context of their own concerns at ASH outside of the recent postings of staff discontent on the personal website of "Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson (aka "meathead"), who is, of course, the high (tax payer) paid supervisor at ASH. There is always the possibility that these staff persons have taken further action, and I simply am unaware of it; in fact, I know that a marked degree of activity does occur in direct relation to my efforts as an advocate for the rights and well begin at ASH' patients, events and developments that I am simply not party to. This is fine. I am not in this for reward in any capacity; and I will, in time, be more apprised about such things once we begin seeking full disclosure about such matters through the federally system. In any case, I have made clear to ASH' staff that if they want to bring the change needed to improve their own experiences at ASH, than they need to be proactive about it.  

IN CL0SING: Ooop, I may said too much! But no, the idea of pending federal action is not a secret; not to you, oh readers (for I have made clear the fact that much of the evidential material I am establishing via my work as it has stood to date will quite surely need to be revisited in a federal forum if we stand any true chance of bringing about the degree of reform that I know needs to come about at ASH and the throughout the state behavioral health care system), or to the rat bastards at ASH and the affialiated administrative offices of the department of behavioral health services, nor behind the closed doors of the Arizona Attorney Generals' office. 

     Please do your part today in supporting the rights and needs of Arizona's most vulnerable citizens. The conditions and practices at The Arizona State Hospital are graphically substandard, and they are getting with it. Patient abuse is inhumane, cruel and unusual, and patently criminal, and yet at ASH, it is ongoing, and needs to stop. Today. Please see my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas", article (which I will update soon), or take it upon yourself to contact your elected representatives, or whatever else you may deem appropriate given the situation as it stands today.  

paoloreed@gmail.com

Random Notes: Of Beautiful Sadness. 

In Loving Memory of Issa Albert Simon (08/28/1981 - 07/10/2012) written by Eliot Rausch

"I'm not sure what keeps us above the surface. Above the darkness. Above the place of finality. An invisible line. On the edge of life. Slipping. Here. Right now. Delicate and fragile. It is my breath. A heartbeat. As I fight. As I surrender. To it's force. It's pull. Somehow it keeps me. Pushes me. Lifts me. Without me. Where there is no time. No line. No darkness. It is here. I understand. Here. Right beneath the surface."

Searchers found the body of a Rancho Cucamonga man east of Barstow two days after he disappeared from a religious retreat. Issa Albert Simon, 30, was found dead at 5:40 a.m. Wednesday about eight miles from the St. Antony Coptic Orthodox Monastery, which sits on 360 acres in Newberry Springs. Friends last saw Simon about 7:30 p.m. Monday. He did not attend an 8 p.m. service at the monastery and was not seen the rest of the night or the next day. Visitors at the retreat called the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department on Tuesday and reported Simon missing. "They were concerned because the man had left his belongings behind," said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman. Sheriff's personnel in helicopters swept across the remote desert area, trying to find any sign of the man. "That was probably the most important part of the search because we're talking about a large area of wide open desert," Bachman said. Search-and-rescue teams hit the ground later in the day and continued looking for Simon through the night, using trackers and all-terrain vehicles. Officials at the Fort Irwin National Training Center offered a helicopter to help with the search. About 3:15 a.m. Wednesday, members of one of the search teams found tracks and then spotted some marks where the man may have fallen, Bachman said. His body was found several hours later. Bachman said there is no evidence that Simon was the victim of foul play.

My deepest condolence and respects to friends and family. You will be missed by all, IAS. RIP sweet Issa, as you deserve. And thank you, Eliot. Remain strong, my friend, and I will see you again before long. PJ Reed.

"Are We Talking To A Brick Wall Here?" Wherein, I try yet again to get Will Humble, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, to open his door to public input, specifically from myself (a client) and actual members of his staff (people working at The Arizona State Hospital), as a matter of granting the citizens their deserved awareness about the state of affairs at ASH, a publicly funded health care facility that is obligated to serve the interests of each and every citizen of the state.   

Evidence Based Practice x (Training + Teamwork) = Results by Will Humble

     PURE PROPAGANDA. The above display is the actual title of Will Humble's August 17, 2012, article about the supposed improvements in safety at ASH. As I have discussed in recent articles of my own, there are at least a few ASH staff who take serious issue with this article, for in their opinion, things at ASH are more dangerous today then they have ever been. below is a copy of a comment I posted on Will Humble's official blog, which can be found on the ADHS main web site. 
      Note: "Your comment is awaiting moderation." I have no reason to believe that this comment will actually be granted publication on the official ADHS web site and/or Humble's blog (they never are). This is just another way that ADHS goes about hiding the truth when it comes to publics' deserved awareness of conditions at ASH, and beyond in the ADHS network. It reminds me of Stalinism. 

August 24, 2012 at 2:51 p.m.
from PJ Reed
(Your comment is awaiting moderation.)
MR. HUMBLE! One day after I sent my last comment to you about this article, several ASH staff posted comments of their own on their boss’s personal webpage(Cory Nelson, ASH Supervisor), wherein they displayed expressions of clear disagreement with the theme of this article. I quote verbatim: “LIARS!!! WORSE THAN EVER!!!” How long are you going to keep hiding your head in the sand? Haven’t you had enough of contributing to the state of AZ’s highly questionable public service system as it stands today? Do you really want to be central to a loudly and highly exposed scandal? In my opinion, sir, you are willfully perpetrating one of the most fraudulently inhumane and sickeningly unjust administrative misdeeds in recent history, and I highly suggest you change your ways today, before the cat litter hits the fan. Sincerely, PJ Reed.

(end of document)

     All of the messages I have ever tried to direct to Mr. Humble via the "Comments" icon on his ADHS blog site (see www.azadhs.gov, "directors page" and "Blog") have been denied publication, and I guarantee you that this one will be handled in the same way, for it is the strongest comment I have to date posted directly to his blog site. But out of my very strong concern about the fact that numerous ASH staff have expressed graphic disagreement with current news postings on the local (Phoenix) television stations, wherein ADHS and ASH administrators are declaring ASH to be markedly safer than ever today, supposedly as a direct result of ASH supervisor Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson's management practices at ASH, I decided to direct yet one more communiqué to Humble's office. As shown in my last two articles, the disagreement has been vocalized as follows: "LIARS!!! WORSE THAN EVER"", and you can view these comments yourself on Cory Nelson's personal webpage, at www.crazycorycorner.weebly.com.

paoloreed@gmail.com

Perpetrating The Most Fraudulent Abuse Of Public Services in The History of Arizona 

I will say it once, as loudly as I can:
You, Mr. Will Humble, are on the verge of something that no reasonable man should ever have to bring upon themselves. Why, why, why, don't you do the right thing? You have any number of avenues by which to bring light to the truths underlying your administrations' failure to address the mismanagement of Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility. What in the hell are you doing, ignoring good faith staff reports, and allowing the administrative misconduct at ASH go on to the extent that it is obviously has at this time? Are you really this shortsighted in your scope as a state official? People are clearly suffering very real harm as a direct consequence of these issues. 

             Am I- are we- talking to a brick wall here? 

Please, please, please step to the plate and fulfill your obligations to the citizens of Arizona and your clientele within the Arizona Department of Behavioral Health Services. 
   
End of story. 

paoloreed@gmail.com

UPDATE: Hot off the goddamned presses! Wherein, new reports submitted by staff to The Arizona State Hospital supervisor Cory "crazycorycorner.weebly.com"

 Nelson's  personal website reveal an out of control and increasingly dangerous environment for staff and patients alike at The Arizona State Hospital.

      This is ridiculous. For months now, I have been trying to get the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, Will Humble, to open a good faith line of communication with citizens of Arizona such as myself, who have serious concerns about the state of affairs at The Arizona State Hospital, via his supposedly friendly blog site (which can be found on the ADHS web site, see: azadhs). I have been paying attention to staff reports flowing directly from current or recently resigned ASH staff members, for example, who post their own good faith expressions of concern about  their safety and other like things on ASH supervisor Cory "crazycorycorner.weebly.com" Nelson's personal website, and taking the information form those postings and sharing it with Humble through his blog, which he characterizes as a good faith, open door sort of line of connection to him and his office. But he and the web masters at ADHS will not even post my comments, much less respond to me.

That said, check this shit out (below). The following two staff comments, titled as "2 FRIGTNED 2 SAY", and "ME",  respectively, were posted on Nelson's website in the past 72 hours or so.  

2 FRIGTNED 2 SAY

08/18/2012 6:05am

ASH CLAIMING ON THE NEWS (CHANNEL 3) THAT ASSAULTS HAVE GONE DOWN. LIARS!! WORSE THAN EVER!
WHY DOESN'T JACO OR MEDICARE LOOK AT EMPLOYEE TURNOVER RATE?

Reply

ME

08/21/2012 9:02am

Of course ASH administration will do everything to cover their asses. Very disappointed in the extreme lack of investigative reporting done on behalf of ASH employees and patients alike. If chanel 3 did even half of their job in reporting they wouldn't have reported the extreme amount of mistruths given by Cory Nelson. Obviously the news doesn't know about this website someone should point the reporter in the right direction and show the error of the story reported on the news.

Reply

The passage shown below was posted to Nelson's 

site by me earlier today, in direct response to these 

newest reports form within the walls and fences at 

The Arizona State Hospital.  

Reply

PJ Reed

08/22/2012 5:49pm

Staff: As alarming as these newest reports are to me, I am far from surprised. I highly encourage you guys to take a look at ADHS Director Will Humble's blog on the ADHS web site. He too states that violence in general has markedly decreased ever since the new policies established ever since Cory Nelson became CEO, and in doing so he blatantly plugs how great things at ASH are at this time. I know that this is not the truth. I am a former patient, some of you know me, and although I am dedicated to looking at the shortcomings at ASH which directly effect the patient population there, I am also very committed to improving the situation there on behalf of the staff community at ASH, because I know that many of you are very good people who are underpaid and yet still do all you can to take care of the patients. If you guys aren't content and comfortable in your job space, then it is is only that much harder for you to do a good job in terms of patient needs. I also realize that it is taboo for staff and patients such as myself to join forces, but please hear me when I say that we are effectively in this together, as citizens of the state, and as human beings. If at all possible, please visit my blog (PJ Reed "The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse") via a simple google search, and please feel free to anonymously post comments of any kind to my blog. It is going to take a lot of dedicated team work to address the situation there at ASH, both in terms of your own needs and concerns, as well as mine. But I attest to the fact that I am not out to make life harder than it is for the staff in general at ASH. I promise you that I will do whatever I can to support the quality of staff experiences at ASH. But I need your input. Thank you.

Reply

      I am outraged! I deeply questioned ADHS Director Will Humble's very recent statements when I first spotted them on his blog site the other day about how much conditions specific to the staff experience at The Arizona State Hospital have improved over the last year. And then today, I take my bi-weekly stroll over to Arizona State Hospital supervisor Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson's website and immediately come upon these most recent postings concerning the blatant untruths that Humble and company are using to cloak the out of control conditions at ASH from public knowledge. And as always, I freely offer my guarantee that if things are going badly for staff at ASH, then the lives of the patients at ASH are only that much more in a state of crisis due to clinical and administrative abuse of authority and other like issues that occur at ASH as a matter of standard practice. This is an absolute travesty. The inhumanity of this entire matter as it stands today, knowing as I do and as I am trying to make crystal clear to you, my readers, that the administrators at ASH and in ADHS are maintaining substandard mental-medical heath care and practices at ASH as a matter of standard practice, literally sickens me. I am nearly beside myself with concern, and only that much more frustrated by how little reaction I have observed in direct relation to the issues I know that I have exposed, to date, in reporting patient abuse at ASH, and beyond in ADHS. This has to stop. TODAY.

IN CLOSING: Today is the first time that I have openly encouraged ASH staff to contact me through this blog. I have until now tried to respect the fact that staff at ASH don't really need to further complicate their conditions as employees at ASH by getting involved with what I am working to do. But the state of affairs at ASH are obviously spinning out of control at an ever increasing pace, as exampled by the gross untruths presented by ASH administration in these recent news stories on the Phoenix television stations. 
      It is apparent to me that Will Humble and the one's assigned to overseeing the operation at ASH are currently maintaining an absolute cloak of deceit and injustice. They are responsible for what may very well turn out to be the newest major scandal to break out in Arizona, because if ASH staff are willing to join forces with me, even in an informal manner, this shit is going to explode like the super nova of governmental corruption that it is. 

paoloreed@gmail.com
    

Random Notes

WASHINGTON: More than half of the 47 Arizona hospitals ranked in a recent survey of patient safety got a grade of C, the lowest grade offered in the first year of the national report.

               (JERILYN FORSYTHE Cronkite News, June 8, 2012.)

    As a psychiatrist, I had been taught to manage serious mental illnesses with a set of assumptions that if articulated would sound something like this: “People with chronic mental illness are permanently disabled. Medicate them and forget them. They are weak and need to be taken care of. They can’t hold down jobs. They have no significant role to play in society. The possibility of them having a meaningful life is slight. Their prognosis is essentially hopeless.” 
          (Mark Ragins, MD, The Road to Recovery [from "Village Writings"1999])

    "I spent four weeks doing a rotation at the The Arizona State Hospital when I was getting my master's degree in nursing. The things I saw there made an impression on me that I will never forget, and I am really happy to know that someone like you has taken on the task of addressing these things. All people are human, and as a nurse, I have never been so shocked as I was during those four weeks by the way some people mistreat mentally ill persons- as though they are not human." 
            (C.K., MSN [nurse practitioner], The Guidance Center, Flagstaff, AZ, April 2012) 


paoloreed@gmail.com

RE: OAH Case #2012c-BHS-0338-DHS The Evolution Of A Grievance: Wherein, following over one full year of systematic suppression of my right to due process in relation to a criminally imposed sequence of administrative abuse of authority at The Arizona State Hospital, I prepare to go to hearing.

THIS ARTICLE DIRECTLY RELATES TO SEVERAL PRIOR ARTICLES CONCERNING THE EVER EVOLVING DISPOSITION OF THE ABOVE REFERENCED CASE. 

Good news on the legal front: In representing myself in this case (July 16, 2012) on behalf of the patients at The Arizona State Hospital in a hearing of The AZ Office of Administrative Hearings (Phoenix), I presented testimony (I had a great expert witness) and evidence in support my contention that admin. and clinical staff at ASH willfully abuse their given authority as a matter of standard practice with no concern whatsoever for and in gross violation of patient rights, and the issue of the state's failure to provide the court with any/all relevant data arose yet again; the judge in the case subsequently ordered me as well as the state's representative counsel (assistant AZ Attorney General, Joel "the mortician" Rudd) to produce material that the state originally tried to bar as evidence, and following the judge's order, the state formally challenged the order as a matter of keeping said evidence out of the light. Yesterday, I got word that the judge has rejected opposing counsel's challenge in support of my having requested that all/any relevant evidence be included in the the judge's consideration of this matter. A small yet very critical victory of sorts, wherein for a moment at least I went toe to toe with the biggest law firm in AZ (the AG) and snuffed their blatant attempts to suppress crucial evidence. The state (opposing counsel) has two weeks to further challenge the judge's newest holding in this context, and knowing the system, they probably will. Time again to wait and see what happens next.

     Thus far in my work as a self represented advocate for my own rights as well as those of the patient community at The Arizona State Hospital as a whole, I have always requested for each and every aspect of relevant data be included as evidence. This fundamentally basic approach applied whenever I filed good faith grievances while still hospitalized at ASH between Jan. 2011 and Feb. 2012;  and I have continued with it at every applicable stage of my efforts to fight the Hospitals' and The AZ Department of Health Services office of Grievances and Appeals (ADHS/OGA) obvious willingness to suppress such data as these issues have progressed up through the applicable bodies of procedural review. But in each particular case, the various components of relevant evidence that I always included as a matter of standard practice in my grievance submissions and related followup have been systematically distorted and suppressed at ASH and in the offices of ADHS/OGA, causing a convoluted mish-mash of shortsighted procedural violations which today underlie the relative disposition of my ongoing work in this context.     
     At this late date, with specific reference to this case as well all four of the other cases I have taken to hearing in The Office Of Administrative Hearings (OAH), I can assuredly state that:

   A) If the patient advocate at ASH, Sonya Serna, had reasonably done her job at those times that I initially brought concerns about patient abuse to her office- at least in a manner consistent with my ideas of what patient advocacy means, and; 

   B) If the various representatives of ADHS/OGA, including but not limited to Theresa Bedoni and Kara Burke, had been willing to abide by the provisions of the Arizona Administrative Code, rather than go around the mountain and back in terms of trying to limit the flow of applicable relevant data, and;

   C) If ADHS Office of Behavioral Health Services Director Margery Ault had fulfilled her obligations and meaningfully included all relevant data as it existed when each of these cases were formally referred to OAH, rather than acting in manner consistent with that of her underlings and further suppressing all relevant data and evidence….

     Then we wouldn't be where we are today.

   All of this avoidance of responsibility has been at the direct expense of my own emotional and psychological wellbeing, and as such, has also allowed the administrators and clinicians at ASH to carry on with their substandard care practices at the direct expense of each and every patient in ASH at this time; and it has all been a wasteful abuse of taxpayer funded resources in terms of the time and energy that it's obviously taken for the various state agency employees involved in this procedural wrongdoing to do all they can to avoid performing the basic terms of their respective positions with the state. It clearly follows that there is no one single motivating factor more critical to understanding this resistance other than the undeniable presence of graphically out of control avoidance of accountability and meaningful oversight. These people, from the verbally and physically abusive technician and nursing staff, to the administratively abusive misconduct of the Hospital's executive officers and their representative counsel in the AZ Attorney General's office, and to the highly unethical psychiatric doctors, are clearly willing to do whatever they have to in order to avoid being exposed for who they are. It is all about preserving a status quo, it is about job security, it is about incompetence and ineptitude, and it is about bloodthirsty greed and power . They watch each others backs, these sorts of people, which is nothing unheard of in the long and well researched annals of bureaucratic criminality, and so deeply share the responsibility of years of administrative corruption that no one of them is willing to come forward and report this nature of wrongdoing, for to do so would only ensure their own respective exposure in this context and the inevitable downfall that would follow. It is like a row of dominos, in effect, and I am willing to bet that as soon one of these rat bastards caves under the pressure that I am dedicated to imposing via my investigative work and related writing, the rest of them will similarly come to earth, as well. Hopefully, they will splat like rotten melons, which would only match, as such, their given lack of character; Akhter, Dy, Roxas-Rojas, Dingle, Morris, L. Patel, and so on.      
      I attest to the following: While hospitalized at ASH, I felt a fear that I have yet to shake, which came about on May 26-27, 2011, as soon as I realized that the administrators at ASH were willing to ignore the very real threat posed to public safety when they willfully tried to cover up the May, 2011, escape of Jesus Murietta; my fears were actualized and confirmed as being legitimate three months later when April Mott was brutally murdered by Jesus Murietta, particularly when I witnessed the Hospitals' continued commitment to denying the significance of these specific events. It is not too hard to grasp the fact that if the the one's running ASH are willing to put the greater public at risk in order to avoid accountability, then they are clearly willing to go to even greater measures in terms of putting individual ASH patients at risk on the same basis of selfish self preservation. I realized this, and in the same 2 week period of time, I experienced it firsthand.  
     From that point on in my time at ASH, I knew as all as I have ever known anything that ASH is a very, very dangerous place to find yourself, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the seriously mentally ill patients at ASH.   
  
IN CLOSING: I grew really tired many, many months ago of having to reiterate the most fundamental precepts of applicable law and policy whenever I engage in good faith attempts to allow the persons entrusted with overseeing and caring for Arizona's most vulnerable population TO DO THEIR FREAKING JOBS. That's all it has ever come down to, me identifying a problem, and turning to whoever it might have been at the time bearing the basic responsibility of addressing said problem(s). Even when I myself was being subjected to gross and ongoing violations of my rights as a patient, person, and consumer while still hospitalized at The Arizona State Hospital, all I ever tried to do was follow suggested protocol when it came to asking the assigned representative professionals there at Arizona State Hospital to respond to my concerns as they arose. I attest to the fact that I had at least one ASH doctor ask me, "What? Do you think you can change the system?" (Dr. Laxman Patel, late April, 2011), while the ASH patient advocate (Sonya Serda) repeatedly tried to suggest that I was failing to pay due attention to my own treatment at ASH whenever I brought patient abuse to her attention, and on several occasions I got the run around in utterly clear fashion from ASH Chief Operating Officer Donna "You are soooo busted!"Noriega and ASH Supervisor Cory"crazycorycorner.weebly.com" Nelson, with various lower level staff far too often working to label me as a trouble maker and overly grandiose pain in their relative asses. These things really happened, and the condition was seemingly permanent and unwavering. All of it, nothing short of systemic and endemic refusals to do the right thing in a moderately complex setting. 

     It is never too late to do the right thing. Patient abuse at The Arizona State Hospital does occur, and no degree of bottom feeding disagreement with my statements to this effect will deter me from continuing this uphill trod, as I say again, and again, and again, as necessary: The administrators and clinicians at ASH are operating at a level of substandard mental-medical health care as a matter of standard practice and they are getting away with it lock-stock-and barrel. I attest to this fact as it stands today, for I saw  and experienced these practices first hand for over thirteen full months. Patient abuse is criminal and inhumane, and there is no justification whatsoever for allowing it continue unabated in modern hospitals of any sort. The willingness of ASH staff to exploit and unfairly disregard the fundamental rights of the highly vulnerable patients there needs to be comprehensively addressed via a transparent process of oversight and accountability. Bottom line. Please see my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas" article, and determine how you can go about contributing to this cause (and I will be updating that resource base in the coming days, too).   
   
paoloreed@gmail.com

"There Is No Abuse Here." At Last! Following six months of writing, and the publication of hundreds of thousands of words of raw (unedited) text, compiled today in over 135 full length articles, all reviewed by over 6400 visitors to this blog (to date), a current employee of The Arizona State Hospital has finally blessed us with a comment. Lord, stop the movement of the earth, why don't you? For Virginia B. has spoken!

Virginia BaccelliaAugust 20, 2012 6:34 AM

"July 12... I don't know what bad civil unit you are referring to but I work at ash and like any other job there are no perfections. There is no abuse here. The nurses are actually cordial to the clients and staff have to float to fill in open positions in order to assist the patients.

I work Palo verde and float the iron wood and desert sage a lot. As providers we have to do what is best to keep the hospital safe for clients and staff. So to post this non sense is nonsense."

Thank you so much for your input, Virginia! I cannot easily express the sheer joy that has accompanied your comments to my humble little writing project. I sometimes feel as though I am a tiny little fragment of humanity in a sea of waste, for I get so few comments from my readers, much less anybody from ASH proper; and I have been green with envy over the fact that the only web posted staff complaints about the out of control state of affairs at ASH are always directed to Cory "crazycorycorner.weebly.com" Nelson's personal website, rather to this blog. I mean, for crying out loud, who is he to get all the attention! But that is alright, and I am at risk of digression. I remain a humble writer, at best, and in the meantime, I hope you can find the time, Virginia, to read some more of my stuff, because lord knows, if you feel there is no patient abuse whatsoever at ASH, than you are sure have plenty of room for dissent. Because I challenge you, in effect (and in purely friendly terms, for I am as much a passivest today, as I was when I entered ASH), based on nothing other than my own good faith testament in direct contradiction to your opinion. In my opinion, patient abuse at ASH does occur, and often enough, that I refuse to let it go. I'm sorry, Virginia, that is honestly how I feel about your feeling that my "non sense is nonsense". But, hey! It's all good! If you do choose to visit again, I will continue to welcome your tidy little comments with open arms and a smile. I am sure that if you know best, you will do the right thing. 

Meantime, I think I will share one- just one- very specific example of proven patient abuse (proven by the record, Virginia, on file there at ASH) that was imparted on me by one the ASH nurses, who you, Virginia, patently characterize in your comments to this blog as being "actually cordial." And feel free, Virginia, to look into this from your end of the conduit, so you can get the other side of the story, and all that. Specifically, I am referring to the often seemingly-bronzed goddess-not platinum blond named Mary Anne (it is not a tan, by the way, she uses some sort of skin dye on herself, or at least that's what she claims. Yeah, I know- freaky as hell!). She acted as charge nurse for the entirety of 2011 on Palo Verde East unit, and to my knowledge, she is still there today. She should, as such, be able to spot.

In late July, 2011, at about 9 p.m. in the evening, when I attempted to exercise my  lawful right to place a phone call to an advocate from the ADHS Office of Human rights named John Gallagher, Mary Anne instructed the phone operator to refuse to place my call. When I attempted, in the same calm tone of voice that I am satisfyingly well known for, to inquire as to why she, Mary Anne, was suddenly of mind to believe that she has more authority than state and federal law specific to the rights of hospital patients in this specific context, she oh-so cordially declared, at a moderately intense volume of voice (she yelled, end of story) the following verbatim statement:

        "Oh, no you don't buster- not on my watch! I know what you are up to!"  
  

Now, just so as not to give you the impression that I am weaving some sort of dastardly web of scandal designed to unreasonably discredit the service of each and every staff person at ASH, Virginia, (because there are- actually- at least a few good staff there at ASH, including on the nursing staff) I encourage you to go take a look at the posted advisory(s) that can now be found mounted on the wall directly over the patient phone stations there on Palo Verde East Unit (and in theory, as per ASH's sole patient advocate, Sonya Serda, above the phone stations in every other unit throughout the entire facility); as you can see, those advisories very clearly state that ASH patients have the unalienable right to place calls to advocates of any kind at any time of day or night. And guess what, Virginia? My personal efforts to see that Mary Anne's oh-so cordially demented belief that she has (had) the right to violate patients' fundamental civil and human right to freely exercise the right of self advocacy in this context led, in time, to those advisories being posted, there where they are directly above the phones, (presuming, that is, that they haven't been unlawfully removed), placed as such so as to ensure that the cordiality of certain ASH staff members doesn't- you know- lose touch with reality in terms of such matters. As in, the reality of law, and well establisher standards of care, and basic civility, and all that other pesky stuff. And as I have already stated, Virginia, this entire matter was documented following my ASH grievance about this event, all of which I kept the records to. I did that, Virginia, because I knew then, as I do now, that abuse of patients at ASH, people JUST LIKE ME, occurs as randomly as do the abused/neglected children in Arizona's Child Protective Services, and yet as regularly as a 25 year vegetarian's daily bowel movement. It is all pretty much the same, but only in Arizona, this day in age.

Virginia is correct, of course, in declaring that "in no job are there any perfections." An odd use of the English language, akin to her characterizing the "non sense" of my writing as "nonsense" (Ouch! Now that hurt!), but her point remains sound in my book. There are definitely no perfections to the practices of staff at ASH. And, of course, Mary Anne the Palo Verde east charge nurse did abuse her authority as a nurse and therein grossly violated my rights as a person, patient, and consumer in this one specific example (I have many, many other well documented examples). This is-indeed- far from perfect; far enough, in fact, that I had- but rejected- the opportunity to file a pretty darn serious formal complaint with the Arizona Board of Nurses after I was encouraged to do so by the same human rights advocate that I have already mentioned. There is no denying it, and the only reason I chose not to take the issue up with the licensing board at that time was due to my heartfelt concern for the patient community at ASH as a whole- because if there's anything someone like Mary Anne the Palo Verde east chargenurse doesn't need, it's another excuse/justification/resentment to abuse the patients.

And at the time it occurred, by the way, it very much- er, uh- actually frightened the shit out of me, a seriously mentally disabled adult affected by major depressive disorder, for I was on the one hand similarly abused as a child by an adult woman who I had been taught to rely upon, while on the other hand, my inner awareness of humanistic autonomy and my right to self determination is directly central to my sense of a safe existence in a potentially humane world.

Thus, oh Virginia, these are very serious matters that flow right to the core of fundamental constitutional and internationally recognized human rights. Perhaps it is simply not possible for certain ASH staff (such as you?) to grasp these realities. Maybe it is simple denial, which is understandable, because who wants to be connected to a place as out of whack with common decency as I feel ASH is? My experiences, which admittedly are not always going to match those of ASH staff, taught me the hard way that patient abuse is somewhat the norm at The Arizona State Hospital. I cannot take responsibility for why or how certain staff at ASH somehow don't see this, whether it is an active choice or whether they are simply too dense, or whatever. Of course it could be that some of the worst staff at Ash are truly- as in actually- EVIL. At a minimum, they can be goddamn mean, and where simple meanness fits into accepted patient care, I really don't know.

Whatever the case, any reasonably sound minded American knows that patient abuse is going to occur at some level in virtually any-all hospital setting, from the fanciest to the most run down, and while the abuse may or may not be all that horrific or extensive in some hospitals, it is also common knowledge to anybody familiar with state mental facilities that patient abuse is particularly insidious in settings like ASH, which is Arizona's only long term public mental health facility. No other public facilities to stake examples or comparisons to, no reasonably sound/objective source of history to rely upon; a vacuum, and nothing more, or less. It is that bad, the abuse, because to some, it is all a mystery, as though, indeed, lost in a vacuum. The voice(s) of troubled mentally ill persons simply strikes some people as inherently awkward, at best, and incomprehensible, at worst. We the mentally ill are unstable, after all: How, then, could a seriously mentally ill person know abuse when they see or experience it? To some, these concerns are undefined and unidentifiable, somewhat without meaning or just cause, and too far out of the given scope of understanding. Crisis personified. 

Virginia! What a sturdy little trooper you are! Thank you again for dropping in. Please do tell all of your friends and associates there at The Arizona State Hospital to hop on board with your own fundamental right to share your feelings about this blog at any time. Anonymously. Or via a spotlight, for all I care. Whatever. It is your constitutional right (remember?), and I will take all the support I can get. And believe it or not, Virginia, your input is very useful to this blog. Invaluable, in fact, for inquiring minds want to know about people like you, and we really do want to understand something about how/why in the hell the things at ASH could generate so little reaction from staff. 

On that note, I will maintain my encouragement for anybody of like mind in terms of my dedication to defending and preserving the rights of ASH patients and beyond to visit my April 30, 2012 "Resource Ideas" article, and take whatever steps you deem most suitable to your way of doing things in supporting this cause as it stands today. Myself, I am a moderately well trained researcher and writer. With a legal background. Who worked in EMS for years. Who just so happened to extensively study health care ethics in a well respected college honors program. Who taught high school english in a private academy (and, thus,  has a bit of concern about Virginia's language skills- where is my red pen?). Who was married to a nurse practitioner for 8 years, and so on. And oh yeah, I am seriously mentally ill, too. (Go figure: "How can that be? He thinks, walks, and talks like a man. How could he possibly be mentally ill?"). 

And  while at ASH, where I found myself tossed into the surreality of a hospital operating at least 40-50 years behind the times (as though in a third world country, like Pakistan, or India, or the Philippines), and as my horrifically negative experiences at ASH stacked up like cord wood  in direct proportion to my increased need and desire to take part in my environment, a research project literally sprung right into my lap.

 I didn't want it- it was thrust upon me like a bad case of warts. And the administrators and clinicians at ASH effectively begged for it.

In my world, as a writer, this is as close to perfection as it gets. But close, and only close, because as Virginia has so wisely declared:

 "Like any other job there are no perfections". 

IN CLOSING: Now I am writing about it. Religiously, with little to no concern for the fallout, personal gain, or fear of the pain of reminding myself, day after day, of the plight of my peers at ASH. Knowing as I do the cruelty of Akhter, Dy, Roxas-Rojas, and the all rest (including at least a few of the ASH nurses), it is simply something that someone has to address. So I guess it may as well be me. It is  a bitter pill to swallow, and yet it is as clear as a northern New Mexico sky in early fall: Patient abuse in any form and to any degree whatsoever is inhumane, criminal, and purely unacceptable. The substandard medical-mental health care practices at ASH needs to stop now. 

paoloreed@gmail.com