Mere Experiments are the SPAB

I was already in bed but still not asleep when I got the call around 10ish. “Your mom fell out of her wheelchair at the dialysis center. She began complaining of a headache so she was taken to Bill Tush Hospital in an ambulance.” It was the nursing home…again.

My response, “She leaves dialysis at 8. Why are you just now calling me?”

“We were just informed and contacted you as soon we got the call,” is the nurse’s lame ass answer. I’m sure they knew much sooner than now.

Since this second-hand information is questionable, I call Bill Tush Hospital.

The emergency room rep explains, “We had her transferred to Tush Medical Center on Harrison Blvd. She was hemorrhaging on the brain and we’re not equipped to handle that here”

When I get to the hospital, mom is sleeping. Nothing about her looks injured to me.

The doctor is asking her questions. “Do you know what today is?” She responds correctly with her eyes still closed.

I ask, “Why won’t she open her eyes?” The doctor says to me that this is normal for an injured patient who suffers with diabetes and mental illness.

Even before becoming a resident at the nursing home, Mom had been committed too often, after refusing to take her meds. Each time she got committed, she would say, “They just want to experiment on my brain. I don’t want them operating on my head.” I tried constantly to convince her otherwise. Once she’s better and home again I’d ask her if she remembered the stuff, she said and did, prior to being committed, she never did.

The doctor continues asking mom questions. “Do you know where you are?” No response. “Do you know who the President of the United States is?”

“Obama.” Mom says. Those were her last words for the following three weeks.

The doctor says they’re gonna wait to see if the hemorrhaging stops on its own. I pray that they do not have to operate on her head, especially since she wasn’t able to speak of these fears this time.

Hopefully, the outcome would be just as pleasant as the last two when she tried to overdose and again when she supposedly fell in her assistant living studio apartment. A rep at the facility claimed she fell and hit her head on the doorknob. Seems to me like they could’ve come up with a better lie than that. I believe someone cracked her skull open. She had to get 17 stitches on her scalp.

“But the doorknob is a lever that swivels up and down at the slightest touch,” I report to an attorney. The only reason I even felt confident enough to talk to an attorney was because a doctor in the emergency room snitched. “Blood tests shows your mom has Seroquel in her system.” I stare at her as though she’d transformed into my worst fear-a sinkhole. Seroquel causes her severe dizziness and even locked jaw. Well, this would explain why she really fell, if she really did.

“But she’s allergic to Seroquel and they know this at the facility because on the spine of her chart it’s written in bold blood-colored letters,” I blurt out to the doctor. She looks at me as if she wants to say something more, but walks away instead.

“Well now I’ve learned that the assisted living staff has been giving my mom Seroquel.” I tell the same attorney, figuring now the bastardly medical staff at the senior home will get what’s coming to them for trying to kill my mom. But none of this information convinced him we had a case. He said there’s no way to prove any of what I’m telling him, especially since the emergency room doctor won’t return my calls.

This is to be expected since I already know there’s some sort of code of “misconduct” between attorneys and attorneys and doctors and doctors and doctors and attorneys. Apparently, my mom’s case is one not worth breaking the code for, which is often the case for a SPAB. I told you I trust no one in the medical field and now I want to add certain attorneys to my distrust list.

I didn’t just come to this conclusion, about doctors, from my mom’s awful experiences but I found backup in books. After reading Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us into Patients by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels, plus hearing various stories told to me by other people, I find it increasingly harder to believe anything medical professionals tell me. Even the author of the book says he was censored by the medical mafia and legalized drug lords. I’m paraphrasing but you know what I mean. They didn’t want him to write anything at all, because educating the public equals fucking with their money. But enough is written to make those of us with a brain able to connect the sickening dots (some pun intended). Thankfully he wasn’t found dead due to some mysterious car accident like some of the research scientists who found the cure for cancer ended up. More stuff I watched in documentaries.

You should check out all of them as soon as you get a chance. It will blow your mind. Did you know the real reason the medical industry gets richer isn’t because so many are sick but because of the fear they instill into those who may not even actually be sick? But worst of all, it’s the sick poor and Black society who don’t stand a chance of maintaining good health or recovering from illnesses, either due to no insurance, inappropriate insurance or just because they are too ignorant and poor to be able to know or even do better.

Anyway, after leaving the hospital that night I figured mom will sleep it off and be better in the morning. Not so. I get another call, from a medical staff claiming they needed my consent by phone to drain the blood from mom’s hemorrhaging brain because it was starting to swell.

I return to the hospital to see my mom looking like a modern-day female Frankenstein experiment gone bad. Head shaved bald, both eyes swollen shut, a knot on top of her head, her face and body were bloated, it was as if they’d pumped fluids into her instead of sucking it out, a breathing tube was down her mouth and her twitches of discomfort made it all look even worse.

Since she remained alive through all that, they decided they needed to take her back into surgery. Her having a neck brace wasn’t stabilizing her broken neck enough, which, by the way, was in two places. They wanted to operate to place pins in it so that it doesn’t get worse.

So, I agreed figuring she’ll pull through this too, as she’s done with other crap she’s gone through. But of course, when I asked them why didn’t they do that when they took her into surgery the first time, they had some fraglenackle bullshit excuse. But I know the truth is they found another good reason to run up the bill.

God, I hope my family doesn’t end up like most poor Black families. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, doctors and scientists never consulted the family as they stole and sold Mama Henrietta’s cells and pocketed billions of dollars by using it to cure the world of various diseases. Those lying thieves didn’t give the family a penny. Or, like in the book, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones, where public health assholes lied just for the sake of learning more about how the disease affects SPABs. You really should check them both out.

Anyway, mom’s damages seemed more like someone slammed her to the ground. I asked a nurse, “Have you ever seen anyone with these type of injuries from just falling from their chair?”

“No. I’ve seen damages like this from people who had fallen down stairs,” she says. Finally, a response among the staff that feels sincere.

But the other nurse, little miss Cindy Brady look alike has this inappropriate minute grin, as if she’s enjoying our pain. She comes in stating, “I want to assure you that we are doing all we can to get your mom better.” What makes her statement more annoying than soothing is prior to her coming into the room I had just told my siblings that they may have made mom’s injuries worse than they really were. This was just the beginning of several conversations between family members, which was brought up again only minutes later by doctors and nurses entering my mom’s room. I’m convinced there’s a camera somewhere.

So, I intentionally start saying derogatory shit that would have them coming in immediately afterwards, as if they expected me to wither like a water starved flower. They don’t give a shit about saving mom. To them she’s just another experiment on another old SPAB woman.

This time a doctor comes in repeating shit about my mom’s health as if this same bullshit hasn’t been discussed already. But what’s different this time is he sounds as if he’s churning back some bits of hostility. I avoid bursting up laughing in his face by shifting my attention to an inaudible television program. But then my brother, sister and I give each other glance over eyeballs and raised eyebrows as confirmation that these motherfuckers really are spying on us.

“Do you guys have a video camera in this room or can you listen in on our conversation?” I blurt out to a nurse, who’d just walked in for the new shift. I was hoping to catch her up. She doesn’t flinch as she responds with the straightest face any liar could ever convey, which is more deny and lie bullshit.

But they got me back for asking that question. “The only way your mom will be able to return to the nursing home is if she gets a trachea so that the nurses can keep her lungs clear of mucus so that she doesn’t drown in her own fluids.” The doctor says this as if he was asking if we needed our parking tickets validated. This new information hit my entire body like it was being defibrillated. There is no way my mom would want to live like a vegetable. Her exact words: “If I ever become a burden to yall, where I can’t do nothin’ for myself, just let me go.”

“Since you’re refusing the trachea there is nothing else that can be done for your mom at this point, we suggest taking her off life support.” The doctor encourages. Now they’re really pissed that I’m refusing to let them continue experimenting and running up the bill on this SPAB. My brother and sister agree with the doctor’s suggestion a bit too quickly for me.

“I don’t understand what’s the rush. She’s been through many bad injuries and pulled through them all,” I tell them in the process of convincing myself.

“You have to take into consideration not just her injuries but her age now,” is the doctor’s response. Outwardly I’m silent. Inwardly I’m telling mom you have to prove them wrong, again.

During the night I dream mom is limping, with a brace on one leg. It’s like she’s going through therapy. I believe strongly in my dreams. They are always a premonition for my real-life circumstances. I wake up and call my sister and brother. They both convince me that I’m just suffering from wishful thinking. Again, I feel defeated.

Every day I visit mom and remain from sun up to sun down. After a while me and various family members make arrangements to take shifts. Since my niece went to visit mom one morning it freed me to go the Barber shop.

I’m sitting in the chair when my phone rings. It’s my niece crying and frantically explaining, “I just walked in and they are doing CPR on granny. I heard them call code blue as I was heading to her room but I didn’t think it was for her.”

All I could think about is I refused to sign the Do Not Resuscitate documents so now more health issues are mysteriously occurring, requiring them to resuscitate her. Mom already told me, years back, that she did not want them pressing into her chest because she’d heard they break ribs doing it.

“I’m on my way,” I tell my niece.

Now I’m finally convinced that this is a bigger battle than mom has ever dealt with. But once again I’m also convinced that they did something to cause her heart to stop. How convenient. Just as my niece was coming in.

Here again, I’ve seen a documentary where a mentally twisted nurse was giving patients medicine, which caused several of her patients’ hearts to stop. The nurse was doing it for the mere enjoyment of resuscitating them.

I’m feeling even more helpless now because I know mom’s heart did not stop on its own. But how and who’s gonna help me prove that these doctors are the least bit interested in restoring my mom back to better health. They are really ready to get rid of her now since they can’t get me to agree to allow them to continue experimenting on her. So now more issues continue to conveniently occur.

I’m finally left alone with mom for longer than I’ve ever been since she’s been here. I tell her, “Ma. You have to wake up…pleeeease. I miss us going shopping together. I got all the way to Walmart only to cry in the parking lot, and go back home because you weren’t with me. I know you’ve suffered so much in life but you’ve fought and won every battle. Please do it one more time just to prove these bastards wrong.”

She opens her eyes wide, looking at me and says, “Heeeey!” The same words she yelled every time I, or anyone she loved, would visit her at the nursing home. But then she closes her eyes again and it was as if nothing happened. Were they controlling her mind with electrodes, like in those science fact movies? Now they’re messing with me, wanting to make me look like the crazy one.

I am so sorry mom that I was unable to stop them from experimenting on your brain as you always feared. But the rich, patriarchal, powers-that-be has won again, as you predicted they would. Everything you said about them sounded like you were merely being paranoid, which is what they diagnosed you with, but now I know better. I sincerely hate that that was your last word to me and the last time I’ll hear your nonrecorded voice again.