CHAPTER 2: WOUNDED, WITLESS & WITAFacility?

 CHAPTER 2: WOUNDED, WITLESS & WITAFacility??!

By way of background, I worked in the law for 20+ years until my beloved father had a stroke at the age of 80 in 2009.  It was then that I quit the law to care for him full-time as his in-home caretaker.  His stroke was initially very bad.  He was vacationing with his brothers in West Virginia and the stroke happened when he was driving back home to Missouri.  He ended up in a rural hospital in KY.  They misdiagnosed his obvious stroke symptoms in the ER as “vertigo” and tried to send him back on the road driving.  This was (and sadly still is) the standard of care for stroke patients in America, folks.  A simple glance at the website for the American Stroke Association back in 2009 even admitted the following grave statistic: “87% of all strokes are misdiagnosed in the ER.” 

What are we even doing here, America? 

Despite all the Stroke Awareness Campaigns, despite constantly hearing the stroke acronym FAST: Facial drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911; doctors still missed these symptoms plus a massive 3 day headache he complained of - as well him not being alert and oriented to who or where he was - all being a clear indication he had suffered a massive stroke. They utterly failed my father in their grave misdiagnosis.  This is important to note because nowadays we have medications that can prevent the long-lasting damage strokes can cause IF they are administered quickly enough upon presentation with stroke symptoms in the ER.  But if 87% of strokes are going to just be misdiagnosed in the ER - especially rural, backwoods ERs with an insufficient level of care for such a medical event - what purpose do all of these awareness campaigns and current medical knowledge even serve?   

Having done medical malpractice law in my legal career, I was livid with this incompetent hospital’s obvious failures with my father.  They only ended up admitting him because he fell twice while in their ER and because he insisted he could not safely drive; and it then took them five (5) full days to contact me, his ICE Contact in his cell phone, to alert me to the problem at hand.  They then discharged him upon my arrival and had me drive him back to Missouri - when they should have arranged for medical transport for him.  I will never forget him sitting in the backseat of his Ford Focus Wagon and me needing to stop every 30 minutes on the drive back home because he was thirsty (read: massively dehydrated) and could not hold the cup of water for himself.  Heartbreaking and so so wrong.    

But, to be fair, it frankly did not get initially much better upon arrival in St. Louis.  We went to a hospital near his home that he preferred.  They assessed him and at least properly diagnosed the fact that he had, in fact, had a massive stroke some days prior.  They stabilized him with fluids and other routine procedures but then told me that they would be transferring him to a rehab facility where he could “recover.”  That Facility lasted four (4) days.  He was admitted on a Friday and when I returned on Monday night after my work at the law office that day, I found my father alone in a dark dining room, his eyeglasses crushed under his wheelchair, and unresponsive.  I called 911 and he was immediately rushed via ambulance to one of  the top hospitals in St.Louis.  

There they assessed that he would have died given another 30 minutes at that Facility as he was in septic shock and his organs were shutting down.  Apparently, that horrid “rehab facility “ they placed him in did not feed or hydrate him or even pay him any attention whatsoever since I dropped him off that past Friday and they told me to return 3 days later after their “Initial Assessment” would be complete. (Side Note: This particular place was ultimately shuttered 4 months later as the result of my Complaints and the complaints of many other families there about just how awful it evidently was.)  

At this next hospital, however, I became the fierce medically and legally trained advocate my father so desperately needed.  I demanded immediate attention for him, I questioned every test or procedure they wanted to do and I read over his medical chart studiously on the hour.  As a result, this better hospital sprang into action, he had excellent medical insurance coverage, as well, so they spared no expense in treating him appropriately for the next three (3) weeks and everything went well for him - THANK GOD - and thanks to the doctors who worked so attentively to save him.  

He was then transferred to a different, far better physical rehab Facility once discharged from this better hospital for physical and speech therapy and THIS TIME I had no qualms about his rehab care. He had received every available hospital level of care post-stroke and we were able to actively CHOOSE which physical rehab center he was admitted to the second time around, rather than just being told where he was going to go by some idiotic and poorly-rated St.Louis hospital.  AND we were able to afford to do half private pay and half augmented Medicare and again - because we were blessed with affluence and his excellent, comprehensive health insurance - he FINALLY got the restorative care he required and was able to transition back home after about three (3) months there.  I visited him every day while he was there and it was STUPIFYING and STUNNING to me the difference between this physical rehab facility that truly restored him to medical/physical wellness and that horrible one that nearly let him die in but four days time.  

I tell you all of this “background information” as my way of admitting that I am now fully well aware that medical inequity is a massive problem in America.  If you have affluence, education and the ability to medically advocate for yourself (or your loved one) and you have great medical insurance - you statistically, more often than not, will be allowed to recover from a stroke (or other health catastrophe) in America and continue on to live a productive life. The poor and marginalized in our Society are not so fortunate.  At the time this all happened to my father, I did not know that he essentially got to recover and live another ten (10) great years with me because we were affluent and had our own resources and my medical-legal training to guide his recovery.  Privileged and blessed indeed.  

And thus and so, when August 2020 became September 2020 at the Homeless Hotel, my medical doctor decided that I needed to enter a “physical rehab Facility” to recover from my TBI from the assault, my left knee injury which was destroyed because of that same February 2020 assault, and my dramatic medical decline causing the suddenly very symptomatic nature of my Huntington’s Disease and so I could receive post-asbestos exposure physical, respiratory and nutritional supportive therapies.  I blame the assault for causing these problems but I also blame the abject neglect we were left to languish in at that Homeless Hotel Program for my rapid medical decline in Summer 2020.  

I was given the State-required assessment needed to enter any SNF (skilled nursing facility/rehab facility) and it was determined that short-term physical rehab was medically necessary for me under IL State Guidelines.  And because we were living amid the COVID Pandemic, I was told that I would have to obtain a negative COVID Test within 48 hours of entering any of the SNFs (skilled nursing facilities hereinafter simply abbreviated as SNF or SNFs in the multiple) where I would medically recover.  At this particular time in Downstate IL, I was told that all available COVID tests in IL were being used for “the athletes” in local and professional sports. There were literally no RAPID RESPONSE TESTS available for me to obtain anywhere in IL.  I absolutely know this to be fact - because I called every testing venue, including Walgreens and CVS, all who allegedly had appointments but they all were booked WEEKS OUT on tests. So no COVID test available in Downstate IL in September 2020. What do you do? In order to move forward, the Facility I was entering required this precaution - which was entirely understandable given the severity of the raging Pandemic in America at this time.  Seemed to me that proof of a negative COVID test would be among many things you should have to prove/present with to enter any such Facility where our fragile and medically vulnerable elders reside.  

  Fortunately, for me though - I had FINALLY received my $1200 Stimulus Check just the week prior (the one most Americans received in April 2020) and I literally had to travel to Missouri, to an Urgent Care Walk-In COVID testing site and pay $100 for the test - out of my own pocket/Stimulus Check.  There were simply no other available options.  I realize we were in an unprecedented Pandemic and things were chaotic but this, to me, was insane.  They, of course, did not accept my IL Medicaid Card in MO so I just had to pay the cost out-of- pocket. Mildly infuriated at yet ANOTHER  failure of the State of IL government’s response during the Pandemic does not even begin to convey my feelings of frustration at this unreal quagmire of dysfunction just to obtain COVID testing a full seven (7) months into the American Pandemic.  How were we STILL mismanaging this Pandemic so badly at this point - more than 7 months in, I often wondered?     

The rest of my $1200 Stimulus Check went towards buying things I would need at the SNF:  slippers, loungewear, shower caddy and hygiene things, underwear, clothes, blankets/pillow, a pair of Fall/Winter shoes - all purchased at second-hand thrift stores.  I had so little that entire Summer of 2020 and needed so much to enter the SNF for my anticipated months-long recovery.  I also purchased a used Chromebook and Bose headphones from Facebook Marketplace because my Obamaphone was wholly insufficient for handling so many day-to-day computer tasks. I bought a long overdue oil change and vehicle air filter and a tank of gas to get there. My poor car had endured over six (6) months of complete neglect and constantly riding on E (empty) on the gas gauge and such lack of proper maintenance will destroy a reliable yet, nonetheless, 15 year old car, faster than you can say found on road dead (longtime FORD acronym.)  I also purchased the Huntington's medication supplements that I take, which are not covered under Medicaid, but which are physician-prescribed. I paid back someone on Reddit who had loaned me money during the darkest days of Summer 2020 because I was determined to prove to Reddit that their faith and belief in me was not misplaced.  And thus and so, just like that -  my entire $1200 stimulus check was mostly gone, save for about $50.00 when I arrived on September 23, 2020 at the SNF where I was sent to recover in MetroEast IL.

Sadly, the Facility I was supposed to enter was no longer available to me as I waited and navigated for those ten (10) days to  try and obtain the necessary  “proof of negative COVID test ” for SNF entry requirement; so I was instead sent to a different Facility.  I will always wonder how things might have gone differently had I been sent to that first Facility as originally planned; but, alas, we live the life we are dealt and have to roll and adapt with the constant ongoing uncertainty a raging pandemic causes in America.  If I learned anything in the Summer months of 2020 it was this: extreme situations require extreme flexibility and adaptive resilience in the face of constant insurmountable challenges and setbacks.  If you sit down and quit at every major hurdle thrown your way in this thing called poverty in America - YOU WILL DIE - it’s just that simple.        

  So I arrived at this second-choice SNF in Metro-East IL with my new-to-me belongings in tow as well as all of those which were donated to me by the local aforementioned churches named in Chapter 1. I mention this because I hold THOSE CHERISHED POSSESSIONS in highest regard.  Things people give to me out of sheer kindness and humanity will always have far more sentimental value and, therefore, genuine intrinsic value to me.  When you bother to care about me, I care that you care and will take the utmost care with anything that you gave to me in caring for me.  It’s just that simple.      

I am rather certain it is highly unorthodox for a “Resident” or “patient” of such a Facility to drive themselves there - but what other option did I have? Plus, I wanted my car to be where I was at all times.  The staff seemed rather dumbfounded  that I drove myself there being that I was wheelchair dependent at the time and in very poor health but, nevertheless, they did get me moved in and my car was parked outside my Resident Room window where I could keep an eye on it.    

My first indication that something <might> be amiss at this Facility was that literally no one ever asked to see my acquired and “legally required” documentation of my recent negative COVID test that I fought for 10 days to obtain.  So….they literally just let someone from outside of this Facility, coming from a “homeless hotel” no less, enter their Facility and no questions were asked about whether or not I might expose the other medically vulnerable residents to COVID or any other highly contagious pathogens for that matter.  A nurse did come to talk to me as soon as I was settled in my room - we will call her Molly - and I even offered her the COVID negative documentation but she said “No, that’s not necessary.” Ummmm…okay…NOT! But whatever people.  

Molly took notes of my current medications and went over my doctor’s orders with me and asked questions about how I came to be in need of short-term rehab etc.  She listened to literally ⅕ of what had thus far happened to me and actually injected: “OMG, how are you not catatonic in a mental ward at this point from all of this trauma? I would be.  I would totally have given up and curled into a ball in the corner and refused to go on.”  I told her I had never even realized that was an option available to me.  I am the daughter of a Veteran and he always taught me: “Life is hard, kid.  It’s going to knock you down sometimes.  But when life knocks you down 27 times - you get back up 28 times, ya hear? Otherwise, you will never make it. You always have to find a way to persevere.”   Molly looked at me rather incredulously then told me someone would be in to “inventory all of my personal belongings that I entered the Facility with” -  but, oddly, that never happened.  At the time, I did not think too much about this lapse…for I did not know what I did not know.  But in retrospect, realizing they allowed someone from the outside coming from a “COVID homeless hotel program” and never asked for my COVIDneg test results and never inventoried my belongings - this was flatout RECKLESS.  For I literally could have entered that Facility with a kilo of cocaine and 12 guns and those incompetents in charge would have been none the wiser.  I would like to state, for the record, that I did not, in fact, enter said Facility with any such illegal items; but the point being - <I could have> and it could have been cataclysmically disastrous had I been a dangerous person with a dangerous mindset or agenda.  Ponder the possibilities and realize that they could have LOST EVERYTHING had I been a gun-toting crazy who dispensed drugs to the other Residents and then just one day shot the whole place up.  I say this not because I have any propensity for such mayhem but to highlight their reckless disregard from the outset. Criminally dangerous in their neglect and disregard indeed.     

On my second day there, I went to shower and upon my return I realized someone had stolen my (just purchased) second-hand computer headphones from my dresser.  I fortunately had the premeditated presence of mind to hide my-new-to me-Chromebook in the pillowcase on my bed under a bunch of books so THAT expensive item was, fortunately, still there.  But as a suddenly-deaf-due-to-COVID person, I genuinely needed those headphones for my mental health weekly ongoing teletherapy sessions as well as to hear most things on the computer/phone calls.  This was but another in a long line of devastating personal losses of my belongings I would just have to adapt to as my “new normal” in this life.  From that day forward, I literally slept with my Chromebook beside me and my Lifeline Phone in my pajamas pocket. I never left them unattended in my room ever again and ALWAYS took them with me when showering.

But when I mentioned the sudden absence of my headphones to the staff, no one cared.  Like - it didn’t even register a reaction from them.  Because, you see, the valuables of the Residents “going missing” is a common occurrence in these “bottom of the barrel, janky, Medicaid, for-profit SNFs” such that no one is EVER surprised to learn of such thefts in these Facilities when it happens to their loved ones living in SNFs.  But after the prior theft by my niece of all of my belongings, this was extremely triggering to me; and I, thereafter, truly struggled to be able to hear the things I needed to hear over the phone/computer via the audio enhancer in the headphones had.    Next, this Facility lost the key fob to my car that I gave to them upon entering the Facility. They told me I could not “legally retain physical custody of it in my room” as they would be liable if I “just drove off” one day.  I found it bizarre, in the beginning, that they would raise such a seemingly ridiculous concern but I am a rule-follower so I stupidly handed the key fob to them - and which they then promptly “lost.” They said it was secured in their Social Worker’s locked office which can only mean one thing - the “management staff” at this Facility are the actual thieves within the Facility.  After that point, I knew I was dealing with a super shady, janky, not well run and criminal enterprise Facility.  But I could not have fathomed JUST HOW BAD IT REALLY WAS…       

A few days after arriving there, I was moved into a room with a roommate and her name was Barb.  Fortunately for me, the third mistake this Facility made was pairing us up as roommates; for we would become stalwart and long-time friends and advocates to make this shoddy shack pithole janky place I had suddenly landed in better - together….one day in the distant future.   

But on that particular day in September 2020, Barb was exactly my age (40s - so young by nursing home standards) and very smart and articulate in addition to extremely witty and fun.  We literally spent so many hours of each day laughing so loud at jokes we made together that the staff frequently would come into our room and comment on how “what a great match we were as roommates  because it had been SO LONG since they had heard uncontrollable, belly-laugh, bellicose type laughter in that Facility - from any residents there.”  If that’s not a staff-initiated, damning indictment of the place, I don’t know what is: Medicaid-funded  SNFs - where joy & laughter go to die ~ before you do…   

Barb suffers from cerebral ataxia but is still fully independent with all of her own medications and ADLs.  It was hard for her to talk (speech difficulties) and it was hard for me to hear.  Nevertheless, we persisted and made it work.  😉 

She told me that prior to my arrival in this janky SNF, they had nearly been shut down by the State because they had 120 COVID deaths in a 119 bed Facility. FULL STOP.  Read that sentence again.  The same people who allowed 120 people to die during the last 3 months of the COVID Pandemic just prior to my arrival also just let someone in off the street WHO COULD HAVE BEEN COVID POSITIVE as they never took custody of my negative COVID test result - had ALREADY recklessly and needlessly let countless of our cherished elders die.  Um….MAJOR RED FLAG.  Barb then told me that all of her own valuables had also “gone missing” from the “locked in Management Office” upon her arrival at the place and her “lost” personal items  included precious family heirlooms of genuine jewelry  including her grandfather’s wedding ring, a ruby ring given to her by her sister and many other treasured items. When she called Management out on this issue, they then made her sign a LEGAL form she could not fully understand stating that she waived her right to file a police report and that she was fully okay with them having “misplaced” her precious family heirlooms.  How convenient for them that they even have such a malicious “legal form” at the ready and pre-printed out for all the Residents their “management employees” rob to sign when they fully well know most Residents there have an assigned Conservator/Guardian to handle such matters for them. 

Corrupt and criminal indeed this place was - without a doubt.    

On my first day there, I had sent my clothes to the in-house laundry. They were returned to me on my second day as Barb’s roommate, which was a few days later. I immediately noticed my beautiful cashmere-blend robe was “missing” from my laundered-in-their-Facility clothing items.  This robe was my father’s and one of the few belongings my niece did not rob from me as it had been in the back of my trunk of my car in a bag - for safekeeping.  I did not use this robe at the homeless hotel because it was Summer and the a/c didn’t work great in my hotel room most days.  This robe was a gorgeous color of deep ocean blue and was so soft.  I bought it for my Dad for his birthday a few months before he died in 2018.  I cherished that robe and now these thieves at this janky SNF have stolen that from me, too.  I filed a formal Grievance Form and Complaint with the Facility Administrator who shall AT THIS TIME remain nameless to protect the guilty.  Suffice it to say, after my first conversation with this shockingly stupid and clearly incompetent Administrator, I nicknamed her “Witless” as in, having no wits about her whatsoever because her real name was actually Whitmore. (Yeah - she sure needed more wits about her alright - so aptly named she was! And I’m clever with funny nicknames for cruel monster people. My roommate, Barb, thought the new nickname of Witless was hilarious because she hated how incompetent the woman was, too, and it WAS FUNNY because of how similar “Witless” is to this Administor’s REAL LEGAL NAME. And thus and so, we henceforth always only ever called this horrible Administrator “Witless.”  But on that day when I was in a bit of tizzy about my father’s missing robe and my other “missing” belongings there, Witless assured me it was likely only “accidentally misplaced by laundry” in someone else’s room and would be found straightaway.  I’m sure you know how that empty promise from Witless ended.  Never found - fully stolen by the criminal management staff charged with safekeeping such items of the Residents there.  

My first weekend with Barb as my roommate alerted me to another grim statistic about these lethal Medicaid for-profit SNFs: weekends mean fewer staff and even less medical care received by the Residents.  As it happened on this first Saturday together, no morning nurse came to work to dispense a.m. medications.  

And there was always only 1 nurse scheduled so the Facility could extract more profit from the poverty populations they pretend to care for.

Barb is an insulin-dependent diabetic. By 9am she was complaining of a severe headache, fatigue and was laying on her bed in obvious distress.  By 10am, she was nearly in a diabetic coma. I put a cold cloth on her head but had literally no idea what to do when you are LOCKED IN & TRAPPED inside of one of these Facilities and no nurse arrives to dispense life-saving medications.  Can you call 911 from such a Facility? I did not know.  But fortunately I had my Lifeline phone (there are no phones available for Residents to use unless family pays for a private landline and in poverty Medicaid Facilities, most Residents there have no remaining family or money to pay for such a “luxury” item.)  So, I used my Lifeline phone to call 911 and I also texted Witless about this reckless situation currently unfolding at the Facility.  Witless came running into the Facility from wherever she was off galavanting that weekend (she’s a notorious boozehound so she was likely on her way to some local winery that particular Autumn 2020 day.)  And  along with her came 10 other personnel she had called in (who, incidentally are never there on weekends) and she told the paramedics that “everything was fine, the nurse was just running late that day.”  {Observational internal note of that fiasco: Witless is a pathological liar who will literally convey any lie to save her own stupid self and she is prone to gaslighting not just the Residents about their “missing” valuables but also officials in the Community to cover her shoddily-run Facility.  Alrighty then.  Always good to know what you’re dealing with in terms of a dangerous person in your midst, in my opinion.}  

Barb got her insulin but her reading was at 538 which <could have been> fatal.  I kept hammering at Witless saying “What if Barb had had a roommate without a phone of her own or who was nonverbal or not mentally aware enough to respond to this medical emergency FOR HER?  She would have died an entirely preventable death for want of basic insulin.” 

Witless literally did not care.  

As soon as the paramedics cleared the building, Witless and her band of ten coconspirators she had called in all left the Facility for the weekend five minutes later.   THAT is how lethal these for-profit Medicaid SNFs are: a near FATAL emergency occurs and the Administrator hangs around just long enough to gaslight any EMS responders into believing “everything is fine.”  Just wow.      

 I would soon come to learn that another reason Barb’s sugar was chronically mismanaged in this Facility was because of the food.  To describe it as “worse than the worst prison food” and “unrecognizable as food” is entirely too generous.  Everything came out of giant government bulk cans of food: canned vegetables, canned meat, canned juice, canned literally EVERYTHING.  As such, it was, therefore, lacking in any nutritional value and dangerous to feed to so many people there, myself included.  Canned and highly processed foods are as cheap as can be for a SNF to buy in bulk but are always high in sugar and salt - two things you never want for a patient population that has high rates of  diabetes and high blood pressure among many other medical maladies.  And because I suffered from Huntington’s Disease and low blood sugar (hypoglycemia- not diabetes) and required an all organic, all natural fresh fruit, protein, and fiber diet - for me their cancer-in-a-can food was also a medical nightmare as I specifically was sent there for “nutritional support” following my massive Post-Covid weight loss and I could not recognize nor eat MOST of the food served there.  Breakfast was usually OK in that it was faux scrambled eggs and a fossilized sausage patty.  I ate that meal because it was the only edible meal of the day.  

Fortunately, Barb had family close by who routinely brought her EXTRA food because the food there was so inedible and I had my EBT benefits.  Someone on Reddit recommended ordering organic and healthy food from Amazon with my EBT and remaining $50 in my bank account from my stimulus check and I did just that.  And you might wonder why I did not do this while at the Homeless Hotel to attenuate my food scarcity.  It’s a valid question.  Honestly, because EBT is restricted SO MUCH (you can’t buy prepared foods/hot foods, can’t buy non-food items, can’t buy hygiene items etc) and because I had never thought to order groceries from Amazon before (remember, I was hospitalized for months while you all were learning to do new hobbies during early Lockdown) - it honestly never occurred to me because I never thought Amazon would ACCEPT EBT.  When I found out they did while at this SNF, because of a kind Redditor telling me they would, I was literally over the moon with glee.   And for future people who may be in the same jam I tell this now so EVERYONE knows - yes, Amazon takes EBT/SNAP.  Also, if you don’t have an address or a safe place to receive said food, there are “Amazon lockers” where you can have it shipped and pick it up yourself.  Oh the many, many things I have learned on this long, strange journey….

  

Barb shared her food her relatives who lived nearby brought to her with me and I shared my food that Amazon delivered via my EBT with her. And this worked great for the months of September and October 2020 to ensure WE DID NOT STARVE of malnutrition in that pit.  Then, in November 2020, the government suddenly and inexplicably discontinued my SNAP benefits.  Without this LITERAL “supplemental nutrition” each month, I would surely starve to death there.  I had just finally STARTED GAINING weight again and now the government turned off my SNAP Benefits. Why? 

No clerical error.  

You see, the government ASSumes that when you are in a residential SNF that you are getting three (3) high quality meals per day and, as such, you therefore no longer require EBT/SNAP benefits.  

Nothing could be further from the truth.  

I submit to you that there are thousands of elders who are, RIGHT NOW, slowly starving to death in these janky, Medicaid for-profit SNFs and if anyone needs EBT supplemental nutrition assistance - it is them.   

To realize that these SNFs intentionally serve the cheapest food they can buy in bulk so that they can maximize profits for their private-equity owners who only care about their profits from the poverty populations whose suffering they have monetized to their great economic advantage was highly infuriating to me. Yes, to say that I did a deep dive into how “for profit Medicaid nursing homes” in IL and America, in general, have been fully hijacked by private equity for profits via plundering the poor is a bit of an understatement.  I made it my personal mission to understand the full-tilt corruption at work in this arena.  And oh what another fully corrupt rabbithole I spiraled within when I did this undertaking…. 

Another entirely preventable medical event that DID end in tragedy at this Facility was a woman named Patricia.  She is a veteran and was military police while serving in the Army.  She arrived at the Facility long before me but in quite similar situation: fleeing domestic violence and needing to “medically recover” from the trauma.  She entered this Facility in a wheelchair needing to get strong enough to walk again , as did I.  But on a day of low-staff and inattention by the staff that was there, Patricia had a fall that caused a massive head injury.  She was rendered nonverbal, eating liquid nutrition through a tube and bedridden.  Can you even fathom that you enter such a Facility to RECOVER from what you have already endured only to sustain WORSE MEDICAL INJURIES & DISABILITIES because of how lethal this Facility is? Then, because she was never turned properly or timely by the staff or given any restorative therapies EITHER at this same shithole Facility, she developed blood clots in both legs and had to have both legs amputated to save her life.  All I can say to this whole horrifying sequence of events is…but for the grace of God go I…..

Pamela and I became roommates in November because, by then, the Facility realized that putting the two youngest and smartest residents in the same room together was always going to be problematic for them.  Because Barb knew the institutional history and intel of this Facility and I knew the legal system to hold them accountable, we were a formidable duo fighting this janky Facility together and constantly hotlined them to IDPH (IL Dept of Health - who ostensibly regulates these lethal pits).   So Witless separated us one day in early November hoping to permanently sever our friendship.  Ah, daft Witless, you only made our friendship grow even stronger.  To this day, I still talk to Barb weekly and send her occasional cards and birthday gifts and Christmas goodies etc.  Witless may have tried to undo her fatal mistake of joining us as roommates but it was so too late.  Once co-conspirators colluding to condemn and expose the crappy conditions in this Facility, always besties forevermore… At least that’s how I see it from my perspective.   

But after having been at this Facility for nearly 2 full months, I had received zero therapies that I actually was sent there for: no physical therapy, no respiratory therapy and clearly no nutritional therapy.  When I made issue of this with Administrator Witless, she responded by holding a meeting with her sycophant staff to try and emotionally terrorize me into future silence on the topic.  I had written her an email with my alarming observations about her Facility and my lack of supportive medical therapies to-date and she gave each Department a copy of my email and allowed them to verbally terrorize me during this 10 against 1 unannouncd meeting.  When I asked from the outset if we could reschedule so I could retain legal counsel or any type of ombudsman representation FOR ME in this ambush meeting (which residents are legally entitled to), Witless refused this request.  When I asked her if I could record the meeting with my phone, she refused.  That’s when I knew it was going to go full-tilt illegal, off the rails and in bad faith and yet I was now trapped in this locked room with these people.  And it was fully illegal what she was doing and she knew it.  She just HOPED I didn’t know it.     

To be clear, a good leader receives an email like the one I sent to her that was only full of good intentions and observations on my part and immediately works to do better in managing her own staff and make rapid improvements.  A sociopathic leader, without conscience, shares that letter with the entire staff and demands they bully and terrorize me in a group settting for 2 hours so that I never bring up any valid issues ever again.  It is to her great misfortune that I predicted her bad faith behavior IN ADVANCE and covertly recorded this meeting via the audio recorder I always keep in my pocket for just such encounters with narcissistic sociopaths in positions of power.  For if I learned ANYTHING at all since my father’s death, nothing tells the REAL STORY of what actually happened with a dangerous, lying narcissist quite like a silent witness concealed in your pocket recording EVERYTHING they say. THAT offensive maneuver on my part Witless did NOT anticipate; but then she’s like every narcissist alive - always believing she’s the smartest person in the room when, in reality, she’s a monster lacking any intelligence whatsoever aside from being just smart enough to engage in constant criminal mischief and wrongdoing.  I knew this much from observing and learning from the disordered behaviors of the predator landlord in STL who was the same and from whose ongoing abuse and stalking I was still trying to escape: always secretly record them!

Define irony: Having been fleeing ongoing narcissistic abuse from my crazed abuser in STL, I finally felt <SAFE> behind this Facility’s fully locked down doors due to COVID - with no visitors getting in or out - and no way to trace me there due to HIPAA. I finally FELT like I could RELAX and exit what had become my long-term permanent residence of “hypervigilance” his ongoing abuse of me caused me -  only to find myself face to face with his female counterpart in this SNF on this day in this ambush meeting.  It’s really not that surprising at all.  These unskilled, unintelligent narcissists are drawn to occupations that superficially seem to carry prestige with them (a la nursing home administrator and a property owning white male slumlord); but, in reality, all they do is count other people’s money & exploit ways to make that money THEIR money.

That’s literally their only skill.

So BOTH occupations often tend to appeal to these predatory monsters specifically because it requires no real skill or smarts and because it gives them a sense of power over unsuspecting new victims’ lives on a rotating basis.   For about the time you might learn your landlord is a covert sociopathic narcissist, you move far away and pray never to encounter such a monster again.  And let’s be honest - most aged elders at any Medicaid SNF are likely to be too medically compromised to ever be able to fight back against such a narcissistic monster in a position of power over them in such a Facility.  

Me? I was the narc-slayer Witless never saw coming.  

And I made it my solemn vow to protect the others living there from her reign of horror and to rid her from that Facility - if it was the last thing I would ever did.  Nobody so casually cruel and criminally corrupt as she is should EVER have been allowed to have any position of any kind in any SNF - not even dog catcher but much less Administrator.  It’s also indicative of her NPD that she insists everyone address her as the “Executive CEO” of the Facilities that hire her when, in reality, she is but the “Administrator” of a SNF. Barely more than a secretary for the front office. The only difference is: most secretaries are smarter than their bosses.

Witless was truly witless: without one wit in her head.

During this “ambush meeting” on November 13, 2020 with this disordered monster and her compliant sycophants, Witless admitted that at that point - a full two months into my residency there - my “entire patient file was only 12 pages long.” She even picked it up and threw it at me across the table to show how little paperwork/medical records they bothered to keep at that Facility.  She also insisted that my lack of restorative therapies there was because my specific IL Medicaid Insurance  did not cover the very therapies I was sent there to receive.  How could that be? And why, if that were the case, was I ever medically screened and sent there to receive those therapies in the first place? 

Upon returning to my room after that terrorizing and retraumatizing meeting with Witless and her staff in November 2020, to say that I was “triggered” by the exact same behaviors in Witless as the disordered landlord had demonstrated daily in STL is an understatement.  I had a full blown panic attack where I could not get air and where I lost consciousness.  I’m not going to diminish it: it was dire and life-threatening given my reduced pulmonary function post-COVID. I could have died.  It was only because my roommate, Barb, helped me through it that I survived.    I hit my call button but Witless harshly  admonished the staff to not respond to my very evident medical distress.  So she wasn’t just capable of intentional malice, casualty cruelty and covert criminality - she was also fully capable of premeditated murder.  

My God.  

We will likely never know just how many people this pure evil woman has been allowed to kill in her position of power over vulnerable people’s lives.     

But after I calmed from that panic attack caused by the ambush meeting attack,  I contacted my IL Medicaid and had a two (2) hour conversation with them wherein my phone call progressively escalated up higher and higher in the insurance company to land finally, at the Vice President of Member Services. I was told, in no uncertain terms during this phone call, that Witless lied to me during that ambush meeting and that my insurance absolutely entitled me to all of those therapies and they, my insurance company, were flabbergasted that this janky joint was apparently running quite the Medicaid fraud scam there on top of everything else and providing NO SUCH RESTORATIVE THERAPIES while charging the State for same.  Show of hands - who is surprised?   Not me.

The VP of my Medicaid actually called Witless directly that day and she was “removed” from that particular Facility soon thereafter.  They brought in someone who their Corporate private equity owners utilized as their “cleanup crew” once any agitator is on site and making problems for them.  We will call this person Big Bertha.  Her sole function was “to be the new face of the same old shoddy Facility” and give the ILLUSION that everything was new and better now that she was there instead of Witless.  I realized this sad fact the first conversation I had with Big Bertha.  She was definitely “Corporate Cleanup Crew Cast material” and I avoided her for that reason - until I simply could NOT avoid her anymore one day soon after her November 2020 arrival there.        

But I would be remiss if I failed to mention, in addition to all of THAT aforementioned toxic dysfunctional incompetence happening within this Facility, the degree to which outright physical abuse and harmful neglect happened on the daily at this poorly run Facility under Witless and then Big Bertha.  So if their overt criminality doesn’t kill you, their covert cruelty will.  What a system we have in America for our poverty-population elders!

My roommate Barb and I shared a bathroom with a woman in the next room who I will call Verdie.  She was 96 and suffering from mild dementia but was a beautiful, lovely woman who was gentle and kind. She had a radiant smile and she loved cats.  I actually gave her one of my thrift-store cat shirts I bought before arriving there because I felt so sorry for Verdie.  She did have a daughter who visited in the early mornings, via the window in her room (remember: this was COVID - we were on lockdown so no visitors could come INSIDE and witness for themselves the horrors happening within and just how egregiously everyone in there was on the decline: medically, physically, mentally and socially.)  I remember the a.m. nurses used to get Verdie dressed and sitting up in her chair so the daughter would THINK everything was fine with her mother.  But the daughter, knowing how awful the food was there IN the Facility, often brought outside food for her mother to eat from favorite area restaurants of her Mom; and the staff always took this food intended for Verdie from the daughter at the locked front door - and then ate it themselves.  Why? Because Verdie could not advocate for herself and tell her daughter what was really happening to her due to her progressive dementia.  But the doors connecting our rooms were always left open so I kept a vigilant eye over Verdie and that is how I knew they were stealing the food the daughter brought to her.  Because the daughter would show it to her through the window and then when the daughter drove off, I would walk up to the front office area and see a member of management eating the food themselves that the daughter had brought for Verdie.  Describing the management at this Facility as wholly atrocious and fully evil does not even convey the extent to which the “front office sycophants” Witless had managed to encircle around her joined her in her evil disdain for the Residents therein.  I actually caught them all laughing one day up in the front office as Witless herself dropped the food intended for Verdie straight into the trash can in her office.  Pure evil indeed. 

And if you think THAT is bad, just imagine what that place descended into  after the day “management people left around 4pm daily” and the second-shift medicos arrived who cared even less about the Residents well-being and spent the majority of every shift in the breakroom eating snacks and playing on their phones.  If you thought the first shift folks were lethal and incompetnent, you cannot fathom how dangerous the second shift medicos were.  At BEST, they were emotionally indifferent or insouciant to the needs of the Residents there; but at their worst they were far more terrifying.  

They engaged in outright abuse of poor Verdie (and many other Residents in the locked down Memory Care Ward.)  On multiple occasions, I found the same CNA physically assaulting Verdie - just because she could - and because frail Verdie could not fight back.  So often, I had to physically get between Verdie and this CNA and make her stop hitting Verdie that I literally lost count.  But each time it happened, I took pictures of Verdie after the CNA left and I documented EVERYTHING.  Then, one day, the abuse was so bad, I knew that I had to record it actually happening with my phone.  Imagine if you will THAT moral dilemma: having to stand idly by while this CNA used Verdie as her own personal punching bag so that I could secretly record it all from the doorway in our shared bathroom.  I then took pictures of Verdie, unconscious, after the fact.  I screamed for them to call 911 but they never did.  They just laughed and said “You can scream and you can try but no one is ever coming to hear your cries. Ha Ha Ha”  Evil predators indeed.  

I did learn the Elder Abuse Reporting System and how to report such events to Illinois Department of Health (IDPH) who regulates these SNFs in IL.  But sadly, this IL government Agency too, fell into total dysfunction and disarray/nonfunctioning incompetence during Pandemic 2020.  IDPH did literally NO ON-SITE investigations for six (6) full months in 2020 in IL which means many people reached out for help via the ONLY legal avenue available to them - the Complaint Hotline -but were left unaided and many likely died as a result.  Everyone was told the false narrative by our media that our elders in these Facilities were in frail health and were, of course, unfortunate casualties in the COVID Pandemic as they succumbed to COVID. I am here to testify that NOTHING is further from the truth.  Our elders died entirely preventable deaths in these lethal Medicaid facilities because these Facilities were given “BLANKET LEGAL IMMUNITY FOR ALL WRONGDOING DURING COVID” from Governor Pritzker.  Giving such legal immunity to such lethal Medicaid facilities was the same as signing their death warrants, in my opinion.  I realize Governor Pritzker was in a lose-lose scenario with this because hospitals were demanding that they needed places to send patients that were still too sick to return home from the hospital but yet too well to remain in a collapsing healthcare hospital system already overwhelmed with patients during Pandemic 2020.  So, Governor Pritzker gave an added financial incentive to the Medicaid SNFs to take these severely ill patients they had no ability to actually competently care for and then shut down all regulatory oversight with IDPH to monitor how such a catastrophic scenario might actually play out in real time. Entirely preventable deaths and despair; abuse and unconscionable neglect is how THAT manifested in real time, in case you’re wondering, Governor Pritzker.   And worse still - nobody questions when someone dies in a nursing home/SNF because well, it happens all the time.  So no autopsies were performed EVER and every death certificate was marked “COVID” regardless of what the real cause of death was (including brutal beatings) and that’s just how it went for those locked down inside of these lethal Medicaid SNFs for so many in IL and America, in general.  It was an unmitigated disaster and our elders did not have to die.  They did not even have to “catch COVID” in the first instance had the Facility I entered deployed any kind of sterile gloves/gowns/face masks or shields or ANY PPE whatsoever.  But they did not.  They routinely walked into all Resident rooms fully unprotected and became the proximate cause of so many of our elders senselessly dying of COVID.  119 at that one specific Facility to be exact.    The hallways were replete with signs warning staff to always wear PPE into the Resident rooms but they so rarely did.  I took so many photographs and videos of this overt danger of NO PPE being worn in the Facility by the staff members that my photo/video storage on my Lifeline Phone was reaching capacity.  Shame on them.  But too bad for us - because IDPH literally did not care.  I reported egregious violations within that Facility so often to IDPH, both while I was still residing there and after I left, and NOTHING was ever done about it.  It would take me six (6) months thereafter to FINALLY find out why… 

After my life-threatening panic attack on November 13, 2020, I had an out-of-facility pulmonary evaluation wherein they finally diagnosed me as having 20% pulmonary function post-COVID and needing 24/7 rescue oxygen - especially given my panic attacks that could literally cost me my life in such a compromised respiratory condition.   Even with a written medical order for same, Big Bertha and the incompetent D.O.N. (Director of Nursing) who I will just call “The Dumb” instead of “The DON” denied me this needed oxygen. They told me that their in-house GP doctor would evaluate me when he was there NEXT YEAR (remember: this was November 2020) and decide THEN IF I required rescue oxygen.  That is how INFREQUENTLY Residents are seen by an actual doctor at such janky Medicaid facilities. So: no regular doctors visits, no restorative therapies, no nutritious food and, more often than not, no nurse presenting for medication dispensing on the weekend shifts and now no oxygen. This place was an abomination to all that is supposed to represent the care our elders deserve in these nursing facilities.  How horrible.  How brutally, awfully, inexcusably horrible. 

I demanded the oxygen, Big Bertha and The Dumb refused.  And round and round we went for HOURS that Thursday after my pulmonary appointment.  They then LOCKED me in a new EMPTY room all by myself and refused me meal trays and access to the rest of the Facility.  From my window in this new “isolation locked room” I could see my vehicle.  I literally planned on breaking the window and making a run for it to my car if my Plan A did not work out.  For you see, the entire time I had access to drive away in my car in spite of them losing my key fob I was forced to give to them.  My car is the type that has a key code to get into the car.  And in the console of my car was my spare key fob.   I knew I could make it out and to my car - but I would lose all of my belongings if I just bolted. No way. 

NOT AGAIN.  

So, I called the most prominent Nursing Home Abuse law firm in Chicago and the partner for that firm demanded to speak with Big Berth, as “acting Administrator of the Facility.”  I banged on the locked door to my room with a wooden chair screaming until a nurse finally came in.  I walked right past her and straight up to where Big Bertha was stuffing her face in the employee break room and handed her my phone.  I had argued with them for hours the night before that I needed to leave if they were going to deny me something so basic as rescue oxygen.  They refused.  But the minute Big Bertha was on the phone with the founding partner of this BIG TIME law firm - she insisted they were not holding me against my will and they were not “falsely imprisoning me” and that they would let the front door swing wide open and I could leave immediately.  She even had Felix, my favorite maintenance man there, help me to my car with all of my belongings in tow.  I told Big Bertha, The Dumb and the antisocial social worker who all the Residents there feared - that I would work to have them all removed from there if it was the last thing I did in this life.  They laughed and mocked me as I left and said “We’ll still be here 5 years from now. You can’t touch us.”  I simply replied “Go ahead, girl bullies: Underestimate me.  That will be fun.”  And with that - I FINALLY, after nearly 3 long months and no treatments or medical care there whatsoever, drove the hell away from that horrifying hell on Earth.          

So, I had somehow managed to save myself but I felt compelled to also save everyone else I left behind still languishing in that pit at the mercy of those incompetents.  And it took me 6 long months of unrelenting persistence with IDPH to FINALLY, FINALLY get the bad actors removed from there.  Because you see, not long after I left there they, of course, immediately brought Witless back as Administrator.  And my roommate Barb literally feared for her life again when that happened.  I would not stand for that.  Witless is a clear and present danger to any Facility she is in and she needs to have no further access to our cherished elders.  

Leaving the Facility without much of a future plan in place was chaotic and medically unsafe.  But I did have a short-term plan in place.  Or, so I thought that I did.  My ongoing teletherapy for mental wellness with Centerstone Behavioral Health had been ongoing this entire time, on a weekly basis, so my therapist knew all the horrifying goings on there. And although she wasn’t much of a helpful therapist for me as a survivor of narcissistic abuse as I mentioned previously, she previously worked in nursing homes and she had been urging me to leave the Facility before they killed me there.  She had personally witnessed it happen to others before in the Medicaid SNFs she previously worked at and she, too, genuinely feared for my life there.  She promised me that a hotel would be waiting for me along with all medical supportive therpies I needed when I was finally able to bounce from this horrid SNF.  We had planned for me to leave that Thursday, November 19, 2020 but they locked me in that room after pointlessly arguing with me for HOURS that night.  So, when that following Friday morning came and believing I had a safe place to go, I leveled up, lawyered up and left that horrid SNF in my rearview mirror.  

Tragically, Centerstone and my therapist failed me here again.  Centerstone failed me again and again, over and over during the entire 18 months of my teletherapy with them.  Their failures were astounding but this was truly life-threatening.  I just left a lethal SNF against medical advice and had nowhere to go and no rescue oxygen in place as required. How horrifying.  Just how many government Medicaid providers can fail one person all at the same time? As it turns out - in IL? That answer is “all of them.”   

Fortunately, though, I remembered John with Call for Help.  I reached out to him, explained what happened and he put me back into that same Motel 6 Hotel from whence I came “just for the weekend.”  He said they had no more funding for the COVID Hotel Program and so that he could only help through the weekend and after that I would have to force Centerstone to do their job and make good on their promise to me.  I was fine with that.  He even arranged for me to have the “rescue oxygen” I required delivered to me in that hotel room that weekend.  And as fate would have it, the minute I was checked in and sat on the bed I got a Statewide alert on my cellphone stating that we were to shelter in place due to increasing COVID positivity rates.  

Oh. My. God.  

Had I not escaped that SNF that very day - that SNF would have been LEGALLY able to keep me there due to the new “shelter in place” Mandate that came out that same evening at 5pm.  

Spared indeed.  

And as it ultimately turned out, had I remained in that SNF even 1 day longer, I would have actually and literally DIED for want of simple oxygen - for I ended up needing the rescue oxygen John had delivered to me - JUST TO BREATHE -  5 times that weekend when my blood oxygen levels crashed repeatedly. 

So, just like my roommate could have perished that first weekend we were together there  - for want of simple insulin - I too could have died for want of simple oxygen.   I cannot convey to you just how deadly these for-profit Medicaid SNFs  are which private equity firms have hijacked for pure profits.  These places are little more than flophouses with no medical oversight whose greedy corporate owners line their pockets with government cash -all at the expense of genuine and safe care for our cherished elders.

After I left this Facility, I worked within the broken IDPH System to try and hold this horrid Facility accountable. I also launched a Facebook Page to try to bring awareness to what a horrible, deadly place it was.  When my Facebook Page went “Live” Witless actually “Friended” the Page.  I was, at first, incensed by her narcissistic arrogance but then I thought - why not? Let her see the ruin and wreckage she has wrought and what I am preparing to do to hold her accountable.  We weren’t “facebook friends” via that Page for more than 30 minutes, though, because I sent her a brutally accurate private message about what a malignant narcissist she is and how I knew what she was (with precisely identified clinically-diagnosable behaviors of NPD she shows on the daily)  and she immediately blocked me and that Page on Facebook thereafter.  Narcissists cannot tolerate being TOLD what they actually are or having people <see them> beneath their false front and see their truly broken, disordered selves. They work diligently to always keep this hidden - or so they think. But the more public awareness about this abusive personality disorder grows, the more the survivors of these monsters band together and warn the World about them.  

My advice? The minute you encounter one - and you know that you have - do not engage.  Treat them like the potentially deadly bear in the woods they are - superficially cute perhaps - but likely sizing you up for dinner; and you should back away slowly from the crazy person and never engage them again.  

And with Witless, I didn’t ever <directly> engage her again.  I permanently blocked her on all social media and on my phone.  But I set about ensuring she and her frightening band of sycophants would be removed from that Facility for the safety of the Residents there who called it home.  As an aside, my Dad used to always quip when I worked in the law and volunteered with various social causes: “When you were born so prematurely at 1.5 pounds, I held your tiny little body in one hand and said: my God if this baby makes it, she will no doubt grow up to be a force of nature to be reckoned with in this World.”  I always thought it was a sweet story when he would tell it through the years but it never really resonated with me in my former life.   

Nowadays? I feel that sentiment deep in my soul.  

No one gets to prey on the vulnerable forever.  Someone will hold them accountable and nowadays - in my new life -  apparently that someone is me.  Because if not me, then who? If not now, then when?  I have risen to meet the moment in each broken system I encountered in IL during the Pandemic because I cannot fathom doing anything else in response to such overt crimes against humanity.        

After leaving this fatal Medicaid SNF, I learned to find historical citations and violations issued against this SNF by IDPH online in their public IDPH file.  They literally lost a Resident at this Facility prior to my arrival there.  His family placed him there for the extra level of care he required, the Facility immediately proceeded to overmedicate him with heavy antipsychotics he was never prescribed prior to entering that Facility and whenever he “acted out” because of his adverse reactions to said antipsychotics, they would send him to the local ER.  The ER would send him back. This is what is called in the nursing home World as “hospital dumping” and it goes something like this: the SNF has a Resident they don’t particularly like so they send them to the hospital hoping the hospital admits the patient long enough that the SNF can say they lost their “bed” at their SNF.  But the ER local to this Facility was well aware of their historical bad acts of “hospital dumping” in this regard and always immediately returned the Residents to the Facility.  But on one occasion after being returned to the Facility, this particular resident patient was simply lost altogether by this horrid SNF I was in.  Because of Lockdowns, family members weren’t allowed inside to check on their loved ones so it took 5 full months for his family to demand to physically SEE their father.  That’s when the SNF admitted they did not have him and they, to this day, have no idea where he is.  Witless tried to blame the hospital but they produced a transport log showing he was signed back into the SNF by a nurse there following return transport from the hospital.   They literally LOST A HUMAN BEING they were responsible for and they remained open for business.  They did not even receive an appreciable fine from IDPH for this horrifying malpractice.  How? How was this possible?  

And then they had their COVID fatality disaster wherein 120 residents died in their 119 bed Facility.  Then I arrived shortly after their COVID death debacle and began documenting EVERYTHING from inside the Facility and trying to report it.  But so often - IDPH just simply never showed up to investigate our Complaints from within the Facility.  Ongoing systemic Complaints there often involved MULTIPLE Residents but it did not matter as IDPH seemed inexplicably content to just let this janky SNF be full tilt lethal and reckless with vulnerable people’s lives and there is no boss of IDPH and so it went…

But after my departure from the Facility, I continued WEEKLY filings against them with IDPH that Residents there were calling and telling me about. I was their only resource or lifeline.  I emailed IDPH weekly  and gave them very specific details about the ongoing egregious violations happening there with no PPE and Residents failing to get their medications among many other issues and errors.  I would then watch the IDPH reports of the corresponding investigation online and watch how NOTHING was ever done in response.  A fully 90% of the time the finding would be: “IDPH finds no fault on the Facility.” Or, IDPH recommends a “plan of correction” for this Facility and this SNF assures compliance to same.”  Well gosh - with such non-consequences like that for would-be FATAL errors, why would this janky Facility even TRY to do better? I could not understand how they were allowed to just continue to be so deadly - with no repercussions.  

So I began uploading photos and videos to PROVE that the Residents and I were telling the truth about how deadly the Facility was.  And that’s when I learned the fix was in.  IDPH does not accept any evidence from those being harmed in these Facilities via photo or videotape as one of their many own lethal rules.  I’m sorry what? So when the Residents actually have irrefutable proof that something happened to them for which the Facility needs to be heavily fined and held accountable  - IDPH simply refuses to accept that evidence.  Incensed, I began forwarding “my videotaped and photographic evidence” to OIG and the Office of Governor Pritzker. But as it turns out - any entity which private equity has hijacked for monetization and personal profit - like these government-funded, Medicaid facilities, the rot of corruption is fully complete and you can’t win.  For you see, they sent their corporate lobbyists to have that rule crafted regarding no actual photographic evidence admissible within IDPH specifically so their portfolios of these lethal Medicaid SNFs can never be appropriately fined - thus ensuring only pure profit comes from these Facilities into their bank accounts.  Because that’s the only thing these greedy Corporate private-equity plunderers understand - is the money.  So no fines for egregious violations equals bigger bonuses for them and people like Witless and The Dumb.  The whole damn system is guilty as hell.        

And then, just like that, after fighting this corrupt system and trying to bring about positive change for the Residents there - the dam finally broke in May 2021.  A full six (6) months of me fighting the intransigent arrogance of Witless refusing to do better and IDPH steadfastly emboldening her reckless disregard for the welfare of the Residents there, Witless FINALLY made an unbelievable error that would FINALLY cost her her job there.  

In Spring of 2021, Witless and I  had been in formal communications regarding her outright REFUSAL to provide me my medical records from their Facility.  They said they did not have to provide them; I told her they did . I even contacted the same law firm in Chicago who had managed to intimidate Big Bertha into letting me leave there and they said that they had tried,  for literally YEARS to get medical records out of that specific Facility- all to no avail. I contacted the IL Attorney General’s Office and FINALLY forced Witless to admit that they had to provide me my own medical records.  (Seriously - how hard could it be? I was only there another 2 weeks after Witless announced in that ambush meeting that my file was only 12 Pages long there.)  But NOW she was insisting that my file was “hundreds of pages long” and it would cost me over $500 to obtain my records from them.  To the great dismay of Witless, I found a rule that states she was required to give them to me for FREE because I was considered “poverty populations” and unable to afford the cost of said medical records.  I am, to date, the only person who has ever successfully obtained medical records from this particular SNF and I am, admittedly, quite smug about that fact.  As my best friend Elisha always likes to say: “You’re the legal tactician that just won’t quit; people should know better than to try and trifle with you.” 

But while these communications regarding my medical records were ongoing, Witless accidentally sent ME an email in May of 2021 she intended to go to her contact at the local IDPH Investigation Unit wherein she told them NOT TO allow recent Complaints filed by Residents there to escalate into an in-Facility investigation.  It was stunning.  There in her own words, in an email, was IRREFUTABLE PROOF of the corrupt covert alliance between the two entities (her and IDPH) which I had been suspecting (and obliquely alleging) existed all along. I could not believe it.  Like a gift from God, her own stupidity FINALLY foiled Witless in her own evil agenda and I now had PROOF that I was right all along and had been telling the truth all along to anyone who would listen.  

I will tell you I had immense schadenfreude in sending the following email to IDPH, OIG, local news media, Governor Pritzker’s Office and anyone I could think of who I had tried to force to care about this ongoing catastrophe in this Facility for six long months.  My email went as follows: 

  

Dear IDPH:

Allow me to direct your attention to the below email communication I received from Witless <actual name omitted here to protect the guilty> on May 19, 2021.  In this email, Witless, in her professional capacity as Administrator of this Facility, makes it abundantly clear that she can, and has, reached out to specific supervisors at IDPH in an effort to assert her undue influence and halt Resident Complaints against the Facility before they can even result in a life-saving (for the Residents) on-site investigation by IDPH.  Because Witless has made a full admission, in writing, of the <Regulatory Capture> I have been asserting exists between your Agency and this Facility, I am now forwarding this same communication to the Attorney General’s Office, OIG and the Governor’s Office for full investigation and criminal prosecution.  I also shared this communication with the local police and my own legal counsel and they have ALL agreed that this email from Witless can ONLY be interpreted as Witless attempting to make me painfully aware of just how high up the Management Chain her influence goes at IDPH.  This is flagrant fraud and outright criminal corruption.  

I now realize it is utterly futile to continue to communicate with YOUR AGENCY in my efforts to ultimately hold this Facility and their bad management under Witless accountable as, at this point, you are just an extension of the systemic and alarming problems which exist within that Facility.  But I would like to know- and trust me when I tell you that I will find out - just how many other valid Residents’ Complaints to IDPH Witless was successfully able to coercively intervene and halt any investigation of with her unlawful influence over your Agency; and how many of those Complaining Residents reaching out for YOUR HELP died as the result of this complicit alliance you clearly have long standing with Witless to NOT INVESTIGATE VALID violations happening at that Facility on the daily.    

For six (6) long months I have implored your Agency to do the right thing and be the safety “guard rail” that our cherished elders so desperately need there at that Facility.  And all along you have been “finding no credible evidence to all claims relating to the many valid Complaints” submitted to you by me on behalf of Residents there and myself.  And now I have it in Witless’ own words as to WHY this Facility is always found to be credible by IDPH and the Residents’ Complaints “not credible” by IDPH.  Congratulations.  You, IDPH, aligned yourself with one of the dumbest criminals I have ever met who uses email to admit to all of her own corrupt crimes with your Agency.

What is done in the dark, in the back rooms and behind closed doors, will be brought to light.  NO ONE gets to prey upon the vulnerable forever.”

THE TRUTH WILL BE THEIR KRYPTONITE! 

And thus and so, I finally did it!  I was finally able to have Witless fired and her band of complicit sycophants were also thereafter also removed from the Facility, one by one.  The antisocial social worker, whom all the Residents feared, eventually quit, too, once her coterie of complicit gal-pals were gone; and JUST LIKE THAT - finally all of the bad actors in charge there were, at long last, forced out.  I told them the day I had to flee for my own medical safety from that Facility that I would not stop until they were all gone and they laughed at me.  Guess who laughed and had the biggest celebration of all in May 2021 when this all went down? Me.  Along with the Residents who all now report that EVERYTHING is better there with Witless gone.  The food is better, they now have daily social activities they enjoy with a full-time Activities Director who truly loves the Residents. They have an Administrator who is, by most measurable metrics, far better and clearly more competent than Witless because when leadership/management improves - everything underneath does, as well.

If you would like additional proof that medical care is much improved there, as well, we need look only as far as the wounded warrior Patricia I mentioned previously in this story.  She is now up and about in a wheelchair and goes outside to smoke and socialize with all the others.  She went from being nonverbal, being fed through a tube to up and around, albeit in a wheelchair and without legs now, and interacting with the other residents she now calls friends.  THAT is progress and improvement and shows that the current leadership there is committed to doing better and being a place where Residents don’t die for want of basic medical care like insulin or oxygen or a CNA to walk with you in the hallways to ensure you don’t have a nearly fatal fall in the Facility.    

It took me six long months of fighting the corrupt system that is IDPH and our for-profit, hijacked-by-private equity firms Medicaid SNFs but I did it.  And it is all well within my soul. I will never stop calling out government corruption where it exists and fighting for those most vulnerable among us.  It is who I am and which unfathomable circumstances during the Pandemic challenged me to become at a more elevated and truly impactful level of holding greedy, grifting awful bad people accountable.  One of my favorite tshirts is from a friend on Twitter and it reads: “I Slay Monsters.”  And that sums me up best more than any other phrase I could think to embrace.       

If you want to learn more about how private-equity has hijacked nursing homes for profit - by cutting all food & services to our most vulnerable elderly in these homes, here is an excellent article about the ravages of nursing homes being plundered by private equity:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-equity-publicly-traded-companies/675788/

In response to this unfolding SNF disaster as I was copying him on most of the critical related correspondence, Governor Pritzker announced an initiative to keep our cherished elders out of these lethal SNFs and help them safely “age in place in their homes” in the coming years. It seems like even he understands the sad reality of that which private equity has hijacked for their own personal profits and has fully funded by way of wealthy Corporate lobbyists cannot be changed from within - rather, it simply must be avoided.  I find this response unacceptable for two (2) reasons: the first being we already cannot hire enough competent home healthcare workers to help our elders “age in place at home” NOW because the pay is so abysmal and the work is often not something young people care to do.  How will we ever hire thousands more for our aging population? And secondly, what of the people like my friends at the Facility where I resided? What becomes of them since they are already trapped in these lethal Medicaid Facilities.  Are they just more “unavoidable collateral damage” as COVID was labeled for them? Because I worked to improve JUST ONE of these horrid Medicaid-funded SNFs.  There are countless thousands more out there that are just as deadly for our elders.  

What of them and those already held captive within them? 

  This HAS TO MATTER TO YOU, AMERICA.  Because GenX? My generation? You’re up next as the demographic next slated to be admitted to  these janky, fatal ratholes for any long-term catastrophic medical care you might need.  Poverty puts you there via the failed Medicaid system in America.  But fully corrupt corporate ownership allows you to die there, languishing and in pain, and often while being beaten daily.  We must reimagine how we care for our cherished elders in America.  Because these fatal SNFs only serve to hasten death, not prevent it.  They do not care for or nourish and help our elders flourish; instead they dish out unspeakable levels of neglect and abuse on the daily.  America, please care about this.  I know many of you reading this are CERTAIN such a janky Facility will NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU just like you are so certain first-time HOMELESSNESS will never happen to you either.  As I write this today, there is an article online about how millions more Americans are going to be foreclosed upon and evicted by November 1, 2023.  Are you fully certain NEITHER of these horrible atrocities will ever darken your doorstep? 

I once was, too. 

Don’t be like me.  For I almost didn’t live to document and tell you the story of just how deadly these Medicaid-funded SNFs are.  I lived to tell you and testify to this ongoing catastrophe in America.  Now I must beg you to live to care and work with me to ensure that what happened to me and my roommate Barb and the beautiful Verdie and the wounded warrior Patricia - and all the others left languishing and starving in these hellscapes - never happens to any American ever again.      

Please note that it IS my intention to name this Facility by actual name and all of the bad actors therein by proper LEGAL NAME when this Memoir finally publishes.  I have temporarily redacted the names of the guilty to ensure my ongoing safety.  But I did not write this book just to NOT NAME the corrupt evildoers nor did I write it to not offer recommendations and science-based suggestions I have for REAL CHANGE in these broken systems in America. Because as my Daddy always said: “Pointing out a problem without offering at least three (3) possible solutions is merely whining.”  And I’m no whiner.  And WOW do I have recommendations and solutions to offer up.  So stay tuned, friends.  

I would also like to make mention of two Twitterfam members who assisted me in such beautiful ways while I was residing in this lethal SNF.  One certain British lady named Julie with an adorable and insta-famous cat sent so many cards and letters to the residents while I was there - both for me and the residents I now call friends there.  I tweeted one day how much it would mean to our forgotten elders there if they were to receive mail.  And she answered in kind to such an amazing degree.  Several of the elders there actually cried happy tears when their Halloween cards arrived because it had been literally YEARS since so many of them had received any mail.  I watched as they carried the cards with them in their sweater pockets for WEEKS following Halloween that year  and kept opening them to re-read them and hold them and touch them and smile at the beautiful pictures on the cards. This Brit lady really knows how to BRING IT to the people and spread joy all around, is all I can say.  And likely unbeknownst to her she, too, gained so many new friends with her generous heart and how she so freely gave of her time to send kindness to total strangers she had never met.  America needs more people like Julie and her insta-famous kitty.   So often we underestimate how such seemingly small acts of kindness like what she did can have far-reaching  ripple effects across so many other people’s lives and sense of happiness in this life.    

Also, Glenn Martin sent me the most beautiful arrangement of flowers while I was a resident there.  At the time I received them, I was sharing my new room with our wounded warrior Patricia who, as I previously mentioned, had been mostly nonresponsive up until that point. But, upon this floral delivery to me,  I decided to place Glenn’s flowers on HER TABLE on her side of the room (instead of mine) and she opened her eyes, kept gazing at them and even smiled for the first time that I had ever seen her respond to anything.  And Molly, the one GOOD nurse at this Facility, even commented that it was, indeed, the first time she had seen Patricia ever respond with smiles and attention to anything really at all since her tragic fall within that Facility. Thereafter, I often saw Patricia staring at the flowers and I would move them close to her so she could smell them too and - again - she would smile so beautifully.  It was like magic medicine for her and a salve to my own brokenheartedness over her entirely preventable current condition caused by that lethal and reckless Facility under Witless.  I left those flowers there with Patricia when I fled the Facility and I will always believe that this one random act of kindness, from a kind internet stranger far across the Country, was the very thing that laid the foundation for Pamela’s groundbreaking recovery in coming back to life again and returning to a her life among the other residents there that she now enjoys, to this day, at this Facility.  Glenn - your flowers are more powerful and important than you might have ever imagined them to be.  Keep doing good in this World, my friend.      

I realize this Chapter “skipped ahead” six months into the future so that you could see my ongoing “win” in fighting the corruption within the fundamentally broken Medicaid SNF system in IL.

But you should wonder: what happened to me from whence I fled that SNF Facility to when I received that watershed moment email from Witless and was able to finally right the wrongs still happening there? Oh, dear friends, you cannot imagine what I witnessed next in our Broken America after I, for the second time, left that Motel 6 in Casyeville IL.   It’s a little chapter I like to call: Berserk and Bonkers Bunk at the Memorable Mental Asylum Run By the Criminally Insane…