In the Arms of an Angel

Sometimes still, emotions overwhelm me. I try not to burden my kids with them but I also don't try to hide them and pretend like I am okay. That burdens them in an entirely different way that they don't understand and may blame themselves for. So when I am hit they often see it.
Sometimes we talk about it. And sometimes that is good because they are so sweet, they have insight, and it helps them knowing they are helping someone else.
Today, I was once again hit hard by the realities... and I swear they have hit me a thousand times in a thousand different ways ...leading me to believe I've already got it solved and have worked through all the possible emotions, yet I am still being hit in knew ways even by old revelations. Part of the reason for this is that now I am actually strong enough to see and accept the truths and realities of what was happening and how I was being handled.
Today I had a conversation with my son. I am so sorry and sickened by the feelings I had for a man that broke me and then set me up.
I am sickened by the reality that I was trying to protect him when he was actually doing things to intentionally set me up and make me look bad. When he held all the cards and had all the power he built a fictitious illusion of me and then made sure to document it in my medical records so that later he could accuse me of stalking when I was actually trying to get help while trying to protect him...
My son.
My 14 year old son.
What a beautiful person.
I share a bit of why I am breaking into tears, again, today after having to look through my records in an attempt to get things sorted and fixed -which is proving to be an impossible task because they hold all of the card and they have all of the power.
My son calmly and intelligently tells me about how power hungry and corrupt people can be. He is 14.
We are not overly religious and have stepped back from religion lately. But I am spiritual and I feel concern that I may not be doing a very good job of helping my kids connect with their higher selves, a higher power, and a higher purpose. I mention something about why it is so important to live a Christ centered life, or at least keep him in our hearts.
My son surprises me as he tells me about heaven. He tells me that I will go there automatically because of how I loved and tried to protect those that were causing me harm. He says I have proved myself.
What a beautiful thing to say and the way he did; which was much better then I can and am reiterating. I am so grateful for him. I don't know if he is right and I likely still have plenty of time to progress or digress into either side of my own duality, but on some level I know that he is correct and my very tender heart is taking comfort in knowing that my tenderhearted human peers that have been heartbroken and betrayed by those they love, forgive and try to protect will ultimately find peace and reprieve in the company of the angels that are looking over us and helping us even when we have forgotten them. And in the company of true angels that we already know here, like my son, my daughter, Renée, CP, and so many others...
And today I thank God and Christ for their redeeming grace and for sending Their love to and through my son. And I hope that others may feel that same love coming to and through me because it is meant for them as well.
"Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much"
-Helen Keller
In the Arms of an Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Ringing Reminders

Sometimes I just wish the ringing in my ear would stop.
Sometimes it does, but only for about 25% of my awake time. I usually can ignore it, but that does not make it go away. I have not been able to associate anything to the times when it stops, like sleep, exercise, etc. it seems to be very random.
And at times when I would like to believe that I am fine and healed, it is like the nagging internal voice of reason constantly reminding me "see, I told you so, I told you there was more going on with your brain than just a concussion."
It annoys me. I want to punch it.
But I'm sure you see why that would not be very helpful.

Isolation

Isolation is really bad for mental health and yet that is exactly how our communities, society, culture and individuals (and even ourselves) seem to respond to people when they are having mental health problems. 
When will we ever learn? Will we ever learn?
The people of Brazil, at least communities we encountered in Rio, handle it differently and it seems to be much more effective and fair:
https://amicrazy2.blogspot.com/2020/02/redefining-crazy.html

Arguing Both sides part 2

I am fighting my brain today.
And my emotions.
This is why I am saying goodbye to arguing both sides. The laws are stacked too heavily in favor of the medical institutions and providers for the way I was treated to ever be okay.
Especially because the reality of my condition was very difficult to manage and the realities of my decreased abilities are extremely difficult to accept.
Limitations that are so discouraging.
Losses I have to grieve.
...
Maybe that is what today is; grieving.
I'm battling my brain...that feels survivor guilt and the realities of limitations and losses.

"Life is Pain" Says the Dread Pirate Roberts, who happens to be Wesley.

Grief is not a straight path. It is never over when we think it is.
But worse than that is the TBI consequences. The reality of mood instability. The new and added difficulties with focussing. The impatience and irritability even when I am not irritable or impatient. The expectations that I just can't meet. How hard it can be to process new information. How reading has become difficult. Aging beyond my years.
"You do require more sleep" and "even something as simple as bonking your head on the refrigerator door will cause you significant problems"
There is great power in knowing. There is validation and hope that comes with proper diagnosis. But I suppose that does not entirely take away the reality of the problems you face and the losses you have to grieve.
And no-one who has not been through it themselves can ever fully understand the powerful, profound, and unfair effects being terminated and discarded by a therapist due to countertransference has on a person., especially when you are experiencing transference. If this is simply how it is  handled then that is terrible, abusive, and the system needs to be changed.
Follow that with what happened to me and, Nope, there is no more arguing for the other side.  Doing so I am not being fair or kind to myself.
I am a victim whether I like it or not... and I do not like it, nor do I want to accept it. But
Justifying and excusing them only further victimizes me. There was no good reason for it, especially since they were paid to help and protect me.
I will be strong again and I will keep fighting.
But today I am grieving.
And giving credit where credit is due. To me and my kids and my husband
and to others that have helped me out of that bottomless abyss.

Keep on Keeping on

Yesterday was an easy rough day.

I had physical therapy for my hand at 8:30 am which meant I had to get up at a reasonable time. That is difficult due to medication. Also I did not get to bed early enough nor did I sleep well enough and that did not help. 

Hand physical therapy is always surprisingly exhausting. The myofascial release techniques that Hand Whisperer uses are especially interesting in how I can feel it in my brain. Often my eyelids and head feel heavy and droopy from it. 

Then I got to talk with a parent of a student I work with. It was a good conversation, nothing stressful. 

After that I took my son to his physical therapy appointment. I have developed a casual friendship with one of the ladies that works there so we chatted for a bit. Then I went for a walk/run, while my son was busy with therapy. 

I have not been running as regularly. Mainly because my hip acts up when I do and it bums me out. But yesterday I ran, tackling some hills and while it did feel good the hip did not like it.

Upon returning to collect my son, his therapist gave me an updated and we chatted about that for a bit.

Then it was home and I had intention to get stuff done. 

However, by then, my head was starting to low hurt which means my brain needed a break. 

I debated on what to do for a brain break to settle my head. I considered a nap because that seems to be the most effective but I really don't want to be so reliant on naps and painting sounded satisfying. Knowing that head aches usually require the more effective break to turn things around most efficiently I figured I'd laid down. But I did not fall asleep instantly so I decided it meant I needed to paint.

Unfortunately the mild headache never went away. 

I managed to get things done, chat with a friend and update a sister over the phone, but the more difficult tasks, once again, went undone. 

This is one of the effects of TBI that really bothers me. I cognitively tire out so quickly. And then it becomes even more difficult to process reading, new information, what people are saying, etc. 

I am extremely lucky that I do not have to work a regular job and that I have been able to take time to heal. I am very grateful for how my husband provides for our family. He has carried us in so many ways lately. I feel bad for those who do not have these same luxuries. Yet, it is still quite disgruntling to be faced with just how much of a deficit I am running on these days and is can make it extremely difficult to find the motivation to keep working towards goals and aspirations especially when your efforts now require so much more effort and yet have gone largely unnoticed, very misunderstood, unsupported, and you feel powerless to make changes where you know they really need to happen.

Sooo... here I am again, blogging it out... Or am I procrastinating?

So much in my head, so much that I know, with nowhere to go with it but here. 

And of course this (the last statement) is not entirely true and I will keep working toward changes I wish to see in this weird wild world that we live in. 

And I will keep hoping I might help others in some small way through my honest blogging of the realities we face as we sort our tragedies and traumas in an effort to gain better psychological health.  

Arguing Both Sides: Part 1 The Magnificent Masterminds of the Medical Malpractice Model

Even still my solving brain continues. I may be slower than I used to be and maybe others have already figured this out from my story but my stable processing brain -that is still trying to figure out what my responsibilities are, how hard I want to keep working to solve in a way that eases my mind and consciences and helps in an overarching way- and my mind that now craves some level of justice [preferably through reform] has recently had an epiphany.

An epiphany, that looks more like a puzzle that is finally coming together to reveal the secret of the whole picture that was hidden in plain sight within all of the small and scattered individual puzzle pieces.

The epiphany that came when I considered writing a letter myself to the attorney that claims to be representing a few of the IHC individuals and the Neuroscience Institute. 

The Epiphany that told me this would be a bad idea 

and here is why:

That lawyer does not care about me. He, very likely, does not care about them either. He most likely cares about his pay check and probably his ego too, and listening to me in a way that will help me (and them) is not in the best interest of his paycheck. Not only that but -and I may be going out on a limb here- I’m guessing he makes more $ the harder he has to work to defend the medical providers he works for. …

… ?!?!!!!

Flashbacks:

•   "I could loose my license because of you," says Dr. He but I do not understand because I know I had done nothing to make that true and I know the threat is not coming from me. He could not loose it because of me unless I pursued some serious actions to make that happen and I had not desire or intention to do that ever. It did not make sense. So my possible fallacy was thinking the threat must be from IHC. After all he had also said "you don't know the other side of things."

• Friend who has been a nurse for IHC for years is explaining their policies and how they are trained, [or conditioned] to handle mistakes if they make them, “If we make a mistake we are not supposed to talk to the person. We have to deny it because of all of the frivolous lawsuits...”

• Another friend who has worked at a non IHC hospital for years, “… they can’t admit they made a mistake and they are especially not allowed to talk to the patient about it if they did because of all the frivolous lawsuits.”
• Others who have repeated similar reports of how they are expected to handle mistakes.
• My discoveries time and time again and being told by attorneys and others about "Torte Reform" and how "the laws are stacked in their favor." Reading the Utah Malpractice Act and seeing just how heavily they really are stacked in their favor and how heavy our politicians have made the Burden of Proof on patients and their families - patients that are already suffering physically and psychologically from conditions that led them to the medical providers in the first place and that the medical providers have then made worse.
• The many conversations with my Attorney friend in which he has explained that there has been significant studies and research that proves there are significantly less lawsuits when doctors admit they made a mistake and work with the patient to correct the problem.
• This information, found here https://www.dkowlaw.com/practice-areas/medical-malpractice, that states:

“The American Association for Justice summarizes the findings from key peer-reviewed sources on the extent of medical malpractice and medical errors:
-Some 440,000 patients die every year from preventable medical errors. [Journal of Patient Safety]
-Preventable medical errors cost our country tens of billions of dollars a year. [Institute of Medicine]
-One in three patients who are admitted to the hospital will experience a medical error. [Health Affairs]
-Studies of wrong site, wrong surgery, wrong patient procedures show that “never events” are happening at an alarming rate of up to 40 times per week in U.S. hospitals. [Archives of Surgery]
-Medical negligence lawsuits amount to just one-half of one percent of all health care costs. [Congressional Budget Office]
-Medical negligence cases represent well under 2 percent of all civil cases. [National Center for State Courts]
-Researchers at Harvard University found that 97 percent of cases were meritorious, concluding, “Portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation are overblown.” [New England Journal of Medicine]”  I wonder, of those 3% of non-meritorious lawsuits how many won? And how many of the meritorious medical negligence cases how many of those actually won?

• My thoughts time and time again of, “What exactly have I stumbled onto here?” as the cover ups, mistreatment, and refusals to clarify and talk with me continued despite my best efforts to help them understand I was “just trying to figure out what was going on with my head.”
•  "they are setting you up" pointed out to me, by family members that work within/for two of The Systems.
• The warnings Dr. She has given me about “what they will put you through” coupled with her observations of them and me, and her hope that I am strong enough to fight this battle and to seek justice, but her careful and very limited encouragement for going the "legal route."
• "I have the power to check that box," said by a medical provider as a threat to my friend who had been abused and betrayed and who had already lost so much and not been protected by the Legal System.
• How people are terrified to be on the wrong side of IHC.
• Dr. Tangled, who was, "not afraid to report," until it came right down to it and coincidentally after she "poured over my medical records." It is worth noting that one of her own had also misdiagnosed me, even before the Neuroscience Institute had.
• this article: The Missing Victims of Healthcare Fraud
• https://amicrazy2.blogspot.com/2019/01/my-scarlet-letter.html

...
Sooo many pieces to this perplexing puzzle….

And I see, very clearly, a very significant part of what was and has been happening to the other side of this story that has led to such a debacle of me.

The attorneys. The high powered, best of the best, clever and articulate, well paid attorneys that work for the hospitals and medical powerhouses.

The attorneys that know the Systems and how to work them best of all. The attorneys that know how to debate and know how to cunningly convince people to support their position regardless of right or wrong.

Is it they who have the medical providers eating out of their dirty little palms; seeking protection, from the fallacies of their own thinking that were inception style planted and then nurtured by those sneaky experts who imposingly and imperiously fed those fallacies to them in the first place? Those Medical providers, Now slaves, to their fictitious fears that are fed by the Masters from the fattened flesh of their own ever increasing attorney fabricated fallouts and fallacies.

Maybe I need to state this more clearly.

The attorneys that are paid significant amounts of money to protect medical providers are very likely the same people that train them on “how to protect yourself from malpractice suits,” when there really is no need for this or, at very least, training and policies need to drastically change because the laws are written to the degree of "no need to worry about malpractice suits.” It seems the actual medical providers do not know or understand how well the laws  are stacked so heavily in their favor that a suit against them is virtually impossible for a patient to win no matter how bad, frequent and obvious the malpractice is. Heck, nearly impossible to even find someone to try and represent you for arbitration.
Are their attorneys the the tale spinning masterminds that have your medical experts convinced that patients (you) are the enemy? Are they the reason providers are convinced that we, the patients, are completely unwilling to forgive or be reasonable in addressing mistakes when they are made? Are they the reasons practitioners and providers refuse to see or accept that they made a mistake? That last one may be sheer doctor ego, but I am guessing there is plenty artificial ego soothing and stroking done by their attorneys to keep them confident in their continued progression down the malpractice path.

I am certain they are The Ones that our providers consult when they have made a mistake. SO what advice do YOU think these Legal Experts are giving to our highly valued, beloved, and trusted providers that may have made a mistake with you?

Hmmm, When do they make money? When do they make the most? Whose best interest do they have in mind?

As long as your medical provider continues down the path of malpractice their attorneys keep getting paid. AND (my guess) the bigger, worse, or more obvious the malpractice is, the more the doctor will need the lawyer and the more $ the lawyer will make. I am sure it also strokes the egos of many to be able to say they won in an obvious case of malpractice. 

Plus IHC has the funds to outlast most of us in a court of law. 

Do you really think they are being given "legal advice" that is in the "best interest" of the patient or even in the best interest of the institution or medical providers that are currently so disproportionately protected by the laws?

So maybe, there was some innocence to my beloved betrayers after all? Maybe the manipulations were more significant elsewhere? 

And maybe our doctors are being indoctrinated to believe some very wrong and very harmful things about us, their patients, just so attorneys can collect the big bucks by preying on fears and fallacies that they, the attorneys, planted and then nurture.

Arguing Both sides: The other side part Intro

If you are following you know that I had a moment where I thought not to argue both sides, however I have learned so much through this wild ride that I would like to fully share what I have learned because I think it important for people to work together instead of against each other as much as we possibly can. I believe it a core value of mine and it is what I was trying for the entire time I was being malpractice on.
So I will argue both sides, which is really an understatement because there are likely far more than two sides to this story which may just be why it became so convoluted when both sides were trying to find a simple or overly simplified solution to a multifaceted problem that is far bigger than just me and my problems.
In other words: this arguing both sides will likely need to be a series (or a book because) there really are so many factors effecting both sides.
To start I would like to state, for the record, I want it to be clearly understood that I know my medical providers made mistakes with me. And not just one, but many.
I believe the providers at the Neuroscience Institute made the biggest and most dangerous mistakes and part of that is because they are considered the experts in the field, at very least they claim to be experts on concussion. Also they have all the providers I really needed there, but they did not refer me to the neurologist there. This is kind of a big deal. Especially with TBI and what I was experiencing and especially as I started manifesting even more significant evidence of possible misdiagnosis or under-diagnosis.
It is clear and their is sufficient evidence that they made mistakes early on and they made mistakes multiple times. Dr. Concussion made significant mistakes and Dr. He made significant mistakes. I first  did not think it, then I suspected it, then I came to know it. BUT even once I understood that they had in fact misdiagnosed me and made significant mistakes, I  did not feel or want either of them to loose their license or be punished for those early mistakes.
However, after going through what I have it would not be unreasonable, and honestly I believe they probably should, loose their licenses for how I was handled and treated as a result of their mistakes. I believe the entire facility should loose their licenses and credentials for continuing with malpractice, perpetuating numerous forms of harm, and working to cover things up and even to set me up to appear to be things I was not (like stalking), at any cost to me, all in the name of "protecting" themselves, which was never needed. Especially considering their positions of power over me,  how heavily the laws are stacked in their favor,  how they held all of the cards, AND especially considering how very vulnerable I was. 
The only person that needed protection was me.
The only institution that needed protection was my family.
But we did not matter.
....Now you might be thinking, "this does not seem like arguing the other side" and you are correct, so far I am not. In fact my emotions are starting to rise again as I try to reiterate what I tried to tell them a million times, that I had no interest in hiring a lawyer, I was not trying to get anyone into trouble, but that I was just trying to figure out what was going on with my head.
And I will be honest it is very difficult for me to argue the other side devoid of emotion. I will also be honest and tell you that when I try to, as I am now, I find the anger surge because the injustices are so clearly wrong and even so simplistically stupid that it becomes infuriating that these intelligent doctors and professionals are so indoctrinated in their fallacies and errors of thinking that they would act so malevolently toward a person as broken and vulnerable as I was.
Flashback: "I am okay with being wrong," he tells me after I proclaim rather cheerily "I think you are wrong." Myself referring to how things were ending as he was terminating and I was leaving, once again mistakenly empowered by his eluding to countertransference and the dismissing of mania. I did not fully understand what he was wrong about or how wrong he really was, but I knew something was wrong and I knew he was wrong about me in some way. The super powers of mania really are quite spectacular and real to some extent -which is part of why it can be so difficult for people who have experienced it to loose those and be okay with letting them go.
Flash forward again:  He was and is clearly wrong and it is not okay or fair to be so wrong about me and then spread those errors to a damaging and defamatory degree all while I really was dealing with so many things like PSTD, mania, and a physically broken brain.
... derailed now, I will confess in my effort to once again give them some sort of benefit of the doubt and show how the corrections could easily be made it is hard not to become triggered, to feel superior, or to loose increasing faith in humanity because they absolutely and stubbornly with no regard for me (their former patient, ally and advocate, even their former number one fan) refuse to even discuss the matter with me.
Sooo it seems, my first attempt to argue the other side, turned into something else. I do hope you can see and understand why. But staying true to letting it be, the processing, even when not so pretty, and rather honest and raw, I will let this be... and call it my Intro.