Sister Esmin Green: The woman who died on the hospital floor
Posted by Sable on July 4, 2008
July 4, 2008. Uncle Michael.
For me, he represents the “every family has one”, or the “crazy uncle”. As if mental illness wasn’t taboo enough, I come from a Black family, where the subject, like many other things, is ultra-taboo. To this day, even in my family of prosperous, educated, compassionate people, Uncle Mike is still taboo. His mental illness (caused bu a wicked drug coctail he made up in the ’70’s) often keeps him at arms length from many.
My first memories of Uncle Mike are from childhood. I remember seeing him at my grandparent’s house, and being afraid of his empty, yet piercing eyes, and knowing in my gut that he was different than everyone else. It wasn’t just his behavior that led me to this, but everyone elses behavior as well.
But back to childhood.
The telephone would ring. I would answer.
And the most gutteral screams would assault my ear.
It was Uncle Mike calling from the psych hospital, swearing, crying, begging.
The nurses were trying to kill him. That was his main message.
Get me out of here.
They’re trying to kill me.
I would quickly run for my mother, certain that some crazy nurses had my uncle held hostage, trying to slit his throat and stick him with needles.
She would sigh, roll her eyes, and walk to the phone, and then calmly explain to my Uncle Mike that no one was trying to kill him.
No one was after him.
The nurses were trying to help him.
Once she got off the phone, she would explain to me that Uncle Mike was sick in his mind, which, didn’t really make sense to me as a young child- I mean, either someone is trying to kill you or they aren’t, right?
When I hit my teen years, Uncle Mike was an embarrasment to me. It’s not like I spent that much time with him. Like most families, I only saw Uncle Mike during the holidays. By that time he was not in a hospital, but living, mostly on his own, even working a bit here and there. But to me, it was like he was put on the planet to embarass me.
Lke Christmas.
My family is so large that if we all bought gifts for everyone, we’d all go broke, so we do the standard drawing of names, and then buy gifts for the children as well. But not Uncle Mike. He had his own list in his own head, and he ran with it every year.
As a selfish teen, the gifts were never anything that I wanted. One year I got a brush. One year, a tacky doll that looked like it came from the 99 cent store.
Those gifts and many others paled in comparison to the box of Super Absorbant tampons I received one year for Christmas. Yes, that’s right, my Uncle Mike gave me tampons for Christmas. He wrapped them and put a pretty bow on them and sat, watching eagerly as I opened the gift.
I was mortified.
I was pissed.
I was humilated, because of course, such a gift drew great attention in a room of 40 or so people.
But none of that mattered. As a woman with children of her own now, who has worked in human services and with those who are cast aside, I’ve learned that, I love my Uncle Mike. I look forward to seeing him, because I know he looks forward to seeing me, and my children.
My children don’t have the same reaction to Uncle Mike that I did growing up, because they see my interaction with him, and do their best to model it, which makes me so proud.
Uncle Mike is fortunate that my grandparents are still alive, and still able bodied; I worry what will happen to him once they are gone. None of his siblings seem interested in taking on the care-taker role. But I am. It’s not something that I’ve ever said. I knowmy mother’s plan (as the only daughter) is to pay someone to care for him.
I disagree with that plan, but now isn’t the time to get into it. What I do know, is that Uncle Mike will always be close to my heart, and he’ll never be the crazy uncle that get’s locked away. He will continue to know my children and watch them grow, and I will continue to be fiercely protective, just as I am everyone else in my family.
Why am I bringing this up?
Because we all have a connection to those who suffer from mental illness, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as living with mental illness.
When someone is left to die on a hospital waiting room floor, they are suffering.
We have to be more open with this issue, we have to talk about our stories and the stories of our friends and loved ones, so that we can actively work to prevent what happened to Esmin Green. If that were my Uncle Mike in the video, I would be shouting from the mountain tops this very message.
So now you know my story;
What’s yours?
July 3, 2008**Note to Readers:
As always, your comments are welcome on this topic. My gentle suggestion to you is to not focus on the horror stories, but instead on broader solutions. I am sure we all have a story, or know someone who has a horror story about hospitals, malpractice, shittious medical care…I certainly have mine. But I’m not going to comment on it, because that is not the point of this post. This woman is an opportunity for much more.
Peace-
Sable Verity
Original Post:
I am feeling almost relieved to have a face and a name to put to what millions of people across this country and around the world saw this week; the death of a black woman in a NY hospital.
Her name is Esmin Green.
My immediate reaction to seeing her face…just seeing her face, and her smile, I heard in my head “this woman died…was a sacrifice to the nameless and the faceless…she is an opportunity for us all”.
I sincerely hope we take this opportunity, and demand better for anyone in this country who needs help, medical, psychological, whatever it may be. We simply have too much wealth, too many resources for things like this to go on. That they do, shows that as a county, our priorities are fucked.
This gut-wrenching report from CNN:
To people around the world who have seen the video, Esmin Green is a symbol of a health-care system that seems to have failed horribly.
Green, 49, is shown rolling off a waiting room chair at King County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, on June 19. She lands face-down on the floor, convulsing.
Surveillance video captures her lying on the floor for more than an hour as several hospital workers see her and appear to ignore her. She died there.
But to fellow members of her church, she was known as “Sister Green.” Together, they served as a family for her in the decade after she left Jamaica for New York.
Green left six children in Jamaica — the youngest now 14. She had been sending money home.
Watch ‘Sister Green’ in church »
Her oldest daughter, 31-year-old Tecia Harrison, told CNN that she cannot bear to think of her mother’s last moments.
“I haven’t seen it, and I don’t think I have the heart or mind to watch it because that’s my mother there,” Harrison said. “That’s the woman who gave birth to me 31 years ago. I cannot watch that.”
Green was involuntarily admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric emergency department June 18 for “agitation and psychosis.”
Friend Peter Pilgrim says he saw Green a few days before her death. He says she was struggling with losing her job at a day care center and had been forced to move out of her apartment.
“Esmin Green is a beautiful person,” he said. “She has a good heart. She loved people, and she loved children.”
Green’s pastor says she had been hospitalized with emotional problems once before and recently appeared to be in distress again. So the pastor called 911, a decision that haunts her.
Upon her admission, Green waited nearly 24 hours for treatment, said the New York Civil Liberties Union, which released the surveillance video of the incident Tuesday.
Her collapse came at 5:32 a.m. June 19, the NYCLU said, and she stopped moving at 6:07 a.m. During that time, according to the organization, workers at the hospital ignored her.
At 6:35 a.m., the tape shows a hospital employee approaching and nudging Green with her foot, the group said. Help was summoned three minutes later.
In addition, the organization said, hospital staff falsified Green’s records to cover up the time she had lain there without assistance.
“Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital’s video cameras, the patient’s medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was ’sitting quietly in waiting room’ — more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor.”
The medical examiner’s office says it is still trying to determine what caused Green’s death. Her medical records will be the focus of an investigation. Hospital documents say she was “awake and sitting quietly” at the very moment she was actually struggling on the floor.
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees the hospital, released a statement Tuesday saying it was “shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care.”
James Saunders, a spokesman for the corporation, said seven employees have been fired or suspended: the chief of psychiatry, chief of security, a doctor, two nurses and two security guards.
A Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman said it was aware of the discrepancies in Green’s record when it began the preliminary investigation June 20.
The corporation pledged to put “additional and significant” reforms in place in the wake of the death.
A federal investigation is also under way, looking into abuse allegations at Kings County that were detailed in a lawsuit in 2007.
In May 2007, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service sued Kings County in federal court, alleging that conditions at the facility are filthy. Patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or on floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, the groups allege, and often go without basic hygiene such as showers, clean linens and clean clothes.
The lawsuit claims that patients who complain face physical abuse and are injected with drugs to keep them docile.
The hospital, the suit alleges, lacks “the minimal requirements of basic cleanliness, space, privacy, and personal hygiene that are constitutionally guaranteed even to convicted felons.”
Among the reforms agreed to in court Tuesday by the hospital are additional staffing; checking of patients every 15 minutes; and limiting to 25 the number of patients in the psychiatric emergency ward, officials said.
In addition, the hospital said it is expanding crisis-prevention training for staff; expanding space to prevent overcrowding; and reducing patients’ wait time for release, treatment or placement in an inpatient bed.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/hospital.woman.death/index.html
Ajlouny said
I watched the video of Esmin Green and it was so sad watching her fall and then suffer on the Emergency Room floor. I just don’t understand why anyone didn’t move or at least say anything. Are people so desensitized that they can watch someone die and not react? It’s amazing to me.