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CaptainxTatsuo:
Well, at least now I know that others write as well as I do.
Cindy: Here is my real life event for your thread.
This happened Sunday night, approximately 11pm, 11 Dec 1999, while I was driving Northbound from Tucson, Arizona, to Phoenix, Arizona, on route Interstate 10. A large tour bus rear-ended me twice and pushed me in my car into the desert. My car flipt and rolled multiple times. It was a 'hit-and-run' - the bus driver failed to stop at the scene. Emergency used 'jaws of life' to cut open the roof of the car to lift me out.
EMS asked female-related questions to me so I told them that I am transsexual. Suddenly I went from being wrapt in blankets that protected me from the cold night air to the blanket taken from me, my clothes being cut from me, and being stript totally naked on the stretcher. Other EMT and emergency personnel were summoned to come take a look. I begged the attendant to please cover me - that I am cold - he refused until others were satisfied they got a good look at me as I tried putting my hands over my private anatomy.
While naked on the stretcher, various EMT personnel repeated drew blood from my left arm - not with an implanted needle but with a new needle to a new site each time - at least six different times within 15 minutes or so. They treated me as a human pin cushion. I objected to the EMT and repeatedly asked them to install a single needle; they refused. The police there told me that EMTs were taking my blood samples to 'prove' I was 'drunk' and 'drugged' - all a false accusation. Since there was no bus driver to question and apprehend for his criminal assault against me, the police saw the scene as a one-car roll-over by an inebriated driver.
EMT allowed my separated right arm to dangle off the side of the stretcher. I repeatedly begged for my arm to be restrained to ease the pain - EMTs refused - it dangled the entire trip to the ER (perhaps 30 minutes) and then some more time until I was eventually placed on an ER examining bed that supported my arm at the shoulder separation.
The air ambulance took me to Good Samaritan Hospital (Phoenix, Arizona). ER doctors did a series of scans and examinations. The doctors refused to re-set my broken clavicle - the worst of my multiple broken bones. My skull required 11 wires to re-attach where it was cracked open (from the roll-over); I told the doctor what he was doing hurt me and asked for pain medicine, he refused.
I was eventually wheeled to my in-patient room sometime about 4.30 am. It was not until another hour or so later that a nurse came to give a sponge bath to me to clean away the road debris and desert dirt. That nurse was the first and about only decent medical personnel during my experience. She was kind, carefull, gentle, and thorough.
I fell asleep about 6 am. I awoke about 10 am and noticed that a police officer placed a traffic violation notice at my bed stand during my sleep. At no time did any police ever speak to me about what happened - they simply issued their citation including charges that I was speeding, had no insurance, and was impaired.
Allow me to skip ahead about one year to finish this point. News reports exposed that cop was a 'dirty' cop involved with an insurance scam led by the Chandler city chief judge and other police agencies; that chief judge was convicted of insurance fraud. This expose explained why there was no investigation at the crime scene - none. I write this with authority because I was employed as a risk management officer with the State of Arizona and I had intimate knowledge of the requirements of police agencies to conduct traffic scene investigations. I returned to the scene on my own and videotaped the entire scene about one week later - still deep in pain but knowing that I had to do something to protect my legal and medical position.
The hospital ordered me discharged that Monday morning - less than 12 hours since the collision that nearly killed me. I was in no condition to go home alone but the hospital told me that my insurance carrier ordered my immediate discharge.
Follow-up care nearly cost me my liver and gall bladder - as I have posted here at other threads. My medical scans documented severe liver, gall bladder, and intestinal damage among my internal injuries; my intestines emitted various colors of matter including green, blue, yellow, brown for several months. I could not retain food - everything I ate literally passed right through me within minutes. Come November 2000, I was still in agony at my abdomen. I went to my medical clinic (I arrived and checked-in at 5.30 pm) to again seek relief. Through the course of time and various tests and scans (after 12 midnight) doctors came to me in the exam room and told me that they made arrangement with the hospital to remove my liver and gall bladder right there and then. I told them a flat, assertive 'NO!'. Another 30 minutes later the doctor returned with a diet plan to restrict and avoid fats, oils, sugars, salts. I asked why this plan was not provided to me as part of my discharge papers from December 1999 - I got no responce from the doctor. I followed that dietary plan and my liver, gall bladder, and intestines finally healed - though it took perhaps six to eight years to realise that healing.
Now allow me to backtrack the time the doctor removed the 11 wires from my skull. He took a pair of pliers and grabbed each one-by-one and pulled them out no different than if he was pulling a nail from a board. I screamed in agony and begged for pain medicine; that doctor refused - he told me to deal with it.
Now then. Can I prove all this mal-treatment was because I am transsexual? Well, I did not exactly ask each and every one of those medical personnel if they did so. I make that assertion based upon the fact of the way the EMT stript me naked in the desert and gathered around to see me. I attended medical school (1981 - 1986) and worked in the medical community (1986 - 1990). I know that the medical community claims to require better treatment than what they delivered to me.
There was no happy ending through the legal system either. I went to a lawyer based upon a referral from a supposed 'friend'. That lawyer gave an early impression to me that he was managing my case to seek damages from the bus company we found to have committed the assault. But that effort went nowhere and the lawyer quietly dropt my case without informing me - though telling me all along that my case was moving forward.
The doctor who had been my primary care physician since 1985 and knew my personal medical history suddenly demanded that I take 'Paxil' and other dangerous psychotic drugs. I refused. Sometime around 2001, that doctor sent a cold letter to me telling me to 'find another physician'. It has been a rough go 'finding another physician' because of my multiple medical conditions - including my collision injuries and my transsexual matter. I finally attained medical stability since mid-2013 - I went about a dozen years skipping through various doctors who would take me for short-term care only.
I can name names but will reserve that for a PM if you request it. I can try digging for my medical records though I am not certain what I shall find considering that my home was burglarised and ransacked last year and the crooks stole my medical records as well as my work records with my SSAN and other vital information.
'How did you feel? How did it affect you? Was your treatment affected? Where your rights denied? Where you insulted, was it blatant or casual or accidental (if someone is cutting you out of a car wreck, the last thing on their mind in ER is what your gender is? They just work on a potential corpse).'
I think I answered those questions well enough for now. I can write a book - oh, actually I did by keeping a daily journal that is somewhere on a floppy disc.
My medical care was horrendous from start to conclusion, except for that one nurse who administered her bed bath to me. I feel that I was mal-treated the entire time. I learned in 2001 that my collision injuries make me un-insurable for either private health care insurance or life insurance.
I have no reluctance to write that my rights were violated so many times in so many ways - a 99% insult.
I was neither a corpse nor a life-or-death body in my destroyed car that December night. I was awake and alert the entire time and needed valid emergency medical care, not their abuse.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to something greater that will help people in the future.
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