Comments on: The value of a life.

By: Sage

Sage — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:07:27 +0000

I’d be honored. I would appreciate a link back. Thanks!

By: KrisBelucci

KrisBelucci — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:36:50 +0000

I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my site? Thank you in advance.

By: Wizcon

Wizcon — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:08:09 +0000

Its the way it was and we were not alone.We focus on the joy he brought. My parents were both interested in what I was doing at Cedars in high school and hosted my trick or treating groups. Dad even went down and helped during the flu epidemic for awhile. One excursion we did with those kids was on the bay cruise boat. A woman with an adult downes syndrome daughter (not one of the patients) sat next to me and begged for information about the group and where they were located. She didn’t want her daughter to go to the state hospital when she died. The mother was quite elderly and the daughter looked to be in her 40’s. Dad was so impressed she kept her with her all those years.
http://www.thecedarsofmarin.org/

By: leslie

leslie — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:38:29 +0000

Wizcon, I am so sorry that your family suffered so.

I wish I could give them – and you something to fill that space in your hearts. I hope others won’t have to experience similar losses.
It is too sad.

By: AliSilver

AliSilver — Mon, 25 May 2009 23:50:03 +0000

By: Wizcon

Wizcon — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:44:36 +0000

The thing is that my parents wanted to keep him at home. But they had their kids all about 13-15 months apart and he was the 3rd out of 4.There were no support systems for special needs. Kids like him were basically doomed to a life in the institution. I remember going up to see him . My parents would spread a cloth on the lawn and instruct us not to leave it and go in and get him.Then we’d have a picnic. He was a jolly little guy. I remember teaching him to walk by having him stand on my feet and hug me. Then I’d walk backward. My parents carried a lot of guilt for putting him in there.

By: Sage

Sage — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:58:46 +0000

That’s so sad about your brother. I had a cousin who had downes syndrome but she also had a hole in her heart. She died at the age of 7. Her mother was a nurse so she was never put in an institution.

By: Wizcon

Wizcon — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:32:36 +0000

My little brother died in a state institution at the age of 3 1/2. The one near Porterville, CA. He had downes syndrome. All my Dad ever said about his death was “we should never have put him there” This was 1956 and a lot of pressure was put on my folks to institutionalize him for the sakes of the rest of us kids. The plan was to admit him to a Lutheran home that was being built.
I obtained his death certificate and it stated the cause of death as “water on the brain”. He did not have hydrocephalus.

President John Kennedy addressed the conditions that the mentally ill and “mentally retarded” lived in in Feb 1963. His goal was to assimilate more into the community. That was what the semi private facility I volunteered in in High school was doing. They had a ranch where the kid were trained for jobs and were pioneers in the idea of community based advocacy. After Regan’s cuts, they had to sell the ranch. It became the studio owned by George Lucas and where he filmed the first Star. Fortunately, they are still up and running and doing fantastic. Wars.http://www.thecedarsofmarin.org/index.shtml

“With respect to mental illness, our chief aim is to get people out of State custodial institutions and back into their communities and homes, without hardship or danger. Today nearly one-fifth of the 279 State mental institutions are fire and health hazards.

Three-fourths of them were opened before World War II. Nearly half of the 530,000 persons in our State mental hospitals are in institutions with over 3,000 patients getting little or no individual treatment. Many of these institutions have less than half of the professional staff required.

Forty-five percent of them have been hospitalized for 10 years or more. If we launch a broad, new mental health program now, it will be possible within a decade or two to reduce the number of patients now under custodial care by 50 percent or more”…Kennedy

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9547

By: timesr

timesr — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:59:12 +0000

If the greatness of a nation is judged by how it treats the elderly and infirmed we are seriously lacking.

If care for the mentally ill is the criteria for greatness then Geel, Belgium is great. Geel has a centuries old tradition of compassionate care for the mentally ill.

http://www.opzgeel.be/en/nieuws/htm/a_place_to_belong.asp

By: Sage

Sage — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:07:09 +0000

As I was writing my response to the above article something came back to me that I haven’t really thought much of for many years.

Back in the 70’s a friend of mine had a sister-in-law who was declared mentally ill. I don’t remember her diagnosis but thinking on her behavior it could very well have been schizophrenia.

Her name was Anne, and one weekend when I was visiting my friend, Anne was visiting as she had gotten a weekend pass from Eastern State where she was an inpatient. I use the term patient loosely.

On Sunday afternoon Anne had to return to Eastern State and my friend didn’t drive so I took Anne. I got out of the car and handed her her bag and she turned to walk down the sidewalk. About halfway down she turned and came back and hugged me….she had never done that before.

That was the last time I saw Anne alive…days later she was dead.

The autopsy report was never released to the family but when we saw Anne at the funeral she had a very large bruise on her forehead. The story from Eastern State was she fell out of bed. A story that I don’t to this day believe.

Anne was a tormented human being that the system let down and I wonder how much different her life could have been had she had the money to get private treatment.

If the greatness of a nation is judged by how it treats the elderly and infirmed we are seriously lacking.