So yesterday was my deceased mother's birthday. She would have turned 56. She passed away 2/3/2001, when I was 12. It was the only day that my friend/roommate could take me to Ventura city to take of some errands.
On the 2cd he walked in on me while I was on the phone with a patient's rights representative and how I was explaining in detail exactly how one of the nurses had assaulted me sexually while I was kept overnight in the ER, in isolation, for a post-surgical infection. What was supposed to be a pelvic exam turned into tearing and bruising my vaginal area badly. The object used was covered in bright red blood.
I don't know why I wiped my tears away when the next nurse returned to do an ultrasound. I felt ashamed that I had been assaulted again.
So on the 3rd, yesterday, I went to Hillmont, or more Hellmont, to speak to someone about my severe grievances that I had about my stay. The emotional, mental, and physical abuse I suffered.
I walked into the front of the building, and I was a bit bewildered, I had only been on the backside of it mostly, so it was odd, and a kind man asked if I needed help. I explained I needed to speak to someone high up about the atrocious treatment that I had received while I had been there, and Dr. Fire replied that he was the man for that.
He was new in overseeing Hillmont, but he was already well aware that it was not a patient-oriented place, which is very bad for a place that is for suicidal and depressed people. Once he realized how much detail I had of the sheer amount of bad treatment he took detailed notes.
Alicia, an actual nurse, I have no idea how on earth she passed her board exams, was one of the worst perpetrators. The woman tried taking my blood pressure on my right arm 5 times, with me standing, my arm just hanging at my side, and when the machine didn't work, no surprise to me, she screamed at me to stop moving or I wouldn't get my medication, as if I were trying to act out. I just kept calmly replying, in a normal adult voice, that I was doing my best to not move. Finally she tried it on my left arm and it took it. I thought she was only a nursing assistant, but since she gave me medication, she had to have been a nurse, Dr. Fire said. Proper way to take a blood pressure, sit patient down, elevate arm to around arm level, then take the blood pressure, and don't scream at them.
She was a horrible c***. At anytime she could find some reason to yell at me, she would. Like when I was walking too slowly with my walker. I was only 2 weeks out from spinal surgery, which was on their computer filing system because they are part of VCMC, where I had the surgery! I mean, even a person who is uneducated in medication might think someone who had spinal surgery might not be able to walk fast all over the place!
It was after M broke up with me, simply saying he had no more feelings for me. Then my roommate and best friend wouldn't speak with me. I called every person in my contact list, no one answered. Then I called the crisis hotline, and they decided to commit me.
Hellmont made me more suicidal and more depressed than I was before I was admitted. My pain levels were off the scale. Sometime on Sunday 6/16 I was dismissed to my room and collapsed in pain, as I felt a bubbling in my spine and I screamed. Alicia began to yell at me to get off the floor and get into my room. I couldn't move for a while and her and another nurse were yelling at me and tried to get me up, causing me more pain. I suddenly felt that we have two nerves the run right down the back of our legs. I gasped and asked if we had two nerves that ran down that way, and they said, yeah, why? Because I can feel them now.
I kept telling the staff that they needed to contact my back surgeon, who is also a specialist in orthopedics and neurology, and they said that they would. So when on Tuesday I was frisked away for an x-ray I was a bit bewildered at the idea of walking all the way to the radiology department (like maybe 3-4 city blocks thru the hospital), but I was worried about this strange new pain. As I walked into the x-ray room, the man asked if I had ever had a chest x-ray before, and I was like, uh I just had one done like a week ago because I had a mystery sickness.
The nurse had taken the wrong person. Someone else with my name... She hadn't asked for my last name, checked my arm band, birthday, nothing. Thankfully I got wheeled back, and I got the wheelchair for a couple hours, of which Alicia kept yelling at me not to let other push me because they would hurt their backs.
A freaking device designed for someone to sit in and be pushed... no one is going to hurt their freaking back! Not even me probably! But people kept doing it without me asking, and I would get her fury. If she keeps working there, one day some patient is probably going to go attack her or something.
Many of the other staff members thought I was faking my back pain. Anyone who said something to my face, I explained that I had had surgery shy of 10 days previously, and they could even go look in their computer system to see it. My whole stay I had no pain management either.
Now, there came to be a crazy ass chick called 'Mary Jane' for some reason, although that was NOT her legal name posted up that I saw, so I will go ahead and use it freely, also because she is an insane criminal.
She spoke no English, and soon we, the patients on the ward, began to realize she was stealing shit.
Her room was right beside mine, which I shared with another girl. She asked me at lunch on Monday if I had moved her pants, seen them, etc. I said no, and asked her why, and she explained that she couldn't find them. I believed that perhaps someone had indeed taken them, and I was already thinking, wtf....
Later after dinner when we went to our room it was very obvious someone had been there and taken things, 4 of my panties were missing, 2 shirts, a sports bra, and more of my roommate's items.
Someone spotted the girl walking into her room, which was adjacent to us, carrying an item of her own, and it caused a loud stir, and she was locked in 'solitary' for a couple, yes couple, hours. Meanwhile my roommate spotted her sweater, and I saw some of my panties. And as they corralled the crazy young kleptomaniac I saw her wearing my sports bra and I told the.... Alicia ugh, who said it was too small for me... It freaking stretches you idiot.
Then another crazy young Filipino girl came in and she was wearing my shirt. I complained to Mario, a staff member who got it stuck in his head that because I have some college education I think that I am better than others, and he told me that I can't make accusations like that. Then she showed me the detail of the shirt, that she had a sweater covering, and I went over to him and explained, she just showed me the picture on the shirt, it's the Tomb Raider shirt I bought at Game Dude that went missing from my room.
She wound up taking the shirt off, and she was braless, in the hallway. So yeah, I got that shirt back, and some of my panties. Unfortunately my panties went missing again, along with a folder with self-help information, and a few toiletry items. Ms. Klepto had the panties in her room, and was no longer wearing my bra, so I was able to retrieve it. My panties and hoodie were soaking wet for some reason. I was freezing, but my roommate lent me her sweater, she was so kind.
So by the time Wednesday came I was carrying all my possessions around with me, where ever I would go. My roommate came to visit me and he was alarmed at the horrible care and the fact they kept letting the klepto back out into the halls of the unlocked rooms. On Thursday, my final day, I awoke to that crazy bitch studying my panties above my face, I freaked out.
"Okay, you're not getting out of it this time bitch!" I screamed, leaping to the door, ignoring the pain, leaning against it, she was hitting me and screaming in Spanish. Soon staff came, and I was like, here is proof she is stealing my things, she is in my room my panties in her fucking hands.
But she did more than that. She stole a dress, notebook, book, and my glasses that day. I have contacts to wear, and a back-up pair of glasses with the prescription a bit off, but they are so heavy they leave markings on my nose. She tore the cover off the book... the book the M bought me... No amount of money can replace that.
Ever since I left, even with a heavy prescription sleep aid and with OTC aids together I can't sleep until 5 or 6 AM I was so traumatized.
Getting to know that patients in the future will not have to suffer such horrible things in the future hopefully is something that my mother would be proud of me for fighting for. Dr. Fire, the one who took my complaints, he said I was courageous, that for me being here there are probably 20 others who are not speaking up.
Now on the fourth I am suffering more emotionally from other things. Severe radiculopathy, pain radiating down the limbs, and I am afraid that I am on the edge of incontinence, so such a severe brink that I won't leave the house, I have to be near the bathroom. I hate it.
As I was finishing this, I just found out that M contacted my roommate about items that he wanted returned that I had, a week ago. A full week. I have been worrying if perhaps if M was even doing okay, and here I find out that he is fine and dandy, but my so-called best friend merely forgot to deliver crushing news that I need to try to deal with ASAP tonight, because tomorrow is Friday! Friday is the day that he would probably come to get his things.
It just makes me want to lie, say, Cali sucks, screw all this, and hop on a bus, get off and OD somewhere out of the state line. No one really remembers me too much these days. People who often can't walk are depressing to be around.
So I am a self-mutilator, too... I did a number to myself last week, and it's not healing. I'm not sure if I should go to the doctor or not. It seems like it might be mildly infected. Heh mildly, I've been doing this for far too long. I have my step-mother to thank for that. It was because I didn't have any alcohol on hand to sterilize the razor or my skin I bet.
My step-mother said I was not harming myself right, hitting myself leaving bruises, scratching myself where it would scab later, she then showed me how to do it 'right', and did it to her arm. It bled and I could only think in my head, wow that is so unsanitary. So I began using razors and scissors that I would sterilize.
So once M broke up with me, he's been playing this ignoring me game.
Silence can be one of the most painful things that you can hear.
Nothing can be one of the most painful things that can be done.
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