Random Notes: 8K Visitors And Growing.
-As of today, readership of this blog has transcended the 8000 mark in just around six full months of publication. Recent broadening of my reader base that has come about in direct relation to new contacts in the media world, as well as relatively fresh interests from a host of academic, legal/advocacy, and multi media resources: Including, but not limited to, Mother Jones Magazine, film maker Michael Moore's blog based database, and Brown University's graduate program in Social Sciences and Public Advocacy.
Sometimes I wish I was still in Phoenix. I wish I could look people like Dr. Pervaiz Akhter, Cory "meathead" Nelson, and Joel "the mortician" Rudd in the eye, and ask them to comment on my work to date, at a minimum; or more so, to declare in clear and simple terms, "I warned you rat bastards. I did, and you know it." But I left Arizona, because I literally received sage advice to the effect as I set out on this journey specific to considering whether it would sensible, as in safe, to remain in Arizona; I knew from the outset that I would likely have to tickle the funny bones of some of Arizona's highest ranking public service monsters, and in predicting this to some of my associates there in Phoenix, more than one person said to me, in effect: 'You might want to consider staying well under the radar, or better yet, conducting your work from another state, because you cannot put anything past these people.'
And it's true, seemingly dramatic (I acknowledge this), but true. Arizona's modern history is fraught with violence and mayhem specific to the state governments' willingness to do whatever it has to in order to maintain status quo, all the way back, in fact, to the arrival of the Spaniards with their sabers and Catholic ways, and onto that particularly insidious period of time when modern Arizona's founders were massacring Apaches and other indigenous groups under the guise of civilization and neo-nationalistic enterprise; and of course, as I have discussed in previous articles, the acclaimed Phoenix news reporter, Don Bolles, was assassinated in 1976 in direct relation to his dedicated investigations specific to exposing corruption in Arizona's administrative branches of government with respect for influence peddling, land swindles, and related bribery. I can also attest to having felt so much resentment from the staff at ASH who I fell into a habit of calling out in terms of their abuse of ASH patients, that it was clear to me that some of them would have been comfortable to learn that I had somehow managed to fulfill my suicidal ideation at the time, there in the confines of the ASH facility.
I would not have been the first patient to do this. In 2007 or so (I do not know the specifics, my info on this comes from patient reports), a young female patient at ASH, who in group therapy sessions had been openly voicing her ongoing intent to kill herself, managed to do just that by hanging herself from a cabinet door in her room; by the time I arrived at ASH, all of the cabinets in patients' rooms had had their doors removed as a consequence of this, in relation, no doubt the lawsuit filed by the woman's family. It really is that bad. Staff, including certain administrators, would prefer the individuals wiling to report patient abuse go away (as exemplified by Cory "meathead" Nelson's statements to me in his September 30, 2011 letter [see my last article, "Why Do We Care?"]), rather than doing anything to address the problems themselves. Absolute negligence and refusal to meet the terms of well established standards of care, which in my case, directly caused an infliction of distress that detrimented my stability at the time. I am not unique. Many of the patients at ASH share my propensity and vulnerabilities to authoritative abuse and neglect, issues that often arise through childhood abuse and other like aspects of various mental diagnoses.
Arizona, meanwhile, is both an unhealthy place for anyone with mental disability to be, and a dangerous place for anyone of reasonably sound character who might choose to stand up in defiance of this sort of shit. And as reported in numerous news outlets of late, the current administration in Arizona is increasingly becoming more scandal ridden than at any time in the past. Again, it really is that bad. But it's only a matter of time, in my humble opinion, before the real shit hits the fan in Arizona, and when that happens, these people- from Governor Jan "Whaddya' say ya' buy me another round, sailor" Brewer to Arizona Attorney General Tom "Trust me, but ignore the federal investigations" Horne, as well as each and every various state agency official currently ignoring their legally required obligations to their citizen clientele- are going to start stabbing one another in the back as they scurry toward the wings of that godforsaken stage, Arizona, and head for the nearest dung hole available for them to hide in. I look forward to that time, granted, but in the meantime, I am operating from a distance of at least three states apart from the center of corruption and directly related substandard mental-medical health care conditions at The Arizona State Hospital that I personally am dedicating to exposing. It is as much a matter of practicality (with respect for my having a very dear old friend where I am today, who graciously offered me a safe place to reside so that I can try and rebuild my life after a decade of crisis that my given mental health issues caused me to suffer), as it is a matter of prudence and common sense.
Indeed. Just over 8k visitors to this writing project in about six months of time. That's well over 1000 a month, or 250 a week, etc. Encouraging, to say the least; and the fact is, for the first 8-10 weeks of publishing this blog, I had very few visitors, perhaps one or two hundred, all told. Things are definitely looking up in all senses, and I have lost none of my motivation in terms of remaining fully on top of this campaign as things have slowly but steadily evolved. I owe as much to my friends at ASH, staff and patients alike.
-I want to say thank you to the author of "My Life of Crime" for her direct endorsement and willingness to include data that I provided her with in her own writing project, so here it is: Thank you, Bonnie! Keep up the good work!
-As well, to the author of the Arizona Prison Watch, for her stalwart moral support of my work, as well as for her own dedication to advocating for the rights of Arizona's inmates, many of whom are unduly subject to any range of unlawful actions and undeserved suffering as a direct consequence of Arizona's prosecution-incarceration happy legal system. Thanks, prison abolitionist chick! You rock!
IN CLOSING: I have been advised of the scheduling of my next hearing in the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings, but there is a definite problem with the scheduling, in the context of there being one other very critical proceeding that should absolutely have been scheduled in advance of this one. It is just another case of the one's assigned the responsibility(s) of serving AZ's citizens doing all they can to avoid accountability interns of their gross failings in this context. Thus, I spent several hours this week doing what I feel I have to in order to get the situation in order, as per my lawful rights and protections in the context of due process,, which is to say that I filed the appropriate form work, contacted and updated the involved parties- rat bastards, all of them- and I will now have to wait and see if the court responds accordingly. I am not a fool, at least not so much of one as the rat bastards in the Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Grievance and Appeals seem to believe I am (How can this be? He is a man, a living, breathing, thinking man! Who in the hell let him into ASH?), and I recognize this latest attempt to manipulate the factual sequence of events specific to my experiences as a patient at The Arizona State Hospital as being just that: An unlawful manipulation of procedural guidelines that is designed to further alter the truths underlying these matters, all in the hope that the fundamental significance of the wrongdoing I have and am still experiencing as a former ASH patient, tax payer, and human being, will be suppressed to such an extent that the one's most directly responsible for the ongoing patient abuse at ASH, and the related administrative corruption, wrongdoing, and utter ineptitude represented in the highest offices of ADHS, the AZ attorney generals office, and so on, might actually continue to get away with their egregious conduct. Well, guess what, you of the evil empire known as ASH to some people, and as Arizona's dirtiest secret, to others: I am onto you, and as one of my favorite poets, Ken Patchett once wrote: "I got the fat poet into a corner and told him he was writing shit and would not get away with it."
Come on, people. Let's get involved in supporting my efforts to defend the well being and fundamental rights of Arizona's most seriously mentally ill and disabled adults today. Patient abuse is as sickeningly criminal a thing to have present in our society as anything I can imagine. It is inhumane, and it is unacceptable. Please contact one or more of the individuals or offices included in my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas." Better yet, go above and beyond anything I have come up with thus far in suggesting how you can become involved, and contact your various elected officials, and so on. Please do whatever you can. Today.
paoloreed@gmail.com
Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Why Do We Care? Herein, a consideration of Cory "meathead" Nelson's 2012 Arizona State Hospital Annual Update, aka, "The State of the Hospital."
Topic: 2012 "State of the Hospital" presentation(s), facilitated by the Arizona Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services, sometime in late August, 2012. (to see a full copy of the materials that I am discussing in this article, go to www.adhs.gov, and from there just go to the Arizona State Hospital page, where you should find it at the top of the page).
Excerpt: Why Do We Care (as in, the staff, about the patients at The Arizona State Hospital)? Because If We Don't (care about the patients at at ASH), They Will Find Someone Who Does (as in, we will lose business).
At some point (or points) in August, 2012, the exact date of which I am not certain, the Arizona State Hospital's executive officer, Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson, in conjunction with the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), convened a "State of the Hospital" presentation, wherein he facilitated a carefully planned dissemination of information specific to the affairs of The Arizona State Hospital (ASH). In order to do this, Nelson relied on a 32 (or so) page power point document, entitled Arizona State Hospital Annual Update, that he presumably presented to an audience including ADHS officials and staff, ASH staff, and maybe even members of the public, including ASH patient family members. It is stretch of the imagination to suppose that any former patients, such as myself, were there, but I would have been there, without a doubt, were I to have known in advance about the event. As it is, I did not hear anything about it until approximately 14-21 days after it occurred, which is when ADHS Director Will Humble published this very, very brief mention of the presentation on his official blog site:
State of the Hospital
I was disappointed, as usual, to see so little information about the event, particularly given that ASH maintains the full responsibility of caring for close to 300 seriously mentally ill and disabled patients. However, my attention was immediately drawn to (the) sentence #2 (out of three) reference to "dialogue and feedback," because I am hopeful that at least a few of the ASH staff who have, in recent months, been expressing their outrage and disbelief about the river of misinformation that's been flowing out of Humble's office with direct respect for the state of affairs at ASH were in attendance, and that they had the courage to speak up and voice their concerns when they had the chance. But I have no way of knowing that, or who all may have actually been in attendance, because beyond Will Humble's three sentence article about this event, all I have been able to garner about what all exactly went on that day comes in the form of a 23 or so so page power point document that Cory "meathead" Nelson utilized in disseminating an arguably questionable body of information about the Hospital's last 12 months of existence as Arizona's only long term public mental health facility. Sadly, there is no information that I am aware of specific to the "feedback and dialogue," but I am in a process of seeking that information.
In lieu of such information, I did take the time to review the power point document that Cory "meathead" Nelson apparently used during his presentation about the state of affairs at ASH. (to view this document, visit www.adhs.gov and then go to the Arizona State Hospital page). It is not a particularly impressive document, along the lines of what one might expect to see at the annual staffing of a moderately straight forward fast food business, with an assorted body of direct references to improvements in facility (including at least one full color photo of a door knob, and two or three very grainy photos of a building roof) and at least 16 primary staffing changes (described under the heading Leadership Changes, and none of which apply to the obviously need to remove ethically challenged executive staff such as Donna "You are so Busted" Noriega (see "News Flash: Donna Noriega- Busted!" April 17, 2012), and other like critical details about ASH, variously paraphrased in categories such as: "What else happened?",
"Really?", "Still more?" (this is where the door knob appears), "You've got to be kidding?", and "So when does it stop?"; and photo imagery that was obviously, oh so cleverly, downloaded from the internet
(much like an 8th grade student might go to the trouble of), including an image of Albert Einstein and the words "Why do I have to change?" (and the quote "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking" pp 16), followed by the highly inspiring and eloquent labor force message shown above right (pp 17). Juvenile tidbits of flash, at best, designed to create an impression of creative thinking; but very sadly, nothing meant to meaningfully effect or improve the substandard conditions at ASH, as I know them to be. This kind of dribble goes on for 15-16 pages, not including the pictures of Einstein, and so on.
But not until page 18 of the Annual Update, does the supervisor of ASH begin discussing anything at all related to the experiences of ASH patients. It is (or was) by all appearances, a perfunctory and far from reassuring discussion in this context (to I, a recently discharged former patient of ASH), and short of having been there at the presentation of this crap personally, I can only speculate as to how Nelson specifically carried forth during this portion of his presentation. On its face, however, as per the materials included in the power point document that I reviewed, I honestly have to say, I am more than a little bit worried.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Take a look at this, if you will. It is a verbatim section of Nelson's power point document (pp. 19). I find it shocking, and yet perfect (for it exposes his blatantly inept disconnect from the patient experience in all senses); insulting, and yet congratulatory (for I am both disgusted by having to believe that this is how this rat bastard looked at me and looks today at my peers still in ASH, and yet my deepest intuitions are realized, herein); and it is best of all, or worst of all (depending on who you are) as bastardizing a display of egregious disregard for the needs of ASH's diverse community of seriously mentally ill adults as I might ever imagine.
Herein, with immediate respect for the needs and expectations of ASH patients and their families, the supervisor of Arizona's sole long term public mental hospital offers his grossly distorted interpretation of what it means to be a health care professional in the 21st century:
Why do we care?
Because if we don't care, they will find
This section of Nelson's presentation is both confusing to me (for in referring to the possibility that "they will find someone who does [care]", I am stumped, in the first place, as to whether he means the Arizona state court system, because "they" are the sole source/reference point of each and every patient that is ever admitted to ASH, or if he is referring to the patients themselves); as well as horrifying to me, (as a former patient, human being, and tax payer), for herein, the person in whom all citizens of Arizona have granted their trust in terms of meaningfully tending to the critically vital needs of the state's most vulnerable and at risk citizens equates caring with commercially oriented profit incentives, and the retention of open market customers. This is what it means to care in Cory "meathead" Nelson's way of seeing things: Either care about retaining our patients, or we will lose them to to competitors. But before I go on any further, I suppose this is a good time to remind ourselves that this is a man who very recently accepted an under-the-table $10,000 pay raise that had not been approved by the citizens for whom he worked in South Dakota, which is the state he worked for immediately prior to coming to Arizona (see: HSC Pay Raise Sparks Questions: Administrator Receives $10,000 Pay Increase, Nathan Johnson nathan.johnson@yankton.net Published:
In other words, Nelson only (or, at least, first and foremost) sees dollar signs and margins of predictable loss/gain in his perspective(s) on caring. And given his behavior in South Dakota, as it relates to Arizona's agreeably corrupt public resources network, I almost assume that he is fully aware of the shortsightedness of his "vision." Not a good recipe, if you ask me (and all that that implies), for ensuring that Arizona's seriously mentally ill and disabled ASH patients are cared for in a manner consistent with established health care standards; a condition of ripeness, more like, in terms of holding open the doors that at this time allow for the presence of overtly sanctioned patient abuse, clinical negligence and discrimination, and directly related administrative malfeasance.
And although I'd typically believe that such history (the South Dakota scandal) would suffice in disqualifying someone like HIM from caring for Arizona's common citizens (this, based on the other 5 states I have lived in at length), it just don't seem to matter in Arizona. But myself aside, all this crap also signifies the the fact that the crisis at ASH still exists, in terms of every person still needing to be there; so it is painful to me, too, as a one time patient, therein, as a man who feels the pain of the ones still in there. I can, today, literally sense the tension, fear, and sickness that arises when patient abuse occurs at ASH, for I was emotionally effected by it at the time, and such effects linger beyond any other like negative events that one might experience. As does the emotional and psychological abuse that someone like I suffered as a child: Indeed, the ruthless personalities of ASH's most depraved staff members, be it the old war horse nurses who have become overly accustomed to care standards that went out of practice 25-40 years ago, or the socio-psychopathic doctors who have no problem with stomping all over the lawful protections and rights of their patients as a matter of standard practice, emerged in my dreams (nightmares) as I slept at ASH, because their graphic misbehavior triggered such memories for the first time, in my case, in over many, many years. This, the state of affairs at ASH, as I see it.
care, health care, the quality of care given to hospital patients, ASH patients. CARE, as Cory "meathead" Nelson sees it, is not relative to the actual quality of care that his patients experience, but rather to the falsehood described by his gaping disconnect from ASH, as a hospital, and the ASH patients, as follows:
As a matter of practicality, I will pose one question: "What does it mean to care when it comes to health professions?" And it seems reasonable, doesn't it, for any hospital patient to presume that our care givers care because we are human beings; and that they care because they are human beings; and that they care because they are health care professionals, dedicated to working in a field, as such, where caring for the welfare of the patient is founded on universal tenets of compassion, trust, and kindness.
Trust, as I have discussed in the past, is the centerpiece of any successful psychiatric objective specific to the needs of mentally ill patients, and the need for this extends beyond the basic psychiatrist to patient relationship; trust, indeed, that these people care (isn't this something that any reasonable person today expects of their health care providers?); trust that is afforded the patient on the basis of any patients' need to believe that our care provider is competent; trust that has a whole lot to do with caring for a patients' comfort, health, well being, safety, and any other number of like sentiments?
I began paying close attention to Cory Nelson within six weeks of his August, 2011, arrival at ASH. At the time, I directly reported concerns to Cory Nelson about definably criminal misconduct in the form of clinical retaliation that was being imparted on me by the senior psychiatric staff, who had full control over my assigned inpatient treatment and discharge planning team at ASH, retaliation for me having lawfully filed a well founded grievance with the support of the department of health's own Office of Human Rights, (see my previous articles specific to case #2012c-BHS-0338-DHS) and in response to my communications with him about the matter, this is what he told me, in writing:
"Patrick I would encourage you to work with your treatment team to address all aspects of your treatment plan while you are still a resident at the hospital. Since your legal status at the hospital is voluntary you may certainly request discharge from your treatment team if you believe that the treatment that you are receiving is ineffective, unnecessary or otherwise not meeting your needs." (ADHS/ASH letter, Cory Nelson to ------- (PJ Reed), September 30, 2011)
Cory "crazycorycorner.weebly.com" Nelson's words, as quoted above when he responded to my reports of patient abuse and staff misconduct, pretty clearly proves that he interprets The Arizona State Hospital as being something like a motel, and in stating this to me in this manner, I was felt as though my psychological condition at the time was of no concern to him, whatsoever, a statement along the lines of:
"So far as I am concerned, Patrick, if you don't agree with the way we do business here at ASH, then you might as well just head out the door and go kill yourself, or whatever. I don't give a shit about you, or your allegations about abuse. I am the supervisor at ASH, and you are nothing to me."
From what I have thus far seen about this goddamn "State of the Hospital" presentation as it related to quality of patient care concerns at ASH, Nelson's
primary intent was to suppress the truth(s) about clearly substandard conditions
at ASH that even staff have been vocal about reporting to his office (as per comments posted directly to Nelson on his personal web page; see "News Flash", July 20, 2012 and "Hot Off The Goddamn Presses" August 22, 2012), while simultaneously furthering the ongoing out of control situation at ASH. The utilization of the expression "State of the Hospital", being as it clearly is a rip off of the "State of the Nation" presidential addresses that citizens of our country are so well familiar with, is nearly blasphemous in its communicative presentation, because Cory "meathead" Nelson and his cadre of grossly inept executive staff harbor nothing but selfishly grounded sentiments about the state of affairs at ASH in terms of the one's residing there. As such, this rat bastard was not seeking to address anything along the lines of improving or even ensuring patient specific quality of care at ASH. In fact, by posing the question "Why do we care?", Nelson unmistakably acknowledged his own lack of understanding of what it means to be a health care professional. He is so far out in left field (because he has a background not in health care, but in corrections) that I can almost imagine him tossing ideas around his head as he prepared his power point Annual Report document, unable-in essence- to wrap his mind around what it is, in fact, to be a caring person. " 'Why would I care... if I did…..?' No, that clearly won't work. 'Why should I care…..?' Ah, no, not that either, too open ended….'What if I cared….' Darn, this is harder that I thought…. Wait, here it comes… 'Why do I care? Yes!' That's the one! Why do we care?…. 'Because if anyone knows how much we don't care, we will lose business….' Not not quite….", and so on.
Topic: 2012 "State of the Hospital" presentation(s), facilitated by the Arizona Department of Health Services/Behavioral Health Services, sometime in late August, 2012. (to see a full copy of the materials that I am discussing in this article, go to www.adhs.gov, and from there just go to the Arizona State Hospital page, where you should find it at the top of the page).
Excerpt: Why Do We Care (as in, the staff, about the patients at The Arizona State Hospital)? Because If We Don't (care about the patients at at ASH), They Will Find Someone Who Does (as in, we will lose business).
At some point (or points) in August, 2012, the exact date of which I am not certain, the Arizona State Hospital's executive officer, Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson, in conjunction with the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), convened a "State of the Hospital" presentation, wherein he facilitated a carefully planned dissemination of information specific to the affairs of The Arizona State Hospital (ASH). In order to do this, Nelson relied on a 32 (or so) page power point document, entitled Arizona State Hospital Annual Update, that he presumably presented to an audience including ADHS officials and staff, ASH staff, and maybe even members of the public, including ASH patient family members. It is stretch of the imagination to suppose that any former patients, such as myself, were there, but I would have been there, without a doubt, were I to have known in advance about the event. As it is, I did not hear anything about it until approximately 14-21 days after it occurred, which is when ADHS Director Will Humble published this very, very brief mention of the presentation on his official blog site:
State of the Hospital
September 12th, 2012 by Will Humble
A few weeks ago Cory Nelson did his in-person “State of the Hospital” presentations. Many of you were able to attend one and we really appreciate the dialogue and feedback we got. It’s impressive to see how much work our hospital team has accomplished in the past year.
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In lieu of such information, I did take the time to review the power point document that Cory "meathead" Nelson apparently used during his presentation about the state of affairs at ASH. (to view this document, visit www.adhs.gov and then go to the Arizona State Hospital page). It is not a particularly impressive document, along the lines of what one might expect to see at the annual staffing of a moderately straight forward fast food business, with an assorted body of direct references to improvements in facility (including at least one full color photo of a door knob, and two or three very grainy photos of a building roof) and at least 16 primary staffing changes (described under the heading Leadership Changes, and none of which apply to the obviously need to remove ethically challenged executive staff such as Donna "You are so Busted" Noriega (see "News Flash: Donna Noriega- Busted!" April 17, 2012), and other like critical details about ASH, variously paraphrased in categories such as: "What else happened?",
"Really?", "Still more?" (this is where the door knob appears), "You've got to be kidding?", and "So when does it stop?"; and photo imagery that was obviously, oh so cleverly, downloaded from the internet(much like an 8th grade student might go to the trouble of), including an image of Albert Einstein and the words "Why do I have to change?" (and the quote "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking" pp 16), followed by the highly inspiring and eloquent labor force message shown above right (pp 17). Juvenile tidbits of flash, at best, designed to create an impression of creative thinking; but very sadly, nothing meant to meaningfully effect or improve the substandard conditions at ASH, as I know them to be. This kind of dribble goes on for 15-16 pages, not including the pictures of Einstein, and so on.
But not until page 18 of the Annual Update, does the supervisor of ASH begin discussing anything at all related to the experiences of ASH patients. It is (or was) by all appearances, a perfunctory and far from reassuring discussion in this context (to I, a recently discharged former patient of ASH), and short of having been there at the presentation of this crap personally, I can only speculate as to how Nelson specifically carried forth during this portion of his presentation. On its face, however, as per the materials included in the power point document that I reviewed, I honestly have to say, I am more than a little bit worried.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Take a look at this, if you will. It is a verbatim section of Nelson's power point document (pp. 19). I find it shocking, and yet perfect (for it exposes his blatantly inept disconnect from the patient experience in all senses); insulting, and yet congratulatory (for I am both disgusted by having to believe that this is how this rat bastard looked at me and looks today at my peers still in ASH, and yet my deepest intuitions are realized, herein); and it is best of all, or worst of all (depending on who you are) as bastardizing a display of egregious disregard for the needs of ASH's diverse community of seriously mentally ill adults as I might ever imagine.
Herein, with immediate respect for the needs and expectations of ASH patients and their families, the supervisor of Arizona's sole long term public mental hospital offers his grossly distorted interpretation of what it means to be a health care professional in the 21st century:
Why do we care?
someone who does.
This section of Nelson's presentation is both confusing to me (for in referring to the possibility that "they will find someone who does [care]", I am stumped, in the first place, as to whether he means the Arizona state court system, because "they" are the sole source/reference point of each and every patient that is ever admitted to ASH, or if he is referring to the patients themselves); as well as horrifying to me, (as a former patient, human being, and tax payer), for herein, the person in whom all citizens of Arizona have granted their trust in terms of meaningfully tending to the critically vital needs of the state's most vulnerable and at risk citizens equates caring with commercially oriented profit incentives, and the retention of open market customers. This is what it means to care in Cory "meathead" Nelson's way of seeing things: Either care about retaining our patients, or we will lose them to to competitors. But before I go on any further, I suppose this is a good time to remind ourselves that this is a man who very recently accepted an under-the-table $10,000 pay raise that had not been approved by the citizens for whom he worked in South Dakota, which is the state he worked for immediately prior to coming to Arizona (see: HSC Pay Raise Sparks Questions: Administrator Receives $10,000 Pay Increase, Nathan Johnson nathan.johnson@yankton.net Published:
In other words, Nelson only (or, at least, first and foremost) sees dollar signs and margins of predictable loss/gain in his perspective(s) on caring. And given his behavior in South Dakota, as it relates to Arizona's agreeably corrupt public resources network, I almost assume that he is fully aware of the shortsightedness of his "vision." Not a good recipe, if you ask me (and all that that implies), for ensuring that Arizona's seriously mentally ill and disabled ASH patients are cared for in a manner consistent with established health care standards; a condition of ripeness, more like, in terms of holding open the doors that at this time allow for the presence of overtly sanctioned patient abuse, clinical negligence and discrimination, and directly related administrative malfeasance.
And although I'd typically believe that such history (the South Dakota scandal) would suffice in disqualifying someone like HIM from caring for Arizona's common citizens (this, based on the other 5 states I have lived in at length), it just don't seem to matter in Arizona. But myself aside, all this crap also signifies the the fact that the crisis at ASH still exists, in terms of every person still needing to be there; so it is painful to me, too, as a one time patient, therein, as a man who feels the pain of the ones still in there. I can, today, literally sense the tension, fear, and sickness that arises when patient abuse occurs at ASH, for I was emotionally effected by it at the time, and such effects linger beyond any other like negative events that one might experience. As does the emotional and psychological abuse that someone like I suffered as a child: Indeed, the ruthless personalities of ASH's most depraved staff members, be it the old war horse nurses who have become overly accustomed to care standards that went out of practice 25-40 years ago, or the socio-psychopathic doctors who have no problem with stomping all over the lawful protections and rights of their patients as a matter of standard practice, emerged in my dreams (nightmares) as I slept at ASH, because their graphic misbehavior triggered such memories for the first time, in my case, in over many, many years. This, the state of affairs at ASH, as I see it.
care, health care, the quality of care given to hospital patients, ASH patients. CARE, as Cory "meathead" Nelson sees it, is not relative to the actual quality of care that his patients experience, but rather to the falsehood described by his gaping disconnect from ASH, as a hospital, and the ASH patients, as follows:
WE CARE BECAUSE WE NEED THE BUSINESS. END OF STORY.
As a matter of practicality, I will pose one question: "What does it mean to care when it comes to health professions?" And it seems reasonable, doesn't it, for any hospital patient to presume that our care givers care because we are human beings; and that they care because they are human beings; and that they care because they are health care professionals, dedicated to working in a field, as such, where caring for the welfare of the patient is founded on universal tenets of compassion, trust, and kindness.
Trust, as I have discussed in the past, is the centerpiece of any successful psychiatric objective specific to the needs of mentally ill patients, and the need for this extends beyond the basic psychiatrist to patient relationship; trust, indeed, that these people care (isn't this something that any reasonable person today expects of their health care providers?); trust that is afforded the patient on the basis of any patients' need to believe that our care provider is competent; trust that has a whole lot to do with caring for a patients' comfort, health, well being, safety, and any other number of like sentiments?
I began paying close attention to Cory Nelson within six weeks of his August, 2011, arrival at ASH. At the time, I directly reported concerns to Cory Nelson about definably criminal misconduct in the form of clinical retaliation that was being imparted on me by the senior psychiatric staff, who had full control over my assigned inpatient treatment and discharge planning team at ASH, retaliation for me having lawfully filed a well founded grievance with the support of the department of health's own Office of Human Rights, (see my previous articles specific to case #2012c-BHS-0338-DHS) and in response to my communications with him about the matter, this is what he told me, in writing:
"Patrick I would encourage you to work with your treatment team to address all aspects of your treatment plan while you are still a resident at the hospital. Since your legal status at the hospital is voluntary you may certainly request discharge from your treatment team if you believe that the treatment that you are receiving is ineffective, unnecessary or otherwise not meeting your needs." (ADHS/ASH letter, Cory Nelson to ------- (PJ Reed), September 30, 2011)
And there it was. The danger posed by a man who did not realize that I, an ASH patient, was, at that time:
A) clinically unstable- as in, still suicidal to some marked degree-
and as such, far from ready for safe discharge from ASH;
and as such, far from ready for safe discharge from ASH;
B) in no position to request discharge because there are no other
long term public mental health facilities in Arizona besides ASH;
C) not requesting his consideration of matters relating to the
effectiveness (per se'), necessity, or fulfillment of my
needs as a patient.
effectiveness (per se'), necessity, or fulfillment of my
needs as a patient.
Specific to the last of these three factors, for about 95% of the time that I was hospitalized at The Arizona State Hospital, I maintained good faith and well intentioned expectations flowing from my recognition of ASH's explicit role in my life at that time; these expectations extended to my understanding of patient rights, health care ethics, and common law and policy; and in terms of the concerns that I had shared with Nelson at the time, my reports related to documented misconduct and misbehavior of ASH staff, violations of law and policy, and abridgments of my rights as a patient, citizen-consumer, and human being. I was not coming to him with any concerns about the ineffectiveness or lack of necessity of my treatment, per se' (although the misconduct that I reported clearly contributes to such concerns, not just in my case, but in terms of the mismanaged care provided to all ASH patients); and my perspective in this context was distinctly stated in the documents that I forwarded to Nelson in relation to this specific matter. My concerns about these issues flowed from my concern not just in the context of my experiences, but in that of my peers, as well, for it was overwhelmingly evident to me that the clinicians and administrators at ASH impart their grossly unlawful misconduct on all 0f the patients at ASH with little if any discretion or reservation. With these issues in mind (not specifically tied into any concerns I had about ineffectiveness, etc.), I fully expected that the supervisor of ASH would have the capacity to realize the full context of my expressed concerns at that time. I communicated with him through well detailed and carefully written correspondence, documents that I of course have full copies of, and even today, I am shocked at how graphically disconnected Cory "crazycorycorner" Nelson is from the basic realities of ASH the facility, and the ASH patients, such as myself.
Even Nelson's reference to my status as voluntary is misguided. There are any number of patients at ASH who agree to accept their hospitalization at ASH on a voluntary basis. At the same time, initial admission to ASH only occurs following a civil or criminal court order for involuntary treatment, but many patients remain at ASH voluntarily if they have been advised by their doctors to remain at ASH beyond the terms of court ordered involuntary treatment while their respective therapy, drug regimen, and general treatment continues. Such was my case at the time. But the fact of the matter is- and as proven by the details surrounding the May, 2011, escape of Jesus Rincon Murietta (wherein, ASH administrators altered the facts underlying the escape in order to avoid accountability, relying on Murietta's status as a voluntary patient in order to justify their patent refusal to release any information about the escape at the time that it happened, thus leading to the brutal slaying of April Mott in late August, 2011; [see "Victim's Family Questions Why Man Was Free", by JJ Hensley, AZ Republic, Sept. 29, 2011])- the administrators and clinicians and ASH, and even assistant attorney general Joel "the mortician" Rudd, arbitrarily manipulate the actual, legal provisions underlying voluntary status at ASH in order to avoid both accountability (in terms of the public trust), as well as in terms of their well established responsibilities and obligations to their patient-customers (as in, specific to my experiences in this context). This is precisely what Nelson was doing when he drafted the Sept. 30, 2011, letter discussed above. (Talking out of his ass, in effect.)Cory "crazycorycorner.weebly.com" Nelson's words, as quoted above when he responded to my reports of patient abuse and staff misconduct, pretty clearly proves that he interprets The Arizona State Hospital as being something like a motel, and in stating this to me in this manner, I was felt as though my psychological condition at the time was of no concern to him, whatsoever, a statement along the lines of:
"So far as I am concerned, Patrick, if you don't agree with the way we do business here at ASH, then you might as well just head out the door and go kill yourself, or whatever. I don't give a shit about you, or your allegations about abuse. I am the supervisor at ASH, and you are nothing to me."
From what I have thus far seen about this goddamn "State of the Hospital" presentation as it related to quality of patient care concerns at ASH, Nelson's
primary intent was to suppress the truth(s) about clearly substandard conditions
at ASH that even staff have been vocal about reporting to his office (as per comments posted directly to Nelson on his personal web page; see "News Flash", July 20, 2012 and "Hot Off The Goddamn Presses" August 22, 2012), while simultaneously furthering the ongoing out of control situation at ASH. The utilization of the expression "State of the Hospital", being as it clearly is a rip off of the "State of the Nation" presidential addresses that citizens of our country are so well familiar with, is nearly blasphemous in its communicative presentation, because Cory "meathead" Nelson and his cadre of grossly inept executive staff harbor nothing but selfishly grounded sentiments about the state of affairs at ASH in terms of the one's residing there. As such, this rat bastard was not seeking to address anything along the lines of improving or even ensuring patient specific quality of care at ASH. In fact, by posing the question "Why do we care?", Nelson unmistakably acknowledged his own lack of understanding of what it means to be a health care professional. He is so far out in left field (because he has a background not in health care, but in corrections) that I can almost imagine him tossing ideas around his head as he prepared his power point Annual Report document, unable-in essence- to wrap his mind around what it is, in fact, to be a caring person. " 'Why would I care... if I did…..?' No, that clearly won't work. 'Why should I care…..?' Ah, no, not that either, too open ended….'What if I cared….' Darn, this is harder that I thought…. Wait, here it comes… 'Why do I care? Yes!' That's the one! Why do we care?…. 'Because if anyone knows how much we don't care, we will lose business….' Not not quite….", and so on.
It is impossible for me to fully understand how in the hell "Meathead" Nelson pulled this off, presuming that he did (?). Again, I have no way of knowing who all was there, or what the reactions of his audience were. Whatever the case, it is stark ravingly clear to me that this man is operating via the presumption that his staff don't care in the first place (and least not in a way that is good for business) and need to be taught how to care. Taught, as such, by a man trained in facilities management entirely unrelated to heath care facilities, that sales and profit are what matters most, and to hell with the patient experience, in fact. This is doubly upsetting, too, because there are a number of very well intentioned, caring and ethical individuals working at ASH, and for Nelson to get up there in front of such people and ask so ridiculously inane a question as this is preposterous and demeaning. By all appearances with this presentation in mind, the South Dakota wing-nut entrusted with running The Arizona State Hospital has yet again put one of his size 12 suede loafers smack dab into the thick of his awesomely clean teeth.
In my humble opinion at this time, in terms of ensuring a reasonable quality of patient care at The Arizona State Hospital, the supervisor of The Arizona State Hospital (the states' only long term public mental hospital), and his superiors in the Arizona Department of Health, have all the vision of a management team from Panda Express.
In Closing: Cory "meathead" Nelson may be qualified to discuss administrative business matters in an open market context (emphasis: may), but when it comes to a public hospital facility such at ASH, he is clearly out of his realm. His disconnect from the role that The Arizona State Hospital fills, as a critically needed public health care entity which does not operate on a basis of commercial enterprise, the very presence of which represents the inability of our culture and society to meaningfully attend to the needs of the seriously mentally ill persons in our midst (persons such as I, for I am here today), and his obliviousness from the needs of the patients themselves (persons such as I, for I know these things about this rat bastard from first hand experience) dictates something not all unlike professional depravity and base level ineptitude. We, the mentally ill, are not trading our disabilities and needs in the way that other people may be able to. We are struggling our illnesses simply to exist. The only reason anybody is in ASH has to do with serious mental illness, and the only assured way that anybody in ASH today is going to regain their sanity lies in cleaning up the substandard and abusive conduct of ASH staff.
I hope that you, my readers, will take the time to visit the Arizona Department of Health Services on-line resources in your own right, where you will be able, amongst other things, to review the Arizona State Hospital Annual Update 2012, post your comments to ADHS Will Humble's official blog, and generally peruse the propaganda presented therein. I hope that you do this, because I do not want you to rely soloed upon me and my interpretations of these matters. I am well qualified, and the only one in fact, who can directly speak about my experiences while hospitalized at ASH, but things like the 2012 "State of the Hospital" event are ongoing, and the public has the right to play a role in any such activities. At a minimum, we have the express right to be fully apprised about the conditions at ASH, but in my opinion, this is not happening (as evidenced by the document I discussed today). Please, find it in your heart to do your part in helping me address the patient abuse at ASH. ASH is operating at a level of graphically substandard mental-medical care, and they are getting away with it.
paoloreed@gmail.com
In Closing: Cory "meathead" Nelson may be qualified to discuss administrative business matters in an open market context (emphasis: may), but when it comes to a public hospital facility such at ASH, he is clearly out of his realm. His disconnect from the role that The Arizona State Hospital fills, as a critically needed public health care entity which does not operate on a basis of commercial enterprise, the very presence of which represents the inability of our culture and society to meaningfully attend to the needs of the seriously mentally ill persons in our midst (persons such as I, for I am here today), and his obliviousness from the needs of the patients themselves (persons such as I, for I know these things about this rat bastard from first hand experience) dictates something not all unlike professional depravity and base level ineptitude. We, the mentally ill, are not trading our disabilities and needs in the way that other people may be able to. We are struggling our illnesses simply to exist. The only reason anybody is in ASH has to do with serious mental illness, and the only assured way that anybody in ASH today is going to regain their sanity lies in cleaning up the substandard and abusive conduct of ASH staff.
I hope that you, my readers, will take the time to visit the Arizona Department of Health Services on-line resources in your own right, where you will be able, amongst other things, to review the Arizona State Hospital Annual Update 2012, post your comments to ADHS Will Humble's official blog, and generally peruse the propaganda presented therein. I hope that you do this, because I do not want you to rely soloed upon me and my interpretations of these matters. I am well qualified, and the only one in fact, who can directly speak about my experiences while hospitalized at ASH, but things like the 2012 "State of the Hospital" event are ongoing, and the public has the right to play a role in any such activities. At a minimum, we have the express right to be fully apprised about the conditions at ASH, but in my opinion, this is not happening (as evidenced by the document I discussed today). Please, find it in your heart to do your part in helping me address the patient abuse at ASH. ASH is operating at a level of graphically substandard mental-medical care, and they are getting away with it.
paoloreed@gmail.com
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Arizona Department of Health Services Is On Facebook: Herein, an essay, beginning with discussion of another means for civil disobedience and open dialogue- well, not open dialogue, but what else is new with ADHS?
This will be brief. I spent about twenty minutes last night looking through the various entries on the Arizona Department of Health Services official Facebook page, and was pleased to see literally hundreds of critical areas of public health concerns that the ADHS "team" works to contribute to in terms of everything from education, to expansions in (some) services, events and opportunities for children to engage in healthy activities, and oh gosh, I am a lost giddy over the complexity of it all. They do such a great job, covering every base imaginable, in such thorough fashion, and just look at those smiling faces, it's so overwhelmingly pleading to the eye that I….. Wait…. Critical areas of public heath concern? Events, opportunities? Smiling faces?
What in the hell am I saying? Have I finally lost track of reality?
Of course it is wonderful to know that the good folks at ADHS are putting out so much positive propaganda and involving themselves (the "team") in so much good stuff. But it only begs the question: If Will Humble and his various droogs are able to address myriad issues of almost ever possible shape and form, why in the hell can't they take an honest step or two towards ethically resolving the substandard care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital? For christ's sake, it's right there on East Van Buren! It never moves, fluctuates, or otherwise dodges attention, and yet the problems that I witnessed and experienced during my thirteen months of hospitalization at ASH have been going on since the dawn of time. It is like a nervous tic, it is a sore toe, a potentially quick fix right there, it and the problems associated with it. So why can't they see this? Why won't they fix it? What is the problem, exactly?
Why? What? I'll tell you why and what: Because seriously mentally ill/disabled persons are amongst the most marginalized human beings in our world, that's why. I don't know if this universally the case, from one culture to the next, and throughout the ages, but it applies today. People like me, and my peers at ASH, are quite literally swept under the proverbial carpet, kept at a comfortable distance ("As far out of sight as possible, thank you."), ignored, and even detested. I attest to having acquired- while at ASH- the awareness that mentally ill and disabled people (like me) don't generally rate so much as an even, fairly shared place in a line for service at a food counter. I saw this, I felt it, I was the subject of it. I was subjected to it, day in, day out. Otherness, alienism, freakishness, dehumanization. I was feared, I was shunned, I was less than human in the eyes of most ASH staff, and I deserved less than humane treatment in their views. And this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, even if they can't recognize it.
But I refused to accept it. I believe, too, that this was nothing short of a luxury, in comparison to how many of my friends at ASH experience "life" there. Many of them have been subjected to the consequences and impacts of their respective disability for a good portion of their lives. Institutionalization, too, does happen, and for these sorts of reasons, many of my peers at ASH knew no other way or had forgotten any other way to exist or be treated; while I, on the other hand, had spent most of my pre-ASH (48-49) years of life living as most reasonably privileged Americans do, with little to no fear of being treated like a nit (you hear that, Patel?) or abused or harmed by others, outside of the criminals on the streets. I was in, fact, and not too long ago, one of those who would cross a major street in order to avoid having to share the sidewalk with a man or woman talking to themselves, and I realized/remembered this while I was there, at ASH. It was an amazing and very disturbing array of self realizations and awarenesses to experience, my "life" at ASH, but my experiences there never pushed me off my own personal ledge of basic integrity (although, try they did try, the rat bastards, in every way I believe they knew how, through intimidation, abuse of authority, ridicule, and insult).
I survived ASH only because I knew then, as I do now, that my integrity as a person is so inalienably tied into my very presence here on this rock, that even the rudest and/or most ruthlessly power hungry staff person or doctor at ASH never so much as nudged me from my sense of self as a human being. It shook me up at times, and it aggravated my willingness to consider death as a better way to exist, and of course my feelings were hurt. But I refused to be like them, and I knew, that if I was not very, very careful, I would in life become just like them. Mentally ill people are, as a rule, systematically dehumanized by the majority of our given culture. This is common knowledge amongst the few, sadly: dehumanization, and stigmatization. It is the root reason for why congress enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act and explicitly included a variety of provisions specific to the rights of such, the mentally disabled. Because the mentally disabled are very highly at risk of abuse and unlawful exploitation, not as consequence of something nearly so obvious as physical disability (in many cases), but rather because of who they are in terms of personality and behavior; and it this aspect of the condition, mentally disabled, that creates the graphic disconnect between the healthy and the not so healthy in this specific context. Equally common is the undeniable fact that, if given the opportunity to avoid the fundamental precepts of common good in a civilized and contemporary society such as ours, certain forms of our own species will seek the easiest way to do things. They will cut every corner in the house, and evade every direct responsibility that they can, all in order to stay afloat. In order to maintain their status quo. So as to earn a living. All justifiable, in the minds of such people, on the basis of one dog eat the other, while always looking out for number one.
Such people feed on the weak. It is inherent in there way of doing things, and they have to find hidden away pockets in the given landscape if they are going to survive. They know this. So they learn, either through trial and error, or by field research and personal education, or for some of them, it comes through instinct; they acquire knowledge of where they can exist as they need to, and then they flock there, almost as one. State mental hospitals such as ASH are perfect examples of such places. "Public mental hospitals are still snakepits for abuse" (The Council on Human Rights, 2009). They are "health care" facilities managed by shortsighted, and far too often, corrupt state government, where the most vulnerable, defenseless, voiceless, and at risk (of abuse) clientele are kept. Sites where the otherwise unemployable can find safe haven (hear that, Akhter?), where their patient-clients cannot so much as raise their voice to a tone of frustration without being subject to punitive forms of unregulated power. Power that imparts itself through the actions of ill qualified "health care professionals" who effectively exploit the lives of human beings who are seen by far too many people, even today, as something other than human. Human, like you are human, and like I am human. Below, between cracks; beneath deserved respect, dignity, and heartfelt concern.
In the ADHS/BHS network- er, I mean "team"- of caregivers and service providers, the mentally ill patients at ASH occupy an obscured, at best, no man's land, mired deep in the tapestry of the state's most needy health care clients. Many of them arrive at ASH via the criminal courts, and despite reckonings in such venues that have come to determine that this person is not a criminal, this person is sick, that specific process inevitably leads to the belief that ASH patients are, in essence, convicts. It was not too long ago, in fact, that the parlance of the field- long term psychiatric patient hospitalization- actually employed that exact word to refer to anybody who just so happened to wind up in the nuthouse- convict, and I still find the word springing up time to time in my research today (although happily, that usually only occurs in relation to older text). So what you end up with, you see, is a pickle of an especially deadly variety; or a recipe for disaster, that is, and a guarantee of something far less than the norm. Something below the standard. Substandard. With substandard health care "professionals" who are so entrenched in selfishness or self loathing that they really have no choice but to conjure the thought: The expectations of greater society and culture be damned, because this is not the real world, this is ASH, and these people are insane, they are deformed in the brain, they are immoral at birth and inherently criminal in character, and nobody cares about them! Nobody else care about them, so why should I?
As already stated, this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, at some time or another, even if they can't recognize it. For their sakes, my friends at ASH, I may even hope they can't, for I can only imagine that it might be easier that way. But I also cannot deny the fact that some of my closest friends at ASH feel the pain and torment of this mistreatment just as vividly as I do, even today, almost 6 moths post-discharge. Day in, day out, they and I still do. I have friends at ASH who will be institutionalized for the rest of their given lives, and if things at ASH remain unchanged, these friends will live every day of their given lives in abject misery, and not due to the the worst aspects of thier illness, but because of the cruelty of the worst staff at ASH.
In Closing: So much for brief. If I was stupid enough to fall for Will Humble and the ADHS Facebook page's line of molded baloney, this would have been brief, I suppose. I am preparing to draft some essays about my experiences at The Arizona State Hospital for publication in one or another of the scholarly reviews that I have agreed to contribute some of my writing to. Essays, sort of like what I learned to love in junior high, only essays of substance, that I can write from the heart, rather than off the cuff, or from the hip. Essays, then, as I learned to write to near perfection in college honors programs, expository expressions of experience and awareness, with thesis' statements and structure. You want to hear my thesis in relation to this article (which is nothing more than on off the cuff essay, I will admit to that)? Here it is:
1) The good folks on the "team" known as Will Humble's Arizona Department of Health Services are so goddamn busy with remaining focused on anything other than one particular line of activity or service, that they are simply incapable, on any level, of slowing down enough to even consider something as bizarre as what I call common decency in the most uncommon places. As such, the Arizona Department of Health Services is a classic state division/agency, not at all unlike the DMV: Overstaffed, underfunded, and way too crowded with paper pushers and shortsighted mid level managers. Not to mention the corruption, state agency corruption, dereliction, and greed, good old greed.
2) While ADHS internal agency, Behavioral Health Services, shares each and every aspect of disarray that its parent so overtly displays, with the additional feature of being grossly under funded-underpaid and staffed by thugs and malcontents who are assigned the direct responsibility of caring for the full breadth of affairs and care needs of the most marginalized, vulnerable and at risk (of abuse and exploitation) population in the community. This goes right to the heart of my aforementioned recipe for disaster. TNT and nitroglycerine ass in one suit case of state managed activity. And while I cannot thank enough, the ones at ASH who do, in fact, meet the obligations of their positions (because, as I have stated time and time again there are many good people at ASH, but they are still the minority), far too many of them are bottom feeding sadomasochists, barracudas, dunces, and gorillas (the otherwise unemployable enmasse) who flock like deranged seagulls into the cavernous underbelly of this agency- ASH- where they can grovel in their ineptitude and depravity as one pulsating blob, covering each others backs, guarding all secrets ("What happens at ASH, stays at ASH- that's what HIPPA's for, remember?"), and swearing off second thoughts about anything, because who can afford to lose their job in this day in age?
Please visit my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas" article. Better yet, if you are up to it, contact your elected representatives, and do it in writing. Help me in getting those sorts of people involved. There is no better time than the present to pull all the stops out when it comes to these matters. Patient abuse is inhumane and criminal, and the associated failures of our state officials and their various staffers to directly address the substandard mental-medical care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital is 100% unacceptable in any reasonably civilized society. As though you need someone like myself to remind you of this. I am nothing special, but I am good enough to do the right thing, and so are you.
paoloreed@gmail
This will be brief. I spent about twenty minutes last night looking through the various entries on the Arizona Department of Health Services official Facebook page, and was pleased to see literally hundreds of critical areas of public health concerns that the ADHS "team" works to contribute to in terms of everything from education, to expansions in (some) services, events and opportunities for children to engage in healthy activities, and oh gosh, I am a lost giddy over the complexity of it all. They do such a great job, covering every base imaginable, in such thorough fashion, and just look at those smiling faces, it's so overwhelmingly pleading to the eye that I….. Wait…. Critical areas of public heath concern? Events, opportunities? Smiling faces?
What in the hell am I saying? Have I finally lost track of reality?
Of course it is wonderful to know that the good folks at ADHS are putting out so much positive propaganda and involving themselves (the "team") in so much good stuff. But it only begs the question: If Will Humble and his various droogs are able to address myriad issues of almost ever possible shape and form, why in the hell can't they take an honest step or two towards ethically resolving the substandard care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital? For christ's sake, it's right there on East Van Buren! It never moves, fluctuates, or otherwise dodges attention, and yet the problems that I witnessed and experienced during my thirteen months of hospitalization at ASH have been going on since the dawn of time. It is like a nervous tic, it is a sore toe, a potentially quick fix right there, it and the problems associated with it. So why can't they see this? Why won't they fix it? What is the problem, exactly?
Why? What? I'll tell you why and what: Because seriously mentally ill/disabled persons are amongst the most marginalized human beings in our world, that's why. I don't know if this universally the case, from one culture to the next, and throughout the ages, but it applies today. People like me, and my peers at ASH, are quite literally swept under the proverbial carpet, kept at a comfortable distance ("As far out of sight as possible, thank you."), ignored, and even detested. I attest to having acquired- while at ASH- the awareness that mentally ill and disabled people (like me) don't generally rate so much as an even, fairly shared place in a line for service at a food counter. I saw this, I felt it, I was the subject of it. I was subjected to it, day in, day out. Otherness, alienism, freakishness, dehumanization. I was feared, I was shunned, I was less than human in the eyes of most ASH staff, and I deserved less than humane treatment in their views. And this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, even if they can't recognize it.
But I refused to accept it. I believe, too, that this was nothing short of a luxury, in comparison to how many of my friends at ASH experience "life" there. Many of them have been subjected to the consequences and impacts of their respective disability for a good portion of their lives. Institutionalization, too, does happen, and for these sorts of reasons, many of my peers at ASH knew no other way or had forgotten any other way to exist or be treated; while I, on the other hand, had spent most of my pre-ASH (48-49) years of life living as most reasonably privileged Americans do, with little to no fear of being treated like a nit (you hear that, Patel?) or abused or harmed by others, outside of the criminals on the streets. I was in, fact, and not too long ago, one of those who would cross a major street in order to avoid having to share the sidewalk with a man or woman talking to themselves, and I realized/remembered this while I was there, at ASH. It was an amazing and very disturbing array of self realizations and awarenesses to experience, my "life" at ASH, but my experiences there never pushed me off my own personal ledge of basic integrity (although, try they did try, the rat bastards, in every way I believe they knew how, through intimidation, abuse of authority, ridicule, and insult).
I survived ASH only because I knew then, as I do now, that my integrity as a person is so inalienably tied into my very presence here on this rock, that even the rudest and/or most ruthlessly power hungry staff person or doctor at ASH never so much as nudged me from my sense of self as a human being. It shook me up at times, and it aggravated my willingness to consider death as a better way to exist, and of course my feelings were hurt. But I refused to be like them, and I knew, that if I was not very, very careful, I would in life become just like them. Mentally ill people are, as a rule, systematically dehumanized by the majority of our given culture. This is common knowledge amongst the few, sadly: dehumanization, and stigmatization. It is the root reason for why congress enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act and explicitly included a variety of provisions specific to the rights of such, the mentally disabled. Because the mentally disabled are very highly at risk of abuse and unlawful exploitation, not as consequence of something nearly so obvious as physical disability (in many cases), but rather because of who they are in terms of personality and behavior; and it this aspect of the condition, mentally disabled, that creates the graphic disconnect between the healthy and the not so healthy in this specific context. Equally common is the undeniable fact that, if given the opportunity to avoid the fundamental precepts of common good in a civilized and contemporary society such as ours, certain forms of our own species will seek the easiest way to do things. They will cut every corner in the house, and evade every direct responsibility that they can, all in order to stay afloat. In order to maintain their status quo. So as to earn a living. All justifiable, in the minds of such people, on the basis of one dog eat the other, while always looking out for number one.
Such people feed on the weak. It is inherent in there way of doing things, and they have to find hidden away pockets in the given landscape if they are going to survive. They know this. So they learn, either through trial and error, or by field research and personal education, or for some of them, it comes through instinct; they acquire knowledge of where they can exist as they need to, and then they flock there, almost as one. State mental hospitals such as ASH are perfect examples of such places. "Public mental hospitals are still snakepits for abuse" (The Council on Human Rights, 2009). They are "health care" facilities managed by shortsighted, and far too often, corrupt state government, where the most vulnerable, defenseless, voiceless, and at risk (of abuse) clientele are kept. Sites where the otherwise unemployable can find safe haven (hear that, Akhter?), where their patient-clients cannot so much as raise their voice to a tone of frustration without being subject to punitive forms of unregulated power. Power that imparts itself through the actions of ill qualified "health care professionals" who effectively exploit the lives of human beings who are seen by far too many people, even today, as something other than human. Human, like you are human, and like I am human. Below, between cracks; beneath deserved respect, dignity, and heartfelt concern.
In the ADHS/BHS network- er, I mean "team"- of caregivers and service providers, the mentally ill patients at ASH occupy an obscured, at best, no man's land, mired deep in the tapestry of the state's most needy health care clients. Many of them arrive at ASH via the criminal courts, and despite reckonings in such venues that have come to determine that this person is not a criminal, this person is sick, that specific process inevitably leads to the belief that ASH patients are, in essence, convicts. It was not too long ago, in fact, that the parlance of the field- long term psychiatric patient hospitalization- actually employed that exact word to refer to anybody who just so happened to wind up in the nuthouse- convict, and I still find the word springing up time to time in my research today (although happily, that usually only occurs in relation to older text). So what you end up with, you see, is a pickle of an especially deadly variety; or a recipe for disaster, that is, and a guarantee of something far less than the norm. Something below the standard. Substandard. With substandard health care "professionals" who are so entrenched in selfishness or self loathing that they really have no choice but to conjure the thought: The expectations of greater society and culture be damned, because this is not the real world, this is ASH, and these people are insane, they are deformed in the brain, they are immoral at birth and inherently criminal in character, and nobody cares about them! Nobody else care about them, so why should I?
As already stated, this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, at some time or another, even if they can't recognize it. For their sakes, my friends at ASH, I may even hope they can't, for I can only imagine that it might be easier that way. But I also cannot deny the fact that some of my closest friends at ASH feel the pain and torment of this mistreatment just as vividly as I do, even today, almost 6 moths post-discharge. Day in, day out, they and I still do. I have friends at ASH who will be institutionalized for the rest of their given lives, and if things at ASH remain unchanged, these friends will live every day of their given lives in abject misery, and not due to the the worst aspects of thier illness, but because of the cruelty of the worst staff at ASH.
In Closing: So much for brief. If I was stupid enough to fall for Will Humble and the ADHS Facebook page's line of molded baloney, this would have been brief, I suppose. I am preparing to draft some essays about my experiences at The Arizona State Hospital for publication in one or another of the scholarly reviews that I have agreed to contribute some of my writing to. Essays, sort of like what I learned to love in junior high, only essays of substance, that I can write from the heart, rather than off the cuff, or from the hip. Essays, then, as I learned to write to near perfection in college honors programs, expository expressions of experience and awareness, with thesis' statements and structure. You want to hear my thesis in relation to this article (which is nothing more than on off the cuff essay, I will admit to that)? Here it is:
1) The good folks on the "team" known as Will Humble's Arizona Department of Health Services are so goddamn busy with remaining focused on anything other than one particular line of activity or service, that they are simply incapable, on any level, of slowing down enough to even consider something as bizarre as what I call common decency in the most uncommon places. As such, the Arizona Department of Health Services is a classic state division/agency, not at all unlike the DMV: Overstaffed, underfunded, and way too crowded with paper pushers and shortsighted mid level managers. Not to mention the corruption, state agency corruption, dereliction, and greed, good old greed.
2) While ADHS internal agency, Behavioral Health Services, shares each and every aspect of disarray that its parent so overtly displays, with the additional feature of being grossly under funded-underpaid and staffed by thugs and malcontents who are assigned the direct responsibility of caring for the full breadth of affairs and care needs of the most marginalized, vulnerable and at risk (of abuse and exploitation) population in the community. This goes right to the heart of my aforementioned recipe for disaster. TNT and nitroglycerine ass in one suit case of state managed activity. And while I cannot thank enough, the ones at ASH who do, in fact, meet the obligations of their positions (because, as I have stated time and time again there are many good people at ASH, but they are still the minority), far too many of them are bottom feeding sadomasochists, barracudas, dunces, and gorillas (the otherwise unemployable enmasse) who flock like deranged seagulls into the cavernous underbelly of this agency- ASH- where they can grovel in their ineptitude and depravity as one pulsating blob, covering each others backs, guarding all secrets ("What happens at ASH, stays at ASH- that's what HIPPA's for, remember?"), and swearing off second thoughts about anything, because who can afford to lose their job in this day in age?
Please visit my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas" article. Better yet, if you are up to it, contact your elected representatives, and do it in writing. Help me in getting those sorts of people involved. There is no better time than the present to pull all the stops out when it comes to these matters. Patient abuse is inhumane and criminal, and the associated failures of our state officials and their various staffers to directly address the substandard mental-medical care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital is 100% unacceptable in any reasonably civilized society. As though you need someone like myself to remind you of this. I am nothing special, but I am good enough to do the right thing, and so are you.
paoloreed@gmail
Prose
beautiful tree,
beautiful grandmother…
beautiful tree, leaning
strong tree, very very
and if upon me,
after pulling your feet
out of your earth
Beautiful Tree
beautiful tree,beautiful grandmother…
beautiful branches,
beautiful arms,
reaching out, touching sky
reaching out, touching air
feeding air, feeding me.
beautiful tree, leaning
over me, my own
beautiful grandmother
for this night, at least
her long and lasting strength
so, so willingly shared.
beautiful tree, bending
over river, through time
towards another shore
beautiful grandmother
for this night, at least
her long and lasting strength
so, so willingly shared.
beautiful tree, bending
over river, through time
towards another shore
will surely fall soon, too
soon will topple at the knees
pulling long embedded
roots from this earth,
soon will topple at the knees
pulling long embedded
roots from this earth,
she will fall soon,
beautiful grandmother
into this river.
beautiful grandmother
into this river.
to become a floating piece of wood
on a river that extends
to the bottom of the world
all rivers run to the bottom of this world
all trees reach for the sky, and
all things go, as all things grow- in time-
in time there is salvation
in salvation there is love.
strong tree, very very
strong, this beautiful tree
has shadowed and kept as its own
this spot, these fishes, these snakes,
turtles, ibis, heron, thrush, and beaver
beautiful grandmother to all
with two by fours nailed
into her back, and ropes, cables,
tires, and children
suspended from her waist.
beautiful grandmother to all
with two by fours nailed
into her back, and ropes, cables,
tires, and children suspended from her waist.
beautiful tree,
beautiful grandmother of all
if i were here, with you
beautiful grandmother of all
if i were here, with you
sitting as i do each night
with you as my keeper,
and if you were to fall
graceful, immensely rich,
the music in all stars will sing
then, at that point in...
then, at that point in...
and if upon me,
after pulling your feet
out of your earth
beautiful tree, joining water
mixing air, touching sky, you fell-
mixing air, touching sky, you fell-
the honor, unspeakable-
so thank you, beautiful tree
for your peace, your shelter
your animate persona, and
your softly swaying
leaf knowledge.
(pj reed 2012)
(notes: photo's 1-3, self pj reed, red river, la.)
paoloreed@gmail.com
so thank you, beautiful tree
for your peace, your shelter
your animate persona, and
your softly swaying leaf knowledge.
(pj reed 2012)
(notes: photo's 1-3, self pj reed, red river, la.)
paoloreed@gmail.com
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Random Notes: Sept. 18, 2012. As of Today…..
1) Will Humble is not available. Again.
As of today, and as to the ongoing unwillingness of Arizona Department of Health Services Director, Will Humble, to open his door to dialogue and feedback from members of the public such as myself, who have very recent, direct experience in terms of the flow of services at The Arizona State Hospital, nothing has changed. My latest comments to Humble's official blog site were not posted after I submitted them in good faith, and as always, the data contained on the site specific to public input is untruthful, as evidenced by the NO COMMENTS icon shown below. Why this man is going so far out of the way in terms of keeping his door closed in this context is beyond me, but it reeks of undue censorship, and almost as clearly suggests his complicity in keeping the truth out of the light.
Bottom line, as follows:
"A few weeks ago Cory Nelson did his in-person “State of the Hospital” presentations. Many of you were able to attend one and we really appreciate the dialogue and feedback we got. It’s impressive to see how much work our hospital team has accomplished in the past year." (END)
(Below are my comments to the article, posted by me on September 13, 2012.)
2) Joel Rudd turns on his own client.
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3) Failure to disclose public records.
Undisclosed CPS records downplayed
by Mary K. Reinhart, September 17, 2012
Questions remained Monday about records that Arizona's child-welfare agency has failed to disclose for more than a decade, but state and county officials generally downplayed the significance of the computer error that supposedly caused the problem.
The withheld information could include details of Child Abuse Hotline reports, services provided to the family and case notes from CPS workers and supervisors.
And the Arizona Attorney General's Office, which represents CPS in dependency cases, said missing documents likely would have had little impact on cases because attorneys for the parents receive the same information that the prosecutors have.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20120917arizona-cps-undisclosed-records-downplayed.html#ixzz26pvpwdbK
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4) A happy hello from India.
Sep 15 (3 days ago) TO: PJ Reed. RE The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse
Meditrina Hospital India has left a new comment on your post "UPDATE: Hot off the goddamned presses! Wherein, ne...":
'I agree with you. Hospital management should have payed attention towards it.
Regards, Best Hospital India
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5) Laxman Patel, "doctor."
paoloreed@gmail.com
1) Will Humble is not available. Again.
As of today, and as to the ongoing unwillingness of Arizona Department of Health Services Director, Will Humble, to open his door to dialogue and feedback from members of the public such as myself, who have very recent, direct experience in terms of the flow of services at The Arizona State Hospital, nothing has changed. My latest comments to Humble's official blog site were not posted after I submitted them in good faith, and as always, the data contained on the site specific to public input is untruthful, as evidenced by the NO COMMENTS icon shown below. Why this man is going so far out of the way in terms of keeping his door closed in this context is beyond me, but it reeks of undue censorship, and almost as clearly suggests his complicity in keeping the truth out of the light.
Bottom line, as follows:
State of the Hospital Sept. 12, 2012 by Will Humble
NO COMMENTS
(Below are my comments to the article, posted by me on September 13, 2012.)
Dear Mr. Humble: I am a former patient of The Arizona State Hospital, a tax paying citizen of Arizona, and a human being. Where can citizens of Arizona such as myself go to review the notes and record of the State of The Hospital presentation? I presume this record is available to the public, is it not? Please advise me of this as soon as possible. Thank you. PJ Reed.
I really doubt we will see any change of heart in Will Humble's attitude. He has somewhat entrenched himself in the same pile of horse droppings that the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals operates out of, and he must know it by now. I thus believe that he is somewhat frightened by the very real possibility that he, too, will be held accountable once these matters come to fruition as my work continues to evolve. Too bad for him, he could have really made a difference. But my concerns are not with his well being, they are with that of the patients at ASH, who are still suffering the direct negative and harmful impacts of this overall situation. Humble's cold shouldering of my attempts to create an open, transparent line of dialogue about the matters that I am sharing with the public only furthers my well formed opinion that he is just as dirty as the folks at ASH. And "folks", by the way, is a far too kind way of describing these rat bastards. I must in a good mood….
I really doubt we will see any change of heart in Will Humble's attitude. He has somewhat entrenched himself in the same pile of horse droppings that the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals operates out of, and he must know it by now. I thus believe that he is somewhat frightened by the very real possibility that he, too, will be held accountable once these matters come to fruition as my work continues to evolve. Too bad for him, he could have really made a difference. But my concerns are not with his well being, they are with that of the patients at ASH, who are still suffering the direct negative and harmful impacts of this overall situation. Humble's cold shouldering of my attempts to create an open, transparent line of dialogue about the matters that I am sharing with the public only furthers my well formed opinion that he is just as dirty as the folks at ASH. And "folks", by the way, is a far too kind way of describing these rat bastards. I must in a good mood….
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2) Joel Rudd turns on his own client.
As to the efforts of assistant AZ Attorney General, Joel "the mortician" Rudd, to unlawfully manipulate the mechanisms of procedural law in order to obscure and thus preserve the untruthful, criminal actions of ADHS employees, I offer the following example of his actions in this context. The following is a verbatim citation from his August 31, 2012, submittal to the court, entitled "Arizona Department of Health Service's Response to Appellant's additional statements." Herein, Rudd willfully demeans a TIMELINE document that was prepared by a state assigned human rights advocate, the document itself being a key element of evidence in support of the wrongdoing that I was subjected to as ASH patient. (I am the appellant in the case).
(5) Timeline
Appellant's Timeline consists of a chronological series of descriptions of documents subsequent to the Appellant's Sept. 02, 2011 single spaced 11-page "Appeal of SMI Grievance" in this matter. The Timeline is clearly a work of advocacy and cannot pretend to provide objective or complete descriptions of the documents. ADHS requests that the tribunal (the court) not admit the Timeline in the record, or, if the Timeline has already been ADHS requests that tribunal strike the Timeline, or in the alternative, disregard the Timeline in its determination of this matter. (page 5) Author: Joel Rudd
What a dweeb! The Timeline that Rudd refers to above was prepared by an employee of his client in this case, The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS). In late November, 2011, an ADHS Human Rights representative named Erica Schnitzner was assigned to investigate the evolution- to that point in time- of an utterly mismanaged investigation of my very serious allegations concerning the misconduct of several high ranking staff persons at The Arizona State Hospital; and in fulfilling the task assigned to her in this context, Ms. Shnitzner produced the Timeline document that Joel "the mortician" Rudd has so much problem with. This is classic bungling of the sort that I am well familiar with by now via my ongoing struggles to get ADHS and its affiliate state agencies to do their freaking jobs. As evidence goes, this Timeline document is a very well written, data based, and sound record of the procedural history of the case in question (#2012c-BHS-0338-DHS), which I took to hearing before Judge Kay Abramsohn, of the AZ Office of Administrative Hearings, on July 16, 2012. The court was informed that the Timeline was prepared on my behalf by an employee of the AZ Department of Health's Office of Human Rights (ADHS- again, the same freaking agency Rudd is representing in this case)named Erica Schnitzner, who is anything but a fly by night charlatan out to mislead anybody. All we (Ms. Schnitzner and I) sought in our preparation and good faith submittal of the Timeline in this matter was to provide the ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals (who have the distinct and undeniable responsibility of protecting ADHS clients rights) with as much directly relevant information as we could. None of the data in the Timeline document was poorly, unreasonably, or inaccurately cited; nor was it in any way irrelevant to the full breadth of actions that ASH administrators and ADHS Grievance and Appeals officials took in violating my rights in this matter, and we did not have any strategical intention whatsoever beyond our desire to lay all of the relevant evidence on the table for the judge's consideration of the case as it stands today. For Joel "the mortician"Rudd to characterize this evidence as nonobjective or incomplete is ludicrous on its face and extremely nonsensical, and Rudd's statements in this affair only serve to further illustrate how depraved this attorney is when it comes to violating his obligations to the citizens of Arizona. He is inept, and maliciously so, and in my opinion, this man needs to be removed from his standing as a pubic official, for he is a danger to the public. Bottom line.
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3) Failure to disclose public records.
As to my concerns about the fact that several of my primary caregivers at The Arizona State Hospital flatly refused to abide by well established federal and state guidelines in terms of my right to have clear access to my own personal medical records, as described in my September 13, 2012, article, Dear Will Humble, I am bringing in excerpts from an article published in today's (09/18/12) edition of the The Arizona Republic newspaper. This article is basically an update relating to the fact the another (other than ADHS/BHS)very crucial agency in the state of Arizona's public resource system, Child Protective Services (CPS), has been refusing or otherwise failing to disclose very critical records specific to their responsibility(s) as caregiver agency, assigned as they are with protecting the well being of Arizona's most critically at risk children. I am bringing the article to light because it has direct bearing on the significance of ASH's willingness to similarly hide the facts and related records in relation to my experiences at ASH. The records that ASH has engaged in refusing me are my own personal records, and the fact that the administrators at ASH are willing to suppress such information only goes to show that they are more concerned with hiding something that would potentially incriminate them and expose their substandard practices, than they are with meeting their responsibilities specific to my needs and rights. These problems are endemic throughout the entire culture of Arizona's public resources, including state government, the AZ Office of the Attorney General, and of course, the administrators at ASH. Machiavellian offspring, evil incarnate.
Below are the excepts of today's news story about the issue of unlawfully withheld records and documentation by the Arizona Child Protective Services agency:
Undisclosed CPS records downplayed
by Mary K. Reinhart, September 17, 2012
Questions remained Monday about records that Arizona's child-welfare agency has failed to disclose for more than a decade, but state and county officials generally downplayed the significance of the computer error that supposedly caused the problem.
The withheld information could include details of Child Abuse Hotline reports, services provided to the family and case notes from CPS workers and supervisors.
And the Arizona Attorney General's Office, which represents CPS in dependency cases, said missing documents likely would have had little impact on cases because attorneys for the parents receive the same information that the prosecutors have.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20120917arizona-cps-undisclosed-records-downplayed.html#ixzz26pvpwdbK
This is the same old bullshit, a childish (at best) effort to ignore the public's right to be as fully informed about the affairs of their community as is reasonably possible; and the willingness of the Attorney Generals' office, in this case, to characterize the missing data as insignificant is as glaring a representation of that public agency's depravity and lack of ethos as one might imagine, in my book. Whether or not they (the AG) think the data in the missing records "would have had little impact" has nothing to do with the rights of the citizens effected by this issue. But in the AG's opinion, it just does not matter. This conduct is grossly out of line in terms of this office's duties to the public, and in this specific case, it is all at the expense of Arizona's most vulnerable and at risk citizens… And children, at that. Only in Arizona, I tell you.
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4) A happy hello from India.
I hereby announce the rather pleasant fact that I have been contacted by a hospital in Nagpur, India, the Meditrina Hospital's administrative staff, to be specific, who apparently have some interest in my work in relation to the substandard medical-mental care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital. I suspect that my articles specific to analyzing why and how in the hell it is that licensed doctors, (including but not limited to several who I interacted with who were educated in foreign settings, such as India), in Arizona's sole long term public mental hospital could be so willing to carry on with their blatantly unlawful behavior there at ASH (and the likelihood that the cultural identities of such doctors underlie at least some of this very insidious problem)are what triggered this communique from abroad, and that is okay. The message form them was positive, albeit very brief, as shown below:
'I agree with you. Hospital management should have payed attention towards it.
Regards, Best Hospital India
Not much, but I will take it. It is good to know that we are getting the attention of health care professionals in as wide a range as possible, for the reform that I am dedicated to bringing about in the state of Arizona's behavioral health care system has national implications, without a doubt, and perhaps even international merit. All things, in their time.
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5) Laxman Patel, "doctor."
As to the Arizona State Hospital doctor who graphically mischaracterized the facts surrounding my having been incestuously sexually abused as a six year old boy by my 18 year old sister (see my 09/04/12 article of the same title shown above), I came upon something in my ASH notes that I find interesting at this time: In my very first meeting with my original primary attending doctor at The Arizona State Hospital, Dr. Laxman Patel, I shared with him the fact that I knew the family of a very nice man in Tucson who had been tragically shot and killed in robbery while managing his convenience store, and the minor coincidence that this family also has the last name, "Patel." Dr. Laxman Patel's exact words in response to this were: "Yes, some people form India do that kind of work, while I have chosen to spend my life helping people, instead." In no uncertain terms, I sensed that something was grossly wrong with this man's character as soon as I heard him say this. As most reasonably aware people know, Indias' social construct includes a very rigid caste system of biased economic distribution and related subjugation, and I sensed that what Dr. Laxman Patel was saying to me at the time, was that he is inherently better in terms of moral character than any man who might just so happen to work in a grocery store. Never mind the fact that the man who was shot, Mike Patel, was a very kindhearted man who I considered a friend. This doctor's obvious lack of decency in the context of compassion and open-mindedness shocked me at the time. Allow me to remind you, too, that this is that same doctor who declared in an initial assessment about me that the incestuous sexual abuse I suffered as a child came about after my older sister "allowed (me) to fondle her….." In this sense, my suspicions about Laxman Patel's questionable qualities as a man, much less so as a doctor, were right on point.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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