> went to court this morning and managed to get an extension until dec
> 13. which is a good thing... now we have time to try to find them a
> lawyer... with which there is still a slim chance cause they can
> perhaps plead ignorance... that they are illiterate and had no idea
> what they were signing.
Oooooh that is really cool. Excellent.
> well, it something to try so we shall try that.
>
> iren is out of the hospital now and asked me if i could send her some
> heart medicine. this might prove difficult as i have no idea what she
> needs. well, i'll ask her to find out from the hospital and to get
> them to write it down. and then perhaps zoli could get the piece of
> paper from her and then perhaps i can talk my doctor into helping...
> fuck, i dunno... how the hell do you get medicine to someone in
> another country?? any ideas?
I think maybe the Red Cross helps with that kind of stuff. But maybe I'm
only thinking that from books or movies or t.v., so I'm not sure. Or
maybe only of the U.S. I've never had to call on the Red Cross,
personally.
Once, when I accidentally moved to Tennessee and my medical insurance
didn't believe that I wasn't still in Colorado, even though I kept
calling them *from* Tennessee, saying look I'm really here, all that
time I couldn't get the many meds a day I needed for my epilepsy. So I
kept going to hospital emergency rooms. Where they would give me one
dose of the meds I needed, but no prescription, cuz they weren't sure of
the diagnosis, and no meds for more days.
Eventually, I had a full-on tonic clonic seizure. My son had to call the
paramedics. They took me to another Tennessee ER, where they kept asking
my son, then 18, if he were my husband, and kept trying to get him to
sign papers to have me committed, as they were convinced I was having a
"psychotic break." They found all those empty prescription bottles in my
purse, see, the ones I'd been carrying around, trying to get re-fills,
and they assumed I'd *taken* all those pills, trying to off myself on
anti-convulsants. Shyeah.
I was so totally out of it, I couldn't even tell them my name. But I
kept screaming for them not to take my son out of the curtained area
where they had me strapped down, like I've been strapped down so many
times before. They would take my son out, but he kept reappearing.
Magic.
Eventually, I heard them saying something about giving me Haldol. I was
coming around enough to know that the injection was contraindicated, and
would have *caused* a fucking psychotic break in me. That time when my
son threw out the syringe. Good, sweet boy.
When I was finally released -- still without meds, and having undergone
yet another MRI, CT scan, and spinal tap -- I had to call the head of
the Department of Health for the State of Tennessee. Then I faxed her
some information. Then she got the paperwork straightened out. Then I
finally got my meds. It took about 2 months, all and all.
So I've never had to deal with the Red Cross, cuz of not trying to be
someone with a "chronic illness" in a country other than this one. Just
trying to move from state to state almost killed me.
> yah, this is all kinda overwhelming
Yeah. But there are always solutions. You just gotta get there before
the problems become acute. Which, in the case of your friends, might not
be an option. So you gotta work fast and clear.
Especially clear.
Call a doctor. Ask what he or she would do. If you don't get a response
you like, call an embassy or something. There has to be a way.
It infuriates me that this kind of stuff has to be so hard.
Canela
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Nov 18 2001 - 12:13:00 PST