My mama passed away in late February, my birthday month and almost two years to the day I moved her in with me. The immense grief has gradually decreased, as I read and was told it would do. But some days, the grief, and the guilt and sadness associated with it, hit me intensely. It combines with my “PTSD.”
I say PTSD because of the intensity of the painful memories and feelings I experience and relive at times. Partly situational, there are a number of things that can trigger it. Most recently, it has been facilitated by the arrival of the cold weather.
The cold is a raw reminder of the time my mom was homeless, living in a car, for around two years. The whole ordeal was traumatizing and depressing. I would, in fact, be put on an anti-depressant for a short time then.
In the Central Valley of California, the weather is similar to that of a desert. In the summer, it gets hot, over 100 degrees many days. In the winter, it gets cold, into the 40s and below freezing at night.
Making it through the cold winter nights was very difficult for my mom. She would have to turn on the car and run the heater throughout the night. How I hoped the car engine or heater wouldn’t go out from her doing so! My mom was tough and, actually, didn’t complain much at all. But she’d of course ask for help at times.
A letter from mom
In a letter she wrote, asking me if she could come live with me, she specifically mentioned the difficulty of surviving the cold. I bought her blankets and clothes to help and checked in on her regularly, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t know, given her serious mental illness, but I suffered too.
I had tremendous trouble sleeping during cold nights, knowing my mom was out there. It was agony. And just stepping outside in the cold weather would strike me with dread and despair. The first winter my mom was homeless, I lost a lot of weight. By the second, my stress and anxiety reached the point that my doctor suggested I take a leave from my job.
The cold weather arrived a few weeks ago, freezing temperatures this past week. With it at times, the feelings and memories of those two years. Each time, I’m there again, in that time period, in a moment, seeing her and hearing her suffer in some way and feeling the dread, agony and heart break all over again.
If it’s not the cold directly, it’s seeing homeless people trying to survive it, like the woman I saw as I drove to work the other day. In a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, I noticed her as she sat up. She sprung up and made a facial expression of great discomfort and pain, mouth wide open, eyes closed, like a silent scream. That moment took me right back to my mom.
Me and mom before Thanksgiving dinner at a Marie Callender’s in ’15.
At these times, and whenever the grief is great, I take deep breathes and try to remember all that I did to help and take care of my mom. That includes advocating for her fiercely when she was homeless. And I’d still visit her when I could, including for Thanksgiving. I’d usually take her to Marie Callender’s, her place of choice for the occasion.
In a few days, it will be the first Thanksgiving without my mama. I’ll miss her company. To help get through it, I’ll be spending it this year in the warmth and company of my extended family, my aunt (my mom’s sister) and cousins. It’s what my mama would want: warmth, instead of cold, connection, instead of estrangement, hope, instead of despair. I’m trying, mama.
I haven’t been too motivated to blog. In fact, it has been three months, since my last post. It can be time intensive and I don’t receive a lot of traffic on it, but I should just write to get better at writing, I think sometimes.
A book I’m reading, given to me by a dear friend.
Besides, eventually, I may want to write a memoir or screenplay and writing regularly can act as a kind of journal of my life to help with that. I already regret not writing more about my experiences with mom or video recording her more when she was alive, after all.
And the number of views and followers shouldn’t really matter. As my experience with my mom taught me, even if you reach or save just one person, the love and value expressed in that transcend space and time. There is no big or small. And it’s the love shown for others that help one protect themselves.
Given this newfound perspective, I’ll be writing a new post in the next couple of weeks. It will be on a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for months: my experience as a caretaker for a parent. It’s unique and the story should be shared.
For some context, know that many mental health advocates are parents and many of them are caretakers for their children, who are recovering from serious mental illness. Parents, understandably, feel an undying loyalty to protecting their children. But what familial and emotional obligations do young adults hold for their parents?
As my boss has told me, I put my life and career on hold to try and help and take care of my mom. And, frankly, I don’t think many young adults would do what I did. As my mom’s heart doctor told her a couple of times when my mom was being uncooperative and defiant, “I hope that you appreciate what your son is doing for you. Many sons would not do this for their mothers. I know. I’ve seen it.”
I miss my mom, but I don’t miss her suffering. And caring for her was exceedingly difficult, since my own health suffered and declined, including my own mental health. In talking to my therapist, it turns out that I have chronic depression, dysthymia. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as chronic depression, until I was told in a grief counseling session.
While visiting my dad in Fresno last weekend, I told him I started seeing a therapist for my depression. I explained how it feels and how long, I believe, I’ve been living with it. A grey cloud in my head has been discernible since at least ’07. That was the year I started to try and get help for mom.
Fishing on calm waters with few people around is one of my favorite hobbies.
My dad listened mostly. I figured he’d be understanding, even though I know he has trouble understanding why I’m grieving, as much as I am, about mom. I told him specifically about two times late last year when I had trouble getting out of bed. That had never happened to me before. It no doubt occurred when it did because my mom’s health was declining and so poor, due to her kidney disease. He seemed the most concerned about me when I mentioned that.
I, also, told my dad I don’t need medicine for it, but that I do need more things to look forward to. I asked him to get the boat ready to go fishing. He said he would. He charged the batteries on it today and surprised me by saying, on the phone, that he was thinking about buying a bigger one. That brought a smile to my face. “Sounds good! Let’s go shopping!” I replied. That will definitely help get me through the year.
Since my mom passed away 5 months ago, I readily admit that I’m experiencing an existential crisis. My mom needlessly suffered a long time. Going back to when more obvious signs of her serious mental illness (SMI) began showing in ’03, we are talking at least 15 years.
As my mom’s health worsened, I’d have to check in on her when she was sleeping more frequently.
My family and I had to helplessly watch her suffer too. For me specifically, I watched her suffer every day the last two years that she lived with me. Not a day went by that I didn’t deeply worry she could die or slip into a coma, so grave was her physical condition. Her psychiatric condition was such that I had to watch my mom live in daily distress. She was a prisoner to her delusions and hallucinations.
Her 8 days in hospice went well enough, all things considered. But for us, specifically our relationship, there was no real closure. You see, we couldn’t tell my mom she was coming home from the hospital to die. She didn’t want to die.
I nervously made conversation with her when she arrived back at the house from the hospital. It was difficult to find the right words. It usually was, talking to mom.
Me: “They [the hospice] came suddenly for you, huh?”
Mom: “Yeeaaa,” she replied disapprovingly.
Me: “No more hospitals?”
Her: “I hope not,” she said dejectedly. She loathed hospitals and was very tired and weak, after stopping dialysis.
Me: “OK,” I said. I didn’t tell her my full thoughts, though. “OK mom…no more hospitals.”
My counselor says I’m doing surprisingly well. I attribute it to my family’s strength and fortitude, particularly my mom’s. What a fighter she was! I, also, attribute it to the grieving and heartache I experienced all those years prior to my mom moving in, though.
The first year of the two she’d spend homeless living in a car, for instance, was probably my lowest point. Getting through that intact helped me weather future storms.
Still, I know my ability to find adequate peace and happiness, moving forward, will largely depend on my ability to understand my mom’s suffering in a way that provides me comfort and mitigates my deep anger and sadness. This is largely a spiritual inquiry, I realize
I don’t really know where to begin, though. I’m not religious in the Christian sense, at least not anymore. My mom loved the Lord and she instilled her love and understanding of the bible’s teachings to me and my sister from an early age. Going to college, as it can do to people, made me more secular, though.
There was a time in my early twenties that I considered myself an atheist, in fact. As time went on and I reached my late twenties and early thirties, I became more agnostic. I don’t doubt part of that change occurred from the heartache I endured, seeing my mom’s initial onset and then condition deteriorate over time.
Ueshiba praying and giving reverence to nature and the divine.
I’d gravitate a bit towards Buddhism, mostly through my training in Aikido, a martial art. The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, consciously developed Aikido as a physical embodiment of his spiritual views and principles. He specifically adhered to Shintoism, an ancient Japanese religion. By the time Ueshiba began practicing it, though, it was heavily influenced by Buddhism. There are definite similarities.
Like Shintoism, there are many deities and prayer rituals in Buddhism. My interests, though, are in cultivating certain principles and “states of being” valued in Buddhist philosophy such as empathy, peace and harmony with others and the environment, and being in touch with the present/one’s surroundings. I’ve found developing these very useful in helping me deal with immense stress and anxiety.
Indeed, I believe both my Aikido training and study of Buddhism helped me become more aware of my internal emotional processes. This allowed me to better mitigate my pain and fear, my depression essentially, through the years, especially during the time period when my mom was homeless.
This isn’t to say I didn’t ever pray or show reverence to Christian tenets and practices. I prayed with and for my mom. I even visited a Catholic priest with my aunt years ago to get insight as to what was happening to my mom. He assured us that it wasn’t demonic possession (I already figured as much.).
This continued when my mom moved in with me in February ’16. When I prayed, though I may have said the word “God,” I didn’t really pray to the Western, biblical one. To the extent I was praying to something at all, it was to the universe or to my ancestors. I prayed at times to my grandma, my mom’s mom, to help us in some way, too. I essentially prayed to anything that could and would help. It didn’t seem like anything was listening, though, at least at the time.
Now that my mom is gone, I’m trying to remain as open as possible to the spiritual possibilities and facets of life. Admittedly, I contemplate from time to time that there may very well not be anything greater than the physical world and, maybe someday, I’ll draw that conclusion. But right now, for me to accept that entirely would lead to the most cynical and depressing states of mind.
Fortunately, my perception has, also, changed already, in a way that allows me to see things anew. I truly believe my mind and senses are the clearest they have been in years. This has made some of the journey a bit more painful, as the depths of my mom’s suffering are easier to see and feel. But it has also helped me see and appreciate certain events as something greater than mere coincidences. In other words, as assurances from the universe, and even maybe my mom, that things are going to be OK and that I do have help. I wasn’t able to see this before.
To share just one example: After some mulling, I decided to buy the cemetery plot next to my mom. While we buried her in the same cemetery as her parents, she’s immediately surrounded by strangers. I didn’t feel comfortable with that, ultimately.
I didn’t realize it right away, but the account number I was assigned for my plot is “5150.” I couldn’t believe it when I noticed it on the paperwork, while sitting at my office desk at home that day. It’s not an exaggeration to say that that sequence of numbers fully characterizes the nature of our relationship for the last 10 years. 5150 is the California legal code for involuntary hospitalizations and something I would try to have done to my mom multiple times, in the hope she would be stabilized.
If my mom was trying to send me a message, that would be a way she’d do it. She had a sharp sense of humor and was definitely blunt when she needed to be. When I saw the numbers, I just smiled, shook my head and said, “OK mom. Good one.” I didn’t feel like she’d be mad at me, though she’d despise me trying to hospitalize her, while she was alive.
After all, she used to like to tell me that someday the “truth will set me free.” She’d say it in reference to her delusions and hallucinations. They took a very religious form. When I’d get frustrated, I’d sometimes throw it back at her. “The truth will set you free, mom.” I can only hope that she would know and accept the truth now.
To touch on some science, I know the mind can see what it wants to see. But events like this one seem too improbable to accept as just coincidences. And I know one thing is absolutely certain. That things like this, patterns or connections between events and my family’s history, didn’t happen before my mom passed. If they did, my mind and heart weren’t open to them. The suffering and depression were too great. An event like that above, I’d just as likely interpret as more “bad luck.”
That was confirmed as much by a Buddhist counselor that spoke on trauma at a recent meditation workshop. He said that people need adequate breathing space and refuge, in order to cultivate their minds, bodies and spirits. He’d go on to say that people who are in life and death circumstances, especially those who have developed trauma, have a much harder time cultivating the calmness and clarity (i.e. being present) necessary to make and feel connection with people and the world/universe around them.
The center piece to my family altar. My family’s ethnic and racial heritage and history are themes.
Heck, when I think about things in hindsight sometimes, I now see that, as hard as things were, things worked out OK for us in many ways. There’s also the “coincidence” that my mom nearly passed away exactly two years after she moved in with me. It was like the universe or God was saying, “I’m or we are watching and with you.” That was confirmed recently by the pastor of a local church my mom and I attended. In assuring me that my mama was looked after, even through her sickness, Pastor Lyn said, “Jesus is behind us, beside us and in front of us through our trials.”
Whatever the “truth” is, I’m grateful I’m finding some solace in things I’ve experienced and seeing things anew. Little rituals, like honoring a family altar I put up in my living room, help too. I don’t know where this path I’m on will end. But I do know that as long as I let my love for my family and principles, like justice for the poor and misfortunate, guide me, things should workout. I got through the worse of it, after all, OK. I’m pretty sure both Jesus and Buddha would agree.
It has been a little more than three months since my mom passed away. Sadly, her scent is virtually gone from her room, but I am doing the best I can to honor and cherish her memory. Indeed, this is a central part of my healing process.
I try to visit her grave weekly in Madera. I’ll usually stop there for around thirty minutes, while on my way to visit my dad in Fresno. On special occasions, like Mother’s Day, I’ve stayed for more than an hour.
Last Friday, June 1st, was her birthday. Mama would’ve been 67 years old. For the occasion, I dressed up and took her a dozen red roses. She loved roses. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to enjoy them for around the last ten years of her life. She, in fact, didn’t want any roses or plants near her because she thought that toxins could enter her body through them.
That’s what my mom’s untreated serious mental illness made life like for her. She literally couldn’t stop to smell the roses. Every day for her was a struggle. Seeing her suffer and deteriorate was a living nightmare for me.
One of the first things I did after my mom passed was throw out all her medicines. At any given time, my mom was taking around ten different ones for her various serious conditions. She was prescribed dozens of different ones in recent years. This includes “anti-psychotic” drugs like Zyprexa and Risperdal, but she never stayed on those long enough for them to have any effect on her.
The Risperdal was, ironically, prescribed to her during one of her last hospitalizations in January. They had never bothered to try and treat her SMI before when she was hospitalized. Predictably, she refused to take it after the first dosage because it made her feel drowsy.
I actually told the hospital staff to not give or prescribe it to her. What was the point? Why prescribe her psychiatric medicine without her being under the active care of a psychiatrist? The hospital didn’t even bother giving us information as to how to find one. They prescribed it anyways. It was waiting for me the next time I went to the pharmacy. Money, money, money! The game is rigged in the favor of the pharmaceutical companies.
Anything left from her week in hospice I threw out immediately too. My house and her room are going to be a sanctuary of peace and good health only. I returned pictures she had placed in plastic bags and drawers to keep safe from “being stolen” to their original locations. I placed her personal possessions, like her Bible, to prominent places on her dressers and book shelves. I bought a house plant for her corner table because I want something alive and beautiful to be in there.
These rituals and acts seem to be helping me. The feelings of guilt, which experts say are inevitable, are subsiding. Increasing my physical activity, reconnecting with extended family and attending counseling are all helping too. My trauma counselor told me yesterday that it was like I was in a war and I was the medic, the frontline and the commander all at the same time. I know it’s going to take great effort and time to calm down from that and sort things out.
An art piece I bought and placed in mama’s room.
He also said that I’m doing really well. I like to think it’s because I have my mom’s fortitude. She was so strong. Her faith never wavered! I, also, like to think that I have her guidance now. I’m asking her for it every day.
My world has been turned upside down. I’m starting a journey without the constant anxiety and fear of what may happen any minute to my mama. That struggle went on for at least fifteen years. I know she’d want me to do what makes me happy. I’m trying, mama.
The homelessness crisis in San Francisco has put a spotlight on another crisis, the plight of people with serious mental illness (SMI) who are too sick to help themselves.
According to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), approximately 3.3% of the U.S. population (8.3 million) live with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
As any SF resident knows, the intersection between homelessness and SMI is a significant one. According to TAC, around 30% of the chronically homeless are reported to have a SMI.
Of course, mental health services for this group are available. But for too many, they are inadequate, if not impossible to receive. In fact, about half of people with SMI are untreated at any given time. Without effective treatment, too many are left to suffer in the streets or their cars, under bridges or subway tunnels.
To address this crisis, local State Assembly representative Scott Weiner, with support from SF mayoral candidate London Breed, is sponsoring SB 1045. The bill would make it easier for a court to place a conservatorship on individuals who are deemed unable to adequately take care of themselves, as a result of their serious mental illness. As a former conservator, I understand they are absolutely necessary for many people with SMI, but Weiner’s and Breed’s solution falls well short.
In socially liberal San Francisco, from Patient and Disability Rights groups, to the ACLU to social justice activists, the bill has plenty of critics and opposition.
Yet, how humane is it to let people with SMI suffer from psychosis, and in many cases, untreated and deepening psychosis? The research is clear that the longer people go without adequate treatment for their SMI, the more difficult it is for them to recover. This group is also extremely vulnerable to physical and sexual violence. On Twitter, Wiener regularly makes this point.
And the reality is current law already allows authorities to involuntarily hospitalize (i.e. 5150) someone. Part of the problem is that the legal concept “gravely disabled” is interpreted far too narrowly.
Basically, one is gravely disabled when he or she is unable to provide food, clothing or shelter for themselves, as a result of their mental illness. However, authorities, from police officers to field clinicians, often say that homeless people are “self-directing” enough to not warrant a 5150 hold “as long as a person on the streets can say where they are going to sleep for the night,” even if it means sleeping behind a dumpster.
This despite the same person endangering themselves by running in traffic thirty minutes earlier and not actively being under psychiatric treatment for their known SMI.
Weiner’s bill recognizes this absurdity and includes a person’s medical and psychiatric history in evaluating whether or not a person needs to be involuntarily hospitalized and placed under a conservatorship.
Where will these people be treated, however? As mentioned above, about half of people with SMI are untreated at any given time, meaning their chances of experiencing acute psychotic episodes are very high. They will require immediate stabilization. For many, that means both medical and psychiatric stabilization and treatment.
Are there enough inpatient psychiatric beds available for the necessary medium to long-term stays? Nationally, the number of inpatient beds available has been slashed in the U.S. over the course of many decades. For example, from their historic peak in 1955, the number of state hospital beds in the United States had plummeted almost 97% by 2016.
This no doubt has contributed to the fact that prisons and jails are the biggest mental health treatment centers in the country.
Beyond a small number of advocacy organizations and outraged family members of loved ones with SMI, nobody talks about this national disgrace. As one such family member, imagine my surprise when I learned SF mayoral candidate Mark Leno makes this very point.
From his webpage: “Mental health policy experts recommend supplying 50 in-patient psychiatric beds for every 100,000 residents in the total population. In San Francisco, that would add up to over 430 beds. And yet, a 2016 policy analyst report showed that San Francisco only offers 163 beds.” He goes on to say that he will add 200 inpatient mental health beds, doubling the supply.
Without doing this, Wiener and Breed are putting the cart before the horse. At worse, it looks like they are trying to appease business interests in the city that want the streets desperately “cleaned up” more than they are trying to help those with SMI and their families.
Because you have to wonder, why is this all of a sudden an issue now? No SF official was interested in helping me when my mom was living with me in SF in ’09. In fact, SF General Hospital released my mom prematurely on more than one occasion, even though she clearly needed psychiatric treatment. They fail to treat or release people prematurely because they don’t have the bed space. A representative in SF Behavioral Health told me as much. I was her conservator at the time and the city failed to help me help my mom.
So again, why? Yes, part of it is the increase in the homeless population. The other part is the “nuisance problem” being caused by increased homelessness. It is hurting the business climate, plain and simple. This should not be the main basis for helping people that are homeless, especially those with serious mental illness and addictions.
The U.S is ranked 29th among 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in supplying psychiatric beds. It is a sign of inadequate healthcare, not freedom.
“The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.” –Michel Foucault
Despite my family’s best efforts to care for her and make sure she received adequate medical and mental health treatment, my beautiful mama passed away prematurely on February 27 at the age of 66.
My mom at around eleven years old
My mom was the daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers and the youngest of eight children. She graduated from high-school and received her Associate’s Degree from Fresno City College, despite having to work in the fields with her family starting from a young age. She would marry her high-school sweetheart, my father, shortly after his return from the Vietnam War.
My mom was a devoted wife, mom, sister and aunt and would defend her family fiercely from all injustices and dangers. One of my earliest memories of her protecting me involves her confronting an older boy who was bullying me when I was in first grade. In talking with him, she convinced the older boy to act as a bodyguard for me against any further bullying from anybody.
When she was not busy working or advocating for us in our schools, my mom enjoyed hosting and feeding extended family and our friends. Whether with her lasagna or albondigas soup, my mom would regularly showcase her excellent cooking skills. Her menudo was particularly good. To this day, my dad adamantly says he has never had menudo as good as my mom’s. In recent weeks, my cousins have reminded me how central my mom’s love, charisma and generosity were to our larger family’s closeness and happiness.
My mom also loved and served the Lord dutifully. Indeed, the two things that made her happiest were being with friends and family and praising and sharing the “word of God”
My mama with my sister and me.
with others. Her faith in and love for God shaped most of her relationships and many of her decisions. The joy she expressed in her faith would provide the ultimate benefit to one of her childhood friends when they would reach their 20s. My mom gave her friend religious testimony and counseling that literally saved her friend from a dark, depressing time. I learned about this in the tribute my mom’s friend gave at the funeral service. “I wanted that joy,” my mom’s friend said.
While the immediate cause of her death was kidney failure, I know the main culprits are a negligent and abusive healthcare system and callous and inhumane government. My beautiful mama began exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness as early as 2003. She began claiming people were out to get her and that microchips and hidden cameras were being used to track her movements and interfere with her thoughts.
After years of witnessing her neglect her diabetes and put herself in dangerous situations numerous times, I began intervening to try and get my mom help in the summer of 2007. By then and much to my agony, my mom was hearing voices and talking to herself. Little did I know how virtually impossible it would be to get the help my mom desperately needed.
My mom and me at my graduation from U.C. Berkeley.
From top to bottom, the healthcare system showed a constant disregard for my mom and our family. Medical doctors and hospitals had little patience and sympathy for someone who frequently would become distrustful and non-compliant (Patient Dumping from a Son’s Perspective). Skillful and caring counselors and psychiatrists we’d interact with were few. Even then, there was little they could do, given my mom did not believe she was ill and refused to take psychiatric medicine.
And while there is a legal basis to involuntarily hospitalize someone against their will, authority figures would regularly find my mom “self-directing” enough as the reason for them not to take action. For example, numerous police officers would say like pre-programed robots, “A person has to be lying down naked on the railroad tracks for us to take them in.” Hospital social workers would ask me “What does your mother want?” when I would request a psychiatric evaluation. Me saying “She wants to be with her family,” would garner little sympathy.
When she was homeless and living in a car for a time, I pointed out to a representative from the Californian Department of Public Health that she meets involuntary hospitalization legal criteria, since she was homeless as a result of her mental illness. I was told that, “Technically, a car roof is a roof over one’s head.”
Mom and me visiting Monterey, CA in Dec. ’17.
Ultimately, in the end, though they were claiming to respect “civil rights,” they all were actually aiding and abetting a system that refuses to provide quality psychiatric hospitals and treatment and, instead, prefers to leave too many people to suffer, estranged from family and friends in the streets or thrown away in jails or prisons.
I moved my mother in with me in February ’16 because I could not continue to see her suffer and estranged from the family she loved and did so much for. I lost my mama twice, the first time to her mental illness and the second time, years later, to her physical illness. I was never able to have her be a fully healthy part of my life during most of my 20s and all of my 30s. Now I am 42 years old and will have to figure out how to rebuild and live my life without my beautiful mom.
Mama was laid to rest wearing her favorite peach dress and white sweater and the necklace I bought her for Christmas.
I am currently seeing a grief counselor and it is clear I have a lot of trauma, emotions, and anxiety to work through. What will help me heal and prosper are the strength and courage my mom showed through her adversity. She never wavered from principles or lost her faith in the Lord or her will to live. I hope to become half as strong and half as principled in my life, particularly in my advocacy for a better healthcare and support system for caregivers and families. We deserve better. My mama deserved better. We love and miss you mom.
Last month, a concerned passerby posted a video on social media of a young woman named Rebecca being unsafely discharged from a Maryland Hospital. Public outrage was so widespread and swift, the CEO of the hospital released a statement, within a few days of the incident, stating the hospital is “taking full responsibility” for their failure.
Newspapers from coast to coast ran articles on other incidents of “patient dumping” in the immediate aftermath. The Sacramento Bee, for instance, ran this article: Hospital dumps senior at homeless shelter.
Largely missing in the coverage and accounts, however, are details about what transpired inside the hospitals that led to such egregious outcomes. Is it incompetence or negligence? Who in the hospital is to blame? Are policies and laws contributing factors?
As a son of a mother who suffers from a serious mental illness (SMI), I’ve experienced several unsafe discharges and hospital mistreatment of my mom firsthand. Like Rebecca, my mom has been wheeled out of a hospital in the middle of a psychotic episode. Certainly, part of what makes people with SMI so vulnerable to this inhumane treatment is that many of them don’t believe they are ill. They often refuse or stop psychiatric treatment. When they stop taking their psyche meds, psychosis inevitably follows. As Cheryl, Rebecca’s mom, told CBS news: “She has to be on meds, otherwise she has psychosis. She will have a manic episode.”
In my mom’s case, she harbors deep delusions and paranoia about the medical system as part of her serious mental illness. She believes medicines are poison, so is prone to stop taking them at any given time, for example. This is all reinforced by voices that she hears: The Meds Are Poison Again
Over the course of the last five years, both my mom’s physical and psychiatric health have substantially deteriorated, due to her lack of self-care/adherence to treatment. Hospitalizations have become pretty regular events, as a result. While hospitals are limited by their own policies and government laws, and patients have the “Right to Refuse” treatment, on multiple occasions more should have and could have been done legally, procedurally and ethically to help and treat my mother.
Between 2012-2015, my mom was hospitalized at least a dozen times in Kern County and neighboring areas. For two of those years, she was homeless, living in a car. When I could, I’d travel down from San Francisco to be with her. I was mostly sidelined to talking with doctors and nurses on the phone, though.
As it turns out, I didn’t even know about most of her hospitalizations. I only found out about them by recently acquiring her medical records from various hospitals. Since moving my mom in with me in February 2016, I have seen the process play out three times firsthand. I have a unique experience and vantage point, so to speak.
Patient In, Patient Out
Like clockwork, starting on day four or five, hospitals begin to make clear that they want my mom discharged. The physical therapist usually gets deployed at this time (A patient has to have a minimal amount of strength to be safely discharged.) and the case manager and doctor start discussing discharge plans. This is the very time table I’ve experienced, even when my mom’s vital signs aren’t stable and she’s physically very weak.
This inevitably leads to breaches in ethics and law. In a 2012 incident, for example, a Kern County hospital would have discharged my mom unsafely AND illegally, if not for my presence and direct advocacy. The attending doctor wanted my mom to begin taking insulin as part of her treatment plan. One problem: my mom had developed cataracts, so was incapable of administering the insulin shots to herself. The doctor and I agreed that she should go to a skilled nursing facility for assistance.
Despite this, the hospital was planning on discharging her on what would have been the fourth day. Upon talking to a Director, it became clear the Director was ignoring the doctor’s treatment plan and placement recommendation. She told me that my mom could just continue to take oral meds! I told her I expected my mom to be placed in a skilled facility until she was able to administer the insulin herself and that I knew discounting the doctor’s treatment and recommendations in a hospital discharge plan is legally prohibited.
The hospital acquiesced reluctantly. It’s hard to imagine this absurd situation happening if my mom was wealthy and not on government insurance. Whatever the exact reason(s), the hospitals are obviously trying to minimize costs.
During Psychosis, Inhumane Treatment is Policy
I should say at this point that my mom has never been successfully treated for her SMI. Suffice it to say, the chances of her experiencing an acute psychotic episode when hospitalized are very high. In this state, she will start openly accusing the hospital staff and doctors of trying to kill her. She’ll begin refusing her medicine, try to pull out her IV, become hostile and sometimes a bit combative. She’ll, also, often times try to leave the hospital on her own accord.
I’ve seen this happen, firsthand, and can only imagine this was par for the course when she was estranged from me. And while I’ve always known that hospitals were limited in what they could do to my mom when she’s having an acute episode (They’re not psychiatric hospitals after all, right?), I have quickly learned that they regularly and consciously do much less than they can to stabilize and keep her safe, despite her psychosis.
I experienced this directly in December of 2015. My mom was hospitalized due to respiratory complications related to her congestive heart failure. Like so many times before, she had stopped taking her medications. She was almost completely non-responsive by the time she arrived and was immediately placed on a respirator. On day three, upon my arrival, I would find out that her glucose was above 700 when she was admitted!
On day six, merely two days after being taken off the respirator, my mom began to have an acute psychotic episode. We were essentially abandoned by hospital staff when it became clear that my mom was going to continue to refuse treatment, after pulling out her IV line. Her room was directly in front of the administration desk, so there was no way, given the commotion, that the charge nurse and other supervisors weren’t aware of what was going on.
The hospital staff left me in the room alone with my mom, as she became increasingly agitated and began demanding that she be taken home. I requested a psychiatric evaluation, in the hopes that she would be considered a “danger to herself” and placed on a 51/50 involuntary hold.
Under CA law, a 51/50 authorizes the involuntary hospitalization and possible treatment of someone experiencing a psychotic or suicidal episode. I say possible because a person can be involuntarily hospitalized, but may still be released without undergoing treatment, as has been the case several times with my mom.
As we reached the two-hour mark of this crisis, it became clear that the hospital didn’t want to take any real responsibility or time to help and treat my mom. At one point, the night nurse, who had just started his shift, was willing to restrain my mom, after seeing my mom almost fall trying to get out of her bed, but was overruled by his supervisor. Eventually, my uncle would arrive, after being called by my mother. The hospital would use his willingness to aide my mom in their desire to wash their hands of the situation.
After some argument, the administrator contacted the attending doctor in order to help decide what to do.
As the audio indicates, I ended up arguing with the charge nurse about having a mental health (MH) crisis team (“Metro Evaluation Team”) to come to the hospital to do a psychiatric evaluation on my mom. Hospitals have their own psychiatrists, but in some counties like Kern County, MH crisis teams are also available. I was told they could go to the hospital by an operator I talked to with the county’s MH crisis line. I had called the crisis line about an hour before, just moments after my mom took out her IV. As one can hear, however, the charge nurse denied that the MH crisis team could do that. She went so far as to misrepresent the involuntary treatment process in her argument.
When someone is going to be involuntarily treated for their psychiatric illness, they are first medically stabilized. This way, the doctor can be sure there isn’t an underlying medical problem causing the psychosis. She referenced these steps in the process to claim that the Metro team couldn’t psychiatrically evaluate anyone at a hospital at all, unless the person was medically stabilized first.
My argument was there was no reason why my mother couldn’t remain there to be stabilized before she was transferred to a psychiatric facility, assuming the MH crisis team deemed her needing involuntary psychiatric treatment. It’s possible she misunderstood the process herself. I find it more plausible that she intentionally misled me. Either way, she didn’t even bother to call the MH crisis team to get clarification or advice. I couldn’t call the crisis team myself. The hospital is required to make the call. That’s common policy in many counties that utilize MH crisis teams.
My mom would be effectively denied a psychiatric evaluation, even though she was in the throes of an acute episode. The charge nurse had actually placed the order for the hospital psychiatrist, but in the end, effectively deemed my mom “mentally competent” enough to have her sign herself out “against medical advice.” The administrators obviously knew medically/physically that my mom was not well enough to leave the hospital, so were insistent she sign the form. The hospital would supply my mom with a wheel chair and have the nurse wheel her out to a waiting cab. The nurse would tell me minutes later that he was ashamed of what happened.
Shortly after this incident I moved to Stanislaus County and moved my mom in with me to try and take care of her. I’ve managed to greatly reduce the frequency of her hospitalizations, but three have still occurred under my caretaking. Compared to Kern County, my experience with hospitals here has been very similar. The discharge is rushed and the hospital becomes neglectful, at best, when she starts to become resistant to treatment. When I requested psychiatric evals during her first two hospitalizations, I was met with the same determined and concerted opposition I experienced that day in Kern County. Whether it was the charge nurse or the hospital social worker, hospital admin and staff insisted she didn’t need one.
My experience clearly suggests that it’s standard practice for hospitals to duck responsibility for a patient’s well-being when that patient experiences a psychotic episode. After all, if hospitals are willing to neglect and jeopardize my mom’s health in front of me, just imagine what they do to patient who doesn’t have a family member or someone to advocate for them during their hospitalization.
Cheryl stated that her daughter had been missing for two weeks before she saw her on the video. Since then, fortunately, Rebecca has started receiving psychiatric treatment and is reported to be doing better. Clearly, other and better options are available, as this case has shown. And even with my mom, we just recently experienced a different, better outcome in her most recent hospitalization a few weeks ago.
My mom was restrained for the first time ever in her history. The difference? Apparently, her having a catheter attached to her jugular to begin dialysis. She attempted to pull on it when she was in an acute episode. The countless times she has pulled out her IV lines and has tried to walk out of the hospital, despite being medically unstable, have never proven to be enough, in contrast.
My mom would eventually calm down and cooperate long enough for her to be stabilized medically. She’d be safely discharged on the eighth day. As I told one of the hard working nurses, to me, it was a good hospitalization for my mom overall. People with serious mental illness and families like mine deserve more help, care and respect than we often receive. Stop the patient dumping and unsafe discharges now!
A little more than two days ago, on Sunday afternoon, my mom stopped taking her medicines. She told me the “Holy Spirit” told her to stop taking them because they were making her ill. She is insisting that she start taking herbs instead, referencing Ezekiel from the Bible.
Ezekiel 47:12 “And the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.”
I can’t say I’m surprised. My mom has stopped taking her medicines numerous times in the past, the last time being in February of last year. Then, it took merely 24hrs for her blood pressure to increase to over 200 and for her to start experiencing breathing complications from her congestive heart failure.
This time, her decision to stop taking her meds was more gradual. In recent weeks. she has been increasingly complaining about the medicines and, in fact, stopped taking one of her blood pressure medications around a week ago. In the last few months, she has also increasingly refused various treatments. She refused to treat her anemia (She didn’t like the weekly shots.) and refused to start prep for dialysis, despite reaching kidney failure stage. As of three weeks ago, her last appointment with her kidney doctor, her kidney function was at 13%.
Given her history, I saw a few different scenarios playing out the last few weeks, this being one of them. I know it’s exceedingly difficult for my mother to be confined to the house. It makes it too easy for her to withdraw into the prison of her mind. So I was hoping a short trip to one of her favorite vacation spots, Monterey, CA, would help improve her spirits and make her more cooperative for at least a little while, but no.
The first day went well enough. But during the evening, she woke up a few different times in the hotel room to conduct “spiritual warfare.” Upon returning Saturday, she slept well enough that night. She was tired from walking around the wharf that late morning. But after eating breakfast and taking her meds on Sunday morning, she returned to her usual fixation with the voices. After a couple of hours of intense conversation with herself, she came out of her room to announce to me what the “Holy Spirit” had told her.
[Me and mom having a conversation on Monday. Her BP hasn’t been over 200 since.]
For now, her heart rate is fluctuating a bit and her breathing seems OK. And although I know not to take her at face value, she says she’s not experiencing any pain anywhere. I’ve had my sister, a family friend and my aunt all talk to her about taking her meds to no avail. I’ve called her heart doctor and the county mental health crisis line to get some information and advice. The doctor said, predictably, to call social services and the crisis hotline operator said, also predictably, that I can call 9/11 if I need to.
Lighting a candle for my mama and asking people on social media to pray for us.
I know the drill already, though. Emergency personnel can try to talk her into going to the hospital, but if she refuses, unless they see her as a clear danger to herself, they aren’t going to make her go. At some point, her blood pressure and/or glucose will get dangerous highly and I’ll have more leverage to request/demand they hospitalize her. I will probably make the call sometime Wednesday afternoon.
I’m of course very stressed out and worried about my mom. I frankly don’t think she will survive another hospitalization. The last two times she has been hospitalized, she never recovered to where she was prior to that. And I worry about the possibility of her becoming incapacitated in some way, leaving me to decide her fate. I don’t want that choice. I shouldn’t have to make that choice. My mom should have been given a chance at recovering and rebuilding her life years ago.
(Originally published in August of 2010. It was the beginning of dealing w/persistent government neglect towards my mom. Knowing what I know now, my mom should have met criteria for what is considered “gravely disabled” and been taken in for mental health treatment, not just at this time, but countless others since.]
On Thursday night, exhausted and hungry, my mother began to cry and plead with two of my cousins: “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of all of this. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I have nothing.”
These break downs happen often. While she shows tremendous courage and endurance in living her life with an untreated serious mental illness, at times of distress, she breaks down and cries, saying that she doesn’t want to live estranged from her family. Needless to say, it is heartbreaking for me and my family to see and hear my mother when she is distraught like this.
For a week, my mother and uncle were homeless AND without a car in Bakersfield. My uncle had driven them both down to Bakersfield from Fresno last Thursday. Driving back and forth between Bakersfield and Fresno has become routine for them these last few months. They do it when my mother feels Fresno is particularly unsafe, i.e. when the “enemy is out to get them.” They will drive around for hours, or even days, and will sleep in their car.
Sometime the following evening, though, my mom was pulled over by the police while driving. For all I know, my uncle just let her drive because she wanted to or because he was tired and asleep in the backseat. Whatever the reason, letting my mother have access to the keys was foolish because my mother has a suspended license and the police impounded the vehicle.
They stayed in Bakersfield for a week trying to get their car back. For a couple of days and nights, members of my extended family put them up in a hotel. That was all my extended family could do for them, though. Like my sister and me, it is too difficult for my cousins to be around my mother, especially since they have young kids. My mom has scared their kids before, believing as she does that there are people and evil spirits around her and trying to cause her grave harm. So, for the other five nights, instead of going to a homeless shelter like my cousins and I suggested, my uncle and mom elected to sleep in another uncle’s car.
Come this past Thursday evening, they were both worn out. According to my cousins, my mom was so tired and hungry, that she looked like she was going to pass out. I can only imagine what her glucose level might be. She admitted to me on the phone earlier that day that she is out of one of her diabetic medications.
My sister and I made phone calls throughout the week to Adult Protective Services (APS) and the police to try and get them to do a welfare check on my mother and, if possible, to connect her with temporary housing. APS and the police were unable or unwilling to do anything, though, because we couldn’t tell them with any certainty where my mother was going to be at any given time. We knew my mom and uncle were at the courthouse during the day, but APS told us they only go to actual residencies and a rude police operator told me that the police aren’t going to waste their time by looking for someone in a courthouse.
My mom and I in 2008 at a family celebration.
Well, as of today, the 28th, my mom and uncle are back in Fresno. My sister and I are hoping that we can get Fresno APS to visit my mom. This is not a sure thing, however, because Fresno APS has been uncooperative. They have been refusing to check in on my mom the last two months, even though we have told them that she is regularly sleeping in the car and had been evicted from her apartment. Fresno APS sent an investigator to my mom’s residence three months ago and found signs of neglect, but since that time has been saying that, due to my mom having a conservator, checking in on my mom’s condition and welfare is the probate court’s responsibility. (The probate court is the court that handles conservatorship issues.)
Because of this bureaucratic negligence and indifference, my sister and I have missed work and spent the last two days meeting with and talking to people at different agencies about what’s going on. My sister was able to talk to a supervisor at the investigation department of the probate court and was told, predictably, it was APS’s responsibility. Talk about passing the buck! With that information in hand, I called the Deputy Director in charge of APS and told them what I had been told.
Finally, around 4:30pm on Friday, I received a call from Bea, a supervisor at Fresno APS, who said that she was going to reopen my mom’s case and send someone to visit my mom sometime this next week. My sister and I are not holding our breath, though. We know by now to not get our hopes up in relying on the government for meaningful help. We won’t be surprised if they find an excuse not to visit my mom at all. Even if they do pay her a visit, we know they probably won’t do anything. It’s pretty simple. They should find some shelter for my mom, hospitalize her if they have to and physically separate her from her brother, since he is neglecting and enabling her. We all damn well know that if she was wealthy and/or famous, it would not be this hard to get her help.
It’s time to end this post now. I need to return my ailing mother’s phone call. She is sounding really tired and weak.
After taking time off work, I returned to teaching in January. Needless to say, that and caretaking are keeping me plenty busy. As I write this, I actually have a stack of midterms besides me waiting to be graded. I suppose if I had more public interest in my blog, I’d figure out a way to make time to post more regularly. Still, three months since my last posting is too long a time period. (For those interested, I do give short updates and commentary on Twitter from time to time: @maestrogaeta)
Sadly, my mom’s health continues to deteriorate. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my mom has developed various serious medical/physical problems. Most recently, she has developed kidney disease. It was discovered last summer (‘16), during a hospitalization for respiratory problems (i.e. congestive heart failure.).
I was surprised and dejected to learn about her kidney problem. Before I moved her in with me in February ‘16, I pored over a couple years’ worth of medical records, as part of my planning. I didn’t see any mention of real or possible kidney problems. Based on what I read online, kidney disease can be asymptomatic for a considerable length of time. Still, why a doctor never bothered testing for that, given her compromised condition even back then, is just more evidence, to me, how poor our healthcare system is, especially for the indigent.
At the time of her hospitalization, her kidney function was at 30%. Since then, it has continued to decrease steadily. Six months ago, it was around 20%. Three months ago, it was at 14%. This past week, her kidney doctor told us it was at 12%. It’s technically kidney failure, at this point. In this time, she has become weaker and more fatigued, which is part of the illness.
Her kidney doctor has of course recommended dialysis or a kidney transplant, but after initially agreeing to be prepped and assessed for those things, my mom changed her mind, as she is inclined to do. Indeed, her long history of refusing treatment is not confined to her mental illness. She didn’t effectively treat her diabetes for years, for example. Her current condition is a direct consequence of this. They don’t call diabetes the “silent killer” for nothing.
Years ago, around ’07, on a mountain bike ride somewhere in the Bay Area. Enjoying the view the best I can, trying not to worry too much about mom.
And while her diabetes is more or less controlled now, in the past year, she has decided to stop seeing an eye specialist, a neurologist, a neurosurgeon and has refused to continue treating her anemia. She didn’t like those “quack doctors” and doesn’t believe she is really ill. She regularly tells me that she doesn’t have kidney disease and that the labs are “screwing with the test results.” She says similar about her glucose readings at times.
Given all this, I’m just grateful that she is continuing to see her kidney, heart and primary doctors and that she is regularly taking most of her prescribed medications. There has been zero progress made in treating her serious mental illness (SMI), however, which comes as no surprise to me.
There was nothing in her past to indicate that she would voluntarily treat her SMI and I knew not to expect much from the county’s mental health services. Their programs aren’t designed to help someone as high needs as my mom and their level of organization and professionalism are so inadequate, that my mom has never been formally discharged, even though we haven’t communicated with their offices in three months. Perhaps they need to be audited?
Her doctors haven’t mentioned it, but it appears that my mom’s fragile physical health is exacerbating her psychiatric condition. (My mom essentially has the poor health more typically associated with someone in their 80s. My mom is 66.) My mom has been highly agitated and hyper-fixated on her voices and delusions the last few months. She has been, literally, engaged every waking minute in “spiritual warfare.” At particularly acute times, she tells me the “evil voices” are actively saying that she’s going to die soon. Much of what she is saying and doing aren’t new, but the intensity and duration are deeper and longer. She is also expressing her general unhappiness with living in the area more.
I go about my day the best I can, monitoring my mom, sometimes arguing, and at times just trying to calm her down. I’ll try to engage her in some normal conversation. I’ll try to find her something to do. When she’s in a really bad place, I’ll pray with her and sage her room. My emotions run a bit all over the place as I see my mom slipping away. Eight or so years ago, when I first started to try and help my mom, I thought/hoped eventually she’d be able to return to work and we’d be able to rebuild our family relationships. Now, I’m just wondering when and how peace is going to finally come for us. Ideally, it would be while we are still alive.
Last Friday, June 1st, was her birthday. Mama would’ve been 67 years old. For the occasion, I dressed up and took her a dozen red roses. She loved roses. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to enjoy them for around the last ten years of her life. She, in fact, didn’t want any roses or plants near her because she thought that toxins could enter her body through them.
I actually told the hospital staff to not give or prescribe it to her. What was the point? Why prescribe her psychiatric medicine without her being under the active care of a psychiatrist? The hospital didn’t even bother giving us information as to how to find one. They prescribed it anyways. It was waiting for me the next time I went to the pharmacy. Money, money, money! The game is rigged in the favor of the pharmaceutical companies.
Without doing this, Wiener and Breed are putting the cart before the horse. At worse, it looks like they are trying to appease business interests in the city that want the streets desperately “cleaned up” more than they are trying to help those with SMI and their families.
Despite this, the hospital was planning on discharging her on what would have been the fourth day. Upon talking to a Director, it became clear the Director was ignoring the doctor’s treatment plan and placement recommendation. She told me that my mom could just continue to take oral meds! I told her I expected my mom to be placed in a skilled facility until she was able to administer the insulin herself and that I knew discounting the doctor’s treatment and recommendations in a hospital discharge plan is legally prohibited.
the video. Since then, fortunately, Rebecca has started receiving psychiatric treatment and is reported to be doing better. Clearly, other and better options are available, as this case has shown. And even with my mom, we just recently experienced a different, better outcome in her most recent hospitalization a few weeks ago.
benevolent neglect 