BlueWidow
Visionary
- Oct 6, 2019
- 2,179
I just wanted to warn everyone who is about to read this that it's going to be a long post. I've been holding a lot of this in for a long time. I appreciate everyone here bearing with me while I go on a bunch of long rants about various things.
It's nice to be able to post things and let my feelings out and not have people around me saying things like, " But you have so much to live for" or " you shouldn't feel that way". I just "love" it when other people think they have a right to tell me how I should or shouldn't feel, don't you?
I should preface this story by saying that when I was a teenager I got caught up in some kind of an insurance scam that involved psychiatric doctors, therapists, judges, and a bunch of other professional people. They were basically taking vulnerable kids like myself who were minors and had no rights and were most likely ignorant of the law and basically using them to get insurance payouts.
The few people that I've told about this always look at me like I'm lying when I discuss it, but I swear to you I am not. The way the scam worked is they would find a vulnerable kid who really did need help. They would then make him a ward of the court so that his entire life could be controlled by judges and doctors involved in the scam.
In my case, I did attempt suicide and was taken to the emergency room where my stomach was pumped. They had proof that I had taken a lethal dose. My father, who was at the bar drinking like he usually was when he wasn't working, was called and told that I needed to be checked into the hospital because I had just attempted suicide. He refused to believe that I had attempted suicide and wouldn't let them check me into the hospital. Therefore, that gave them the excuse to call a judge and get an emergency court order to put me in the hospital. The next day I was made a ward of the state and then I was completely at their mercy. They decided where I would live, where I would go to school, what kind of drugs I would be forced to take, what treatments I would be subjected to, etc. Every aspect of my life was decided by these people and nobody ever gave a damn about my opinion on anything. Nor did they care if the things they were doing actually helped me or not. They would purposely put me in the hospital when I didn't need to be in there, and they would also purposely release me with full bottles of pills knowing full well that I was going to swallow all of them and then that would give them an excuse to put me back in the hospital and milk the insurance company for more money. Or they would do or say things to purposely upset me and then claim I was having an anxiety attack and that was a reason for them to put me back in the hospital when I was only reacting in a way that any reasonable person would in the same situation. When I had normal reactions to things, they acted like they were abnormal and used it to put me in the hospital and force me to take horrible drugs that have taken a serious toll on my health over the years. Anyway, as a result of all this I don't trust the medical profession AT ALL! Along with this, I've had other experiences with doctors that have just made me feel like they don't give a damn about me. At some point I'll tell you another story about my experience with my thyroid problems and how the doctors kept me on the wrong medicine for more than a decade. Then there's the way I saw them treat my husband when he had cancer. He went through all kinds of hell and in the end he died anyway, so what was it all for?!
Anyway, here's my story about being Baker Acted.
Until about a year ago, I lived in Florida. In June 2009, I was involuntarily placed in the psychiatric hospital under a law called the Baker Act. This is part of the reason I'm so concerned about these red flag gun laws and how they're going to be abused by people. Because of the Baker Act, anyone in Florida can call the police and claim that you are mentally unstable or a threat to yourself or others and the police will come and forcibly take you to the hospital with no evidence whether you need to go or not and they can hold you against your will for up to 72 hours and you have no way to fight back. When I say anyone, I mean anyone. That means someone that wants to cause trouble for you can call the police on you. There have been many cases of people abusing the Baker Act, but yet nothing gets done about it. There are also teachers and school officials who will call the police on little kids as young as six years old and have them Baker Acted without their parents knowledge or consent and it's perfectly legal!
Anyway, I was Baker Acted because I was stupid enough to go to a medical professional and tell her that I was tired. That's right, I told her I was tired and I probably needed a change in my thyroid medicine. I was depressed, but I didn't even mention it to her because I figured at that point the depression was being caused by the low thyroid. However, this medical person, she was actually a nurse practitioner not a doctor, had a trainee following her around the day that I was there. All that I can figure out is that she saw an opportunity to show this trainee how powerful she was as the reason why she did this and she didn't care how it affected me or my husband. My husband had gone with me to support me. After I told her I was tired, she left the room for a while and when she came back she was all excited and told me that I had to go to the hospital right away. I said, "What? Why? All I need is a thyroid test and a raise in my medicine". But she insisted that I had told her I was suicidal when I said no such thing. Then my husband came in and tried to talk her into just letting us leave. She refused. After that she let me go out and have one of her assistants draw my blood for the thyroid test.
I believe she told this assistant to purposely screw the test up so that she could stall for time.
In the meantime, this nurse went into the other room and called the police and told them that I was suicidal and that my husband was abusing me! None of that was true! She didn't even know my husband. Normally I went into the office alone to get my thyroid levels tested and my medicine refilled, but he had come in with me for support because of how tired I was feeling.
I had also been very hesitant to go into the doctor and tell her how tired I was because I don't trust medical people. My husband insisted that it would be OK and that nothing bad would happen. that's another reason that he accompanied me to the doctor that day. Boy was he wrong!
So I was out getting my thyroid blood test and the person that was drawing my blood purposely kept poking me in the wrong place and missing my veins. After they did it 3 times I passed out. When I came to, this police woman burst into the room and started yelling.
My husband and everyone was around me trying to bring me back to consciousness and my husband put his hand up in front of him & asked her to give me some room because I had just passed out and I needed some air. This police woman said, " Don't you threaten me!". He wasn't threatening her, he was just trying to get her to back off and give me some air and some space. After that the doctor that owned the clinic came in. I had been going to this clinic for 5 years and I had never once seen this doctor. I believe that nurse must've called him and asked him to come down there in case she needed him to back her up in her claim that I needed to go to the hospital, even though I had never met this doctor before in my life and he knew nothing about me.
Meanwhile I was talking to the police woman and trying to explain to her that my husband was not abusive and that I didn't need to go to the hospital. She said that I had to go no matter what. I made an offhand comment that I guess my rights didn't matter at all and the doctor turned around and shouted, " No they don't!".
I had to go to the bathroom and the cop said she had to come with me (what did they think I was going to do? drown myself in the toilet?), so she sat there and watched me while I went to the bathroom which was very humiliating. Then I was led through the waiting room of the doctor's office in handcuffs and put in the back of a police car like a criminal.
Luckily, my husband was a smart man and as soon as the police woman threatened him, he backed off even though he was extremely upset. He went out and got in our car and he followed the cop car to the hospital. The whole way there the cop kept trying to tell me about places I could go to get away for my abusive husband. I kept telling her that my husband was not abusive and that the nurse didn't know what she was talking about.
Then I had to sit in the hospital waiting room handcuffed while everyone in the waiting room stared at me, again like I was a criminal. My husband came in and sat down and I sat down next to him and we put our arms around each other and just sat there shaking. I could tell this cop was livid that I was sitting so close to my husband. She didn't want me anywhere near him and she was just dying to arrest him for something because she believed the lies that this nurse had told her. Eventually they called me back into the emergency room and the cop took me back there and took the handcuffs off. Meanwhile, after I was taken to the emergency room my husband told me he had gotten in our car and driven around the block about 100 times so that he wouldn't be sitting in the waiting room when the police woman came out of the emergency room. He said he didn't want to have any encounters with her because he could tell that she was out for his blood.
In the emergency room, I was made to take my street clothes off and put on one of those paper gowns and I sat for the next several hours on a gurney shivering and waiting for someone to help me.
I told anyone who would listen that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive. During that time I got a front row seat for all of the horrors that happen every day in an emergency room, so if I wasn't depressed before I went in— I sure as hell was afterwards. There was one poor man who came in and he had been shot and there was blood everywhere as they wheeled him by me. They took him to a back room & a little while later his family came out screaming. He had died. I felt so bad for him and his family. That was just one of the horrors that I saw that day. Remember this is all happening because I dared to tell a medical professional that I was tired and needed a raise in my thyroid medicine. This is why I don't trust medical professionals at all!
Finally, at about 6 o'clock in the evening a nice psychiatric nurse came and talked to me and I told her that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive. She was kind enough to let my husband come in and sit with me in the emergency room.
I was eventually taken upstairs and booked into the psych ward. I was stuck there for two days and I did the best I could to keep my cool because I know from experience that on the psych ward anything you do is interpreted in a specific way. I only had one outburst and I tried to have it in my room when no one was around. At times it was very hard to maintain my composure because of how upset I was. They kept offering the anti-anxiety medicine, which I really could've used, but I refused to take it because I didn't want them to use that as an excuse to keep me in the hospital longer. I continued to tell anyone and everyone who would listen that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive.
My husband sat outside the closed ward during all the hours when he wasn't allowed to come in and visit me. One morning at 7 AM, one of the PNTs came in and he told me that my husband was sitting outside. He asked me if my husband knew that visiting hours weren't until 5:30 that evening. I told him that he was aware of that, but he just wanted to be as close to me as he could. My husband was so upset that he broke the key off in his car ignition among other things. He was a complete mess without me. He told me that there was no color in his life without me.
That's how I feel now every day without him.
They finally decided that I was correct and I wasn't suicidal and they released me. My husband came to pick me up and we stopped at a diner and had lunch in silence. We were just so stunned by this experience that we didn't even know what to say. After lunch we both went home and lie down on the bed and held onto each other and fell asleep for a long time. Neither one of us had been able to eat or sleep throughout the entire experience. We later considered suing a bunch of people, but one of my husband's friends told him that if we did that, we would have to keep reliving the experience over and over. In the end, we decided to just let it drop and try to go on.
I never went back to that doctor's office ever again. I was happy a few months later to see that it was closed down. As a final insult, we got a bill for $6000 for the hospital stay.
My husband was the kindest, sweetest, most wonderful husband that there could ever be. He made me feel loved more than I have at any other time in my life. I was his number one priority. Even when he was sick with cancer, he would try to put my needs ahead of his own. For anyone to ever accuse him of being abusive is just so completely wrong that I don't even know what to say about it. I still can't talk about this experience without getting frustrated and angry and upset all over again.
The two-year anniversary of his death is next Wednesday, October 15th. He died at 8:58 PM. I miss my husband so much. I'm so tired of crying and hurting. My life has no color without him.
It's nice to be able to post things and let my feelings out and not have people around me saying things like, " But you have so much to live for" or " you shouldn't feel that way". I just "love" it when other people think they have a right to tell me how I should or shouldn't feel, don't you?
I should preface this story by saying that when I was a teenager I got caught up in some kind of an insurance scam that involved psychiatric doctors, therapists, judges, and a bunch of other professional people. They were basically taking vulnerable kids like myself who were minors and had no rights and were most likely ignorant of the law and basically using them to get insurance payouts.
The few people that I've told about this always look at me like I'm lying when I discuss it, but I swear to you I am not. The way the scam worked is they would find a vulnerable kid who really did need help. They would then make him a ward of the court so that his entire life could be controlled by judges and doctors involved in the scam.
In my case, I did attempt suicide and was taken to the emergency room where my stomach was pumped. They had proof that I had taken a lethal dose. My father, who was at the bar drinking like he usually was when he wasn't working, was called and told that I needed to be checked into the hospital because I had just attempted suicide. He refused to believe that I had attempted suicide and wouldn't let them check me into the hospital. Therefore, that gave them the excuse to call a judge and get an emergency court order to put me in the hospital. The next day I was made a ward of the state and then I was completely at their mercy. They decided where I would live, where I would go to school, what kind of drugs I would be forced to take, what treatments I would be subjected to, etc. Every aspect of my life was decided by these people and nobody ever gave a damn about my opinion on anything. Nor did they care if the things they were doing actually helped me or not. They would purposely put me in the hospital when I didn't need to be in there, and they would also purposely release me with full bottles of pills knowing full well that I was going to swallow all of them and then that would give them an excuse to put me back in the hospital and milk the insurance company for more money. Or they would do or say things to purposely upset me and then claim I was having an anxiety attack and that was a reason for them to put me back in the hospital when I was only reacting in a way that any reasonable person would in the same situation. When I had normal reactions to things, they acted like they were abnormal and used it to put me in the hospital and force me to take horrible drugs that have taken a serious toll on my health over the years. Anyway, as a result of all this I don't trust the medical profession AT ALL! Along with this, I've had other experiences with doctors that have just made me feel like they don't give a damn about me. At some point I'll tell you another story about my experience with my thyroid problems and how the doctors kept me on the wrong medicine for more than a decade. Then there's the way I saw them treat my husband when he had cancer. He went through all kinds of hell and in the end he died anyway, so what was it all for?!
Anyway, here's my story about being Baker Acted.
Until about a year ago, I lived in Florida. In June 2009, I was involuntarily placed in the psychiatric hospital under a law called the Baker Act. This is part of the reason I'm so concerned about these red flag gun laws and how they're going to be abused by people. Because of the Baker Act, anyone in Florida can call the police and claim that you are mentally unstable or a threat to yourself or others and the police will come and forcibly take you to the hospital with no evidence whether you need to go or not and they can hold you against your will for up to 72 hours and you have no way to fight back. When I say anyone, I mean anyone. That means someone that wants to cause trouble for you can call the police on you. There have been many cases of people abusing the Baker Act, but yet nothing gets done about it. There are also teachers and school officials who will call the police on little kids as young as six years old and have them Baker Acted without their parents knowledge or consent and it's perfectly legal!
Anyway, I was Baker Acted because I was stupid enough to go to a medical professional and tell her that I was tired. That's right, I told her I was tired and I probably needed a change in my thyroid medicine. I was depressed, but I didn't even mention it to her because I figured at that point the depression was being caused by the low thyroid. However, this medical person, she was actually a nurse practitioner not a doctor, had a trainee following her around the day that I was there. All that I can figure out is that she saw an opportunity to show this trainee how powerful she was as the reason why she did this and she didn't care how it affected me or my husband. My husband had gone with me to support me. After I told her I was tired, she left the room for a while and when she came back she was all excited and told me that I had to go to the hospital right away. I said, "What? Why? All I need is a thyroid test and a raise in my medicine". But she insisted that I had told her I was suicidal when I said no such thing. Then my husband came in and tried to talk her into just letting us leave. She refused. After that she let me go out and have one of her assistants draw my blood for the thyroid test.
I believe she told this assistant to purposely screw the test up so that she could stall for time.
In the meantime, this nurse went into the other room and called the police and told them that I was suicidal and that my husband was abusing me! None of that was true! She didn't even know my husband. Normally I went into the office alone to get my thyroid levels tested and my medicine refilled, but he had come in with me for support because of how tired I was feeling.
I had also been very hesitant to go into the doctor and tell her how tired I was because I don't trust medical people. My husband insisted that it would be OK and that nothing bad would happen. that's another reason that he accompanied me to the doctor that day. Boy was he wrong!
So I was out getting my thyroid blood test and the person that was drawing my blood purposely kept poking me in the wrong place and missing my veins. After they did it 3 times I passed out. When I came to, this police woman burst into the room and started yelling.
My husband and everyone was around me trying to bring me back to consciousness and my husband put his hand up in front of him & asked her to give me some room because I had just passed out and I needed some air. This police woman said, " Don't you threaten me!". He wasn't threatening her, he was just trying to get her to back off and give me some air and some space. After that the doctor that owned the clinic came in. I had been going to this clinic for 5 years and I had never once seen this doctor. I believe that nurse must've called him and asked him to come down there in case she needed him to back her up in her claim that I needed to go to the hospital, even though I had never met this doctor before in my life and he knew nothing about me.
Meanwhile I was talking to the police woman and trying to explain to her that my husband was not abusive and that I didn't need to go to the hospital. She said that I had to go no matter what. I made an offhand comment that I guess my rights didn't matter at all and the doctor turned around and shouted, " No they don't!".
I had to go to the bathroom and the cop said she had to come with me (what did they think I was going to do? drown myself in the toilet?), so she sat there and watched me while I went to the bathroom which was very humiliating. Then I was led through the waiting room of the doctor's office in handcuffs and put in the back of a police car like a criminal.
Luckily, my husband was a smart man and as soon as the police woman threatened him, he backed off even though he was extremely upset. He went out and got in our car and he followed the cop car to the hospital. The whole way there the cop kept trying to tell me about places I could go to get away for my abusive husband. I kept telling her that my husband was not abusive and that the nurse didn't know what she was talking about.
Then I had to sit in the hospital waiting room handcuffed while everyone in the waiting room stared at me, again like I was a criminal. My husband came in and sat down and I sat down next to him and we put our arms around each other and just sat there shaking. I could tell this cop was livid that I was sitting so close to my husband. She didn't want me anywhere near him and she was just dying to arrest him for something because she believed the lies that this nurse had told her. Eventually they called me back into the emergency room and the cop took me back there and took the handcuffs off. Meanwhile, after I was taken to the emergency room my husband told me he had gotten in our car and driven around the block about 100 times so that he wouldn't be sitting in the waiting room when the police woman came out of the emergency room. He said he didn't want to have any encounters with her because he could tell that she was out for his blood.
In the emergency room, I was made to take my street clothes off and put on one of those paper gowns and I sat for the next several hours on a gurney shivering and waiting for someone to help me.
I told anyone who would listen that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive. During that time I got a front row seat for all of the horrors that happen every day in an emergency room, so if I wasn't depressed before I went in— I sure as hell was afterwards. There was one poor man who came in and he had been shot and there was blood everywhere as they wheeled him by me. They took him to a back room & a little while later his family came out screaming. He had died. I felt so bad for him and his family. That was just one of the horrors that I saw that day. Remember this is all happening because I dared to tell a medical professional that I was tired and needed a raise in my thyroid medicine. This is why I don't trust medical professionals at all!
Finally, at about 6 o'clock in the evening a nice psychiatric nurse came and talked to me and I told her that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive. She was kind enough to let my husband come in and sit with me in the emergency room.
I was eventually taken upstairs and booked into the psych ward. I was stuck there for two days and I did the best I could to keep my cool because I know from experience that on the psych ward anything you do is interpreted in a specific way. I only had one outburst and I tried to have it in my room when no one was around. At times it was very hard to maintain my composure because of how upset I was. They kept offering the anti-anxiety medicine, which I really could've used, but I refused to take it because I didn't want them to use that as an excuse to keep me in the hospital longer. I continued to tell anyone and everyone who would listen that I was not suicidal and my husband was not abusive.
My husband sat outside the closed ward during all the hours when he wasn't allowed to come in and visit me. One morning at 7 AM, one of the PNTs came in and he told me that my husband was sitting outside. He asked me if my husband knew that visiting hours weren't until 5:30 that evening. I told him that he was aware of that, but he just wanted to be as close to me as he could. My husband was so upset that he broke the key off in his car ignition among other things. He was a complete mess without me. He told me that there was no color in his life without me.
That's how I feel now every day without him.
They finally decided that I was correct and I wasn't suicidal and they released me. My husband came to pick me up and we stopped at a diner and had lunch in silence. We were just so stunned by this experience that we didn't even know what to say. After lunch we both went home and lie down on the bed and held onto each other and fell asleep for a long time. Neither one of us had been able to eat or sleep throughout the entire experience. We later considered suing a bunch of people, but one of my husband's friends told him that if we did that, we would have to keep reliving the experience over and over. In the end, we decided to just let it drop and try to go on.
I never went back to that doctor's office ever again. I was happy a few months later to see that it was closed down. As a final insult, we got a bill for $6000 for the hospital stay.
My husband was the kindest, sweetest, most wonderful husband that there could ever be. He made me feel loved more than I have at any other time in my life. I was his number one priority. Even when he was sick with cancer, he would try to put my needs ahead of his own. For anyone to ever accuse him of being abusive is just so completely wrong that I don't even know what to say about it. I still can't talk about this experience without getting frustrated and angry and upset all over again.
The two-year anniversary of his death is next Wednesday, October 15th. He died at 8:58 PM. I miss my husband so much. I'm so tired of crying and hurting. My life has no color without him.
