June of 2016:
Hey Dan why don’t you ask me how I am today? I’m in severe pain due to a rather nasty oral infection and quite testy today just as I was last night. This is due to not being able to sleep and being exposed to situations where people are all crammed together waiting to check into the shelter and thus exposed to bacteria. Thanks. Cue the Jesus Jail threats. Cue to illogical statements.
Because of the illogical decisions around chores I was kept
from a doctor appointment that took me weeks to get a couple weeks ago. Thanks.
I am told chores can’t be started until 7 AM but then on other days they are
started early and when I ask WTH the response is, “You guys want to get out of
here don’t you?” I mean what the hell is wrong with me for not understanding
everything we are told about rules is flexian? You see I was sweeping the
storage building and then picking up garbage for a long time on chore days. I
was there a long time, way past almost everyone else every chore day. But wait,
idiocy comes into play as per usual. I was told I could not sweep the storage
building until 7 AM. So being logical and everything I say, look they put the
plastic bins in the buildings then so I go out early before there are lots of
people, sweep and then start picking up garbage. The concept was not grasped
after several explanations because the stupid is strong. So I’m like well then
OK geniuses I’ll just do a regular chore at 7 AM. Then later I was asked by
staff why I was not sweeping the storage building. I said because of
illogicality and being intercoursed without lubricant, there is no trying to do
any extra work for you people your charley foxtrot system ruins everything.
The day I had the doctor appointment I told them I needed to
just do my chore and leave as I had to be somewhere, I was not concerned as
there was plenty of time, so I was given one of the longer chores, along with
bleach at a higher concentration than 10% which made me ill. Not being able to
finally see a doctor and then being exposed to toxins that made me sicker must
be priceless for you.
Last evening when I came in the number of people waiting to
check in got to the point that men were putting their hands on me and so were
some rather filthy children. ME/cfs goes by many names due to the complex
nature of it. Scientists who do research on it call it by something related to
what they are working on. But mostly the government prevents the research
because despite thousands upon thousands of research articles that show it is a
very complex illness that effects multiple systems even causing brain damage
they decided our vaginas were just making us crazy. They did the same thing to
women who had lupus for decades as they died of renal disease. One of the research
scientists calls it non-HIV AIDS. Our immune systems are broken in the area of
viruses, particularly Herpes family, CMV, EBV, HHV-6, etc. We get viruses in
particular stages of ME/cfs often and in others stages can’t catch them because
our immune systems are on hyperdrive. We can also have chronic bacterial
infections, especially sinus infections which I went through, now I get dental
infections.
I am in late stage ME/cfs and catch everything, but live in
filth, with people who don’t wash their hands, hang filthy clothes on the bed
next to my head or put their hands on me due to crowded situations. There are
other people with immune issues due to health problems and medications at the
shelter who don’t really even understand this. There are other health harming
issues. The toxic chemicals, the activity I have to do, the constant trauma
from an org. that should be Trauma-Aware but instead is trauma causing by
obvious intention
lack of sleep, intentional triggering of PTSD and the inability to eat the diet
I need all cause me to be ill with cycles of flare ups of herpes family viruses
and whatever is going around on top of it. People who are traumatized have
permanent brain changes, so why continuously traumatize people who have already
been through more than one person can bear? What is your agenda? Certainly not
the welfare of the homeless.
As we all waited to get in Michele flitted about at the food
table getting something which she then showed to Tim in the office and put it
in the fridge. OK, then she did other things. So I go to the office to explain
this is a problem and Tim slammed the door in my face, you know like you did to
me Dan. So that is it, publishing will begin. I would throw down the gauntlet,
but if I had gauntlets some bastard would probably steal them.
There was a dead mouse in someone’s plastic bin in the
women’s storage area, the smell of death was in there for days and recently
there was a dead mouse found in the electronics cupboard. The epidemiologist
for Ada County says the only way the Plague in the area would be on city mice
is if someone took a dog into the desert and it rolled on a dead ground hog or
made contact some other way as the fleas are species specific and would change
to another species only if their usual one was not available. So it is unlikely
we would have that problem. It does however seem strange that fleas would not
have adapted to take opportunities when they often carry diseases that kill
their host.
Last night the psychotic woman in the bed next to me talked
and waved her arms/legs around for hours. Multiple times I shushed, said hey
people are trying to sleep, etc. She just made odd sounds back at me. I have no
idea when she stopped as I finally fell asleep from exhaustion and pain around 1
AM. She was asleep in the AM. I got up and say to the supervisor that this is
going on, that I have ear plugs that work when she mumbles but she often periodically
yells. She was in the top bunk next to mine and the waving arms and legs were
kind of disturbing, but I could have turned over and ignored it. I further said
that she was obviously manic and that when she came in just before lights out
she suddenly stopped the constant talking and waving behavior so maybe if she
spoke to her she would cease and desist. It is not true that she can’t control
the talking and she is done no favors by not being taught where it is
inappropriate to talk to internal stimuli. The supervisor did come in and said
something to her which stopped the behavior around 5 minutes. Then it went on
for more hours. In the morning someone told me she had also complained and got
and the supervisor told her to just use ear plugs. You know because we would
have never thought of that. Oh and this was all going on while the smell of old
piss and BO wafted up from the bunk below me as she constantly sniffed snot
back into her head instead of blowing her nose. The ear plugs blocked the snot
sniffing.
Then this morning I was of course assigned sweeping and
mopping the women’s dorm. This same woman who prevented me from sleeping was
given linens so she could change her whole bed while I was sweeping and
mopping. I told her she was supposed to be gone from the dorm, she paid no
attention. On top of this there has been a recent uptick in problems with
psychotic or dementia issues. Moving property of others, telling me fuck off
when I tell them don’t touch other people’s property, you can’t leave that crap
on the floor etc. There is no supervision which is SOP. The male staff say to
me, but when so and so is on since they are female they go in there and deal
with the issues. Then I say, no they don’t, no one does.
Whenever I finish my chore I take a picture of the
assignment sheet due to the day I came in very ill, dizzy and uncoordinated and
had Michele tell me I lost my bed due to not doing my chore after I had done
extra. I was very dizzy at the time and dropped my pajamas in the garbage, then
had to wear them because I had nothing else. Thanks. She decided to make me
stand around for a while telling me not to put my stuff on the bed making it
even harder for me so I came out where you were barbecuing hot dogs. I do not
trust any of your staff now because there had been several people not
documented, but she believed them and did that to me and I don’t lie. I
especially don’t trust her and neither do many people. She would have taken my
bed but someone advocated for me as a witness, there were several other
witnesses who could have been asked. I am ethical and truthful which is why I
have been a whistleblower at great expense to me personally many times, so
never try to accuse me of being untruthful.
When we come to the shelter we never know what in the hell
will go on next, it is a crazy charley foxtrot of abuse and unsupervised
craziness.
Wendesday morning when I did my chore I mentioned what went
on last night and got BS, “You know what to do about it’, then I say, “Give her
some Haldol?” No he says, use ear plugs, really? Gee wish I would have thought
of that. He tells me that this is how things will be as it is a temporary
shelter. Then tries to shame me by saying they can’t throw her out due to a
mental illness, (but I’ve seen you do that and the consequences many times
which caused me to make multiple calls to agencies advocating for the person
and asking WTF so I call bullshit on that) which is of course not what I
wanted. My comment was about lack of interventions with multiple people over
the past week. I’m feeling very sick when I come in, just want to shower and
lay down, I don’t even want to interact with the staff, so will not get up for
piddly reasons, it has to be pretty bad. Sometimes it is the damn staff in the
laundry room yucking it up and having a gay old time not giving a damn that all
those women are trying to sleep.
I was the supervisor of psych units, mostly an acute adult
psychiatric unit on a periodic basis because the state would send me in as a
whistleblower to tell them what was going on, years before that I was a
corrections psych tech (whistleblowing then too), telling psych patients to
knock off their behavior or that it is now time to sleep you can’t be talking
does work on many patients.
Country wide the excuse for the lack of supervision,
cleanliness and the intentional trauma causing behavior of staff is explained
by short phrases such as, “It’s just an emergency shelter” or “It’s a temporary
shelter” and that is what one of your staff said to me. There are people who
have been at the temporary, emergency shelter for years. So please give me a
break. So then I start saying, “We have a filthy shelter because it’s just a
temporary shelter”, “We traumatize people because it’s just a temporary
shelter”, “We have food safety violations because it’s just a temporary
shelter”, “We have never heard of the germ theory of disease because it’s just
a temporary shelter”, “We have no supervision because it’s just a temporary
shelter”, “We pretend to have social services because it’s just a temporary
shelter”, “We steal personal property and throw it away because it’s just a
temporary shelter”, “We can’t fix the toilets because it’s just a temporary
shelter”, “We have dead mice in the plastic bins because it’s just a temporary
shelter…”, “We have bullying and mobbing from staff and “guests” because it’s
just a temporary shelter…”
What happens when I lose sleep is a flare up which causes
flu-like symptoms, including a vascular headache and other pain, fatigue, brain
fog, tinnitus, flare of interstitial cystitis, cognitive problems, s/s of
neuropathy, irritability and then difficulty sleeping due to the flare up. I
have a flare on all chore days, today little sleep and the chore on top of the
heat, so not doing well. And of course all attempts to get health care were
thwarted. So sleep deprived, flare up, more problems sleeping, exposed to
massive germs and catch that too. Then toxins due to mitochondrial dysfunction
make me sicker. I essentially had viral sepsis last winter and could get no
health care, I have no idea why I am still alive. I have massive beaus lines in
my toes to demonstrate the history of what happened and peripheral neuropathy
with pain from the frost bite last winter.
Last evening I went back late because what is the point of
being on a bunk listing to someone say, “Fucking bitch” over and over, not that
I mind swearing but if it is constant like that is disturbing and concentration
in there is hard enough anyway. When I come in Sarah was there and they had already
checked me in, but then I mention that I was kept awake until 1 AM and given
the BS line that indicated nothing will be done.
I tried to talk to you about the showering system. I was
told we sign up for times and other crazy things. You got angry and closed the
door on me. So last night as happens almost every night I signed up for a time
which had no one else on the list and only one person for the time before. So I
go into the shower room and as per usual all three stalls are full so I have to
stand there with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome waiting while people
who did not sign up for the time I signed up for shower. I did go out to tell
the supervisor this was the situation as I have done many times. I was
pooh-poohed. The rules only apply to me, I have to sign up to shower, but
others, not so much. Charley foxtrot.
Then after the shower in which I had to listen to the
constant talking from the same woman, “fucking bitch” I went by the desk and
said, “The needs of the one supersede the needs of the many, Mr. Spock would be
appauled and Worf would come in and remove all he PetaQs.” I got a puzzled look
and a “what” so I repeated the statement with better Clingon pronunciation of
petaQ. The volunteer and Sarah were cracking up. Then due to a comedy protest I
did in Alaska I said, “There is an angry homeless person in the lobby, tomorrow
publishing begins.” Michele goes, “I don’t know what that means.” It was
hilarious and don’t we all need some entertainment.
I decided to use my nursing skills last night and started
talking to the constant talker, occasional yeller very sternly, but calmly.
What worked on her was a very stern, “No one wants to listen to that constant
swearing. Swearing is fine by me, but what is the point if it is all you are going
to say.” She stopped the talking for a while, looked like she was thinking
about what I said, then started again quietly. After a few minutes of my giving
her my look when she got louder she laid down to go to sleep. She was probably
tired from the night before. I know I was but with ME/cfs when we are sleep
deprived we get a sleep disorder called ‘tired but wired’ so have problems
getting to sleep.
You people have been given every chance and did not take
that opportunity.
The first day I came to the Interfaith Sanctuary I had been
at the day shelter, Corpus Christi all day with my suitcase and a plastic bin. I
was upset already that day, traumatized already.
I think someone may have helped me carry the plastic bin,
but I don’t remember as it has been about seven months ago and I was so
traumatized by that evening I could not even write about it until now and I
write all the time including about personal experiences. I don’t remember all the
details now of course. I have complex PTSD, rather severe after a decade of
trauma, layer upon layer. So just thinking about this traumatized me. Homeless
shelters traumatize people intentionally. They take people who were already
traumatized and put them in a system of trauma. They hurt people who can bear
no more pain and then wonder why they are on drugs and alcohol or sleeping in a
tent. The system damages the health of the homeless who die at half the age of
the sheltered. The solution is housing, but there is no affordable housing
except for a rare individual and those with social disabilities are not rented
to.
I was told at the day shelter they would want to put my
clothes in the drier and would ask me to put on some clothes they had and take
a shower. I knew that was about bed bugs, no problem. What I did not know is
they treated people horribly and had no respect at all for the personal
property of the homeless. They did not even care about my health intentionally
leaving me outside in the freezing cold for what I think was three hours.
They wanted my things brought to the laundry room so I
brought them in and was yelled at for being in the laundry room. I was saying
to him they told me to bring you this stuff, no one said I was not to go in the
laundry room. I was trying to do what they said, but as I know very well now
they are so inconsistent you can’t ever figure out the right thing to do. The
place is run by two co-serial bullies, so this makes sense. I stood outside the
door to the laundry room freezing for about an hour waiting to give the laundry
room dude my stuff for the drier. Some guy came up to do the same thing, waited
a while and got angry pounding on the door. The guy in the laundry room angrily
swung the door open almost slamming me with it and thinking it was me banging, no
it was not. I was hypothermic, stressed and due to ME/cfs which often has POTS,
Postural Tachycardia Syndrome associated with it was very ill at this point
from standing. People with ME/cfs have low blood volume, we are orthostatic, so
dizzy and our hearts pound due to pooling of blood in an already volume
depleted person from standing. I got so I could not even think between being
hypothermic and with the POTS secondary to lack of blood flow to my brain. I
was also having an ME/cfs flare with a fever. It was a horror story and they
did this to people all the time. It made me very ill for a long time and
recovery was not possible due to lack of sleep, the stress of staying there at
night, the bullying and the exposure to massive pathogens so I had viruses all
winter. I have no idea how I survived.
They never gave me the clothes to change into, never had me
change into their clothing to put the clothes I had on or my jacket in the
drier because they don’t follow their own rules. Their rules are fluid, may
only be stated, but not implemented and often only apply to some people and not
others. I did not understand that then, but I do now. They wanted to put my
backpack in the drier and by then I was so sick and hypothermic I could barely
move and certainly was unable to form a thought. In ME/cfs it takes a large
part of the brain than normal to form a thought, then we have mitochondrial
dysfunction and blood flow issues so our brains end up starving and don’t
function in the kind of situation I was in. I told them this and not one fuck
was given.
They wanted me to put my things which included electronics
in a garbage bag and just leave them on the ground, then go inside to do intake
paperwork. After telling them this was crazy I refused while shivering from
hypothermia. None of them have empathy. All I got was bullying and right wing
talking points to try and shame me or make me feel small. They especially love
the blaming for things out of the homeless person’s control which is of course
a part of the non-profit-industrial-complex neo-liberal thinking. And I wasn’t
grateful for being abused and having my property in danger, I know how odd of
me. If only they had known me they could have saved their breath. I am very
well educated and well read, bullshit does nothing but piss me off.
Since I refused to leave my possessions on the ground in a
clear garbage bag for people to steal, imagine that, they decided to give me my
plastic bins. SOP is to leave one’s property lying on the ground while doing
chores in the morning to be stolen, it sounds insane and it is but that is what
they do. I already had one plastic bin with me so they gave me one of their’s to
make two. Mine had yarn, pots and pans, along with other things in it. The
suitcase which had personal property, some clothing and the files for three
civil cases I desperately needed to get filed. I had left Alaska due to
harassment so the work could get done, lawsuits and other civil cases could be
filed, my book could get written and I could get back to gardening, making
quilts, cooking, writing, activism, my art and being able to manage my ME/cfs
was put in what they called long term storage then. It was a block building
with doors in front of four sections, the long term storage for “guests” was
the last one. I thought that was safer than the plastic bins, but that was very
wrong. These people were not to be trusted as they have absolutely no respect
for their homeless clients. More on that story later.
Those storage bins are filthy and so are the storage areas
they keep them in. My name was supposed to be put on them but I did not know
this, it was supposed to be on my suitcase too but it was not. I had no way of
knowing their procedures at all and was very ill that night before I got there.
It was all I could do to even stay conscious. Then they tortured me with
psychological abuse and the freezing cold. A few days later when finding out my
bins should be labeled with my name I asked to have this done and the guy was
abusive. I asked about the suitcase and was growled at. I thought oh well at
least it is locked up, it is safe. It
was not.
The intake interviewer was a very abusive man, he is still
there and still a serial bully. I did not write about what happened or what was
said that night as I was so traumatized and shocked that people would treat the
homeless this way even after having been in a very abusive shelter in Alaska. I
now know from extensive research this is common practice in many states. What a
country.
Finally, I got to take a shower which helped the hypothermia
but was not good for POTS. I did not get a bunk that night, but instead got one
of three spots on the floor for women. They do not have shelter mats for the
floors, but instead use those interlocking mats people put down to protect
their floors. When asked about mats claims of lack of resources are made. I
never believe a word. They are not very wide so the blankets are on the floor
and there is not enough room to keep your body from touching the floor. Those
with arthritis etc. are miserable because the mats are on a cement floor.
ME/cfs is many things, very complex, one problem is immune
system dysfunction. There are many people with immune system problems in the
shelters at high risk of infections and being on the floor is high risk. There
are only three spots for women and one of them was right at the front of the
desk where people walked by kicking the woman there, walking on their bedding
and spilling coffee on them. That is how they treat people.
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