Kathleen A. Gagne

Kathie Gagne died 4,702 days ago.

February 4th, 2012 @ 11:45 am

I talked to mom at the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit this morning. She sounded really, really good. She wasn’t exactly ready to take on the world or anything, but she was alert and lucid.

She told me that she still had not received any books. (My uncle — her brother — had told me he would take her some books to read.)

Mom said that her hip was really hurting her, so I told her I would try to get them to give her some Tylenol for it.

She said, “I love you,” multiple times during the call, which was really nice to hear.

She told me that she felt trapped, but that she understood that the building wasn’t falling down.

After I talked to her I called and talked to someone named Patty. I asked Patty to get mom some Tylenol for her hip, and she said she’d tell a nurse.

Days of Our Lives

February 3rd, 2012 @ 11:55 am

A friend of mine asked me what was happening with my mom at the beginning of February. Here is the reply I sent him:

It’s a long story.

Something happened to her brain, but it wasn’t a stroke. They’re not really sure. She’s been having memory problems for about two years, but I just was blowing it off, thinking it’s just her getting old and forgetful, or wanting attention, or suffering from depression. I talked to her on Thanksgiving — we even video chatted on my cousin’s laptop on Skype — and everything was normal. She was sort of distracted and kept forgetting things, but that’s the way she’s been for a while. Then that night they found her wandering around the parking lot of her apartment complex because she couldn’t remember which apartment was hers, and she was really mad about it and yelling at people. Like two weeks before that I started paying for her cell phone and my sister’s cell phone; I had them added to my AT&T account and they both got new phone numbers. Because of that […] they couldn’t get in touch with anyone so they called the cops. The cops thought she was just a crazy old lady because she couldn’t remember what month it was or who the President is or anything, so they took her to the hospital, gave her a CT scan, and then “Baker Acted” her. The Baker Act is a law in Florida (maybe the whole US?) that basically says they can hold you if you’re crazy.
There’s only two places where you can Baker Act someone in Daytona. One is the big, nice hospital across the street from the Daytona Beach International Speedway. (Awesome hospital, all NASCAR money built it; incredible facilities, super high-tech, etc.) The other is a shitty little mental ward where they stick people rehabbing from cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. So of course with our luck they stuck her in the shitty one.
I found out the next day and have been dealing with it every day.
At first they said she had a stroke, then they said she didn’t. They said she has brain damage, but they don’t know from what. She’s terrified of being in a “home” or trapped, so she keeps flipping out and screaming and yelling and trying to escape, so they keep drugging her out of her mind to keep her calm. After TWO MONTHS I was finally able to get her transferred from the shitty place to the nice hospital, but it’s the same dumbass doctor in charge at both places and he sucks. It’s just terrible. It sucks ten ways to Sunday, man. It’s the worst thing ever.
When I talked to her the night before last, she was telling me that she thought she was going to die that night because the building was collapsing and the people were all crazy. It’s true that everyone there is crazy. I call every single day and every time I can hear psychotic lunatics screaming in the background. She’s scared to death — when she’s not drugged into a stupor — and doesn’t understand why she can’t go home.

So, yeah. That’s what I’ve been dealing with since Thanksgiving.

Telephone Failure

February 3rd, 2012 @ 11:00 am

I tried calling the common room at the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit, since that seemed to give me the best chance of getting someone who could get mom on the phone. The line just rang and rang for a solid minute, and then someone clearly picked up the telephone and just started randomly hitting buttons on the receiver.

I hung up and called the nurses station, but it just rang for a few minutes and nobody ever answered.

The Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit is a hell-hole.

Pathetic

February 3rd, 2012 @ 8:39 am

My wife asked me to send her the phone numbers I had for the hospital, because she wanted to attempt to speak to my mother. Here is the email I sent her:

Dear [name redacted],

The “common room” is the day room where mom can talk on the phone. She’s almost never there by default, and you’re just as likely to get a crazy random person answering the phone as you are to get a nurse or tech. You have to make sure to ask to whom you’re speaking first. A nurse or a tech will say, “I am a nurse,” or, “I am a tech.” Then you can ask to speak with Kathleen Gagne. (Nobody knows her as “Kathie” there and they will just get confused if you call her that.) They’ll tell you she’s in her room or that they’ll go get her. Then you usually wait five or ten minutes and the line goes dead. Every now and then you will be able to talk to mom, but usually you have to move to the second number, the 4080 one. That’s *not* the Nurses’ Station, although that’s what I was told it was. That’s more like a general operator for the psych ward. Someone there is always very nice and helpful, until about 3:30pm (PT) when they convert to asshole mode. Julie is on shift today and she is very, very nice. Unfortunately she can’t leave her desk, so all she can do is try to call directly to the nurses’ station and get you one of the nurses, who are generally more reliable than the techs (or whatever random answers the phone in the common room).
The third number is for Connie Wade, the social worker assigned to mom’s case.

Oh, and, finally, I think that they might not have you listed as allowed to talk to mom at Halifax. I’ll try to make sure, but I haven’t been able to talk to anyone competent to do that today. (Julie is very nice, but not the best at follow-through.)

This morning I called Connie and left a message asking for her to call me. (Julie later told me that Connie is in meetings all morning.)
Then I called the common room line and it simply rang and rang about twenty times, so I hung up and called the operator (the 4080 line) and talked to Julie. I explained that my mom, Kathleen Gagne, is in Unit A (which is inexplicably also sometimes called the “2500 Unit”) and that nobody was answering the common room line. Julie asked me to hang on and said she would get a tech. After about two minutes Julie returned and said she got a tech who said he would bring mom to the phone, so Julie transferred me to the line for the common room again.
The line in the common room rang for eight minutes — I watched the timer on my iPhone — and then I hung up and called Julie again.
Julie said she was sorry, of course, and asked me to hang on again while she checked.
After two more minutes, Julie returned and said that Nurse Rhonda (who is frequently on the day shift and is very responsible and competent but very short and gruff) told her that mom was asleep in her room, so she had no idea why a tech would have said he would bring her to the phone.
Julie suggested I call again at 11:45am (ET) because mom should be awake then for lunch for sure.

That’s a very, very typical chain of events for every time I have attempted to talk to mom for the last three months. It’s frustrating to the point that it is very easy to understand why someone would end up giving up and you realize why people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities are so often abandoned; it’s just so hard to get them on the phone. It’s insulting and disgusting and pathetic. […]

More Frustrations

February 3rd, 2012 @ 7:50 am

I called Stewart-Marchman and Julie answered the phone. I asked if I could talk to my mom and she put me on hold for ten full minutes. Then I heard ringing on the other end of the line, and a tech answered and said he’d bring mom to the phone.

A few minutes later Nurse Rhonda picked up the phone and said that mom was asleep. She transferred me back to Julie, who told me I should try again at 8:45 am (Pacific).

More Unanswered Calls

February 3rd, 2012 @ 7:45 am

I called the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit and left a message for Connie Wade.

Ted

February 2nd, 2012 @ 6:00 pm

I called the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit to talk to mom, and an unidentified man answered the phone. He told me he would get her, and then put the phone down on a table or desk or something. For ten minutes — I timed it on my iPhone — I listened to the sounds of people yelling and screaming in the background.

Then someone named Ted picked up the phone. He was very rude to me. He was very loud, and I wrote on a little piece of paper that he was “a dickhead”.

I tried to be nice to him; I explained how my mom had been at Stewart-Marchman. Ted said that SMA was mostly for drug rehab and “seriously crazy” people who screamed all the time, and that my mom was probably there because she yells so much.

Ted said that mom was in her room, “screaming for three hours straight this afternoon.” It broke my heart to hear him say that.

I don’t remember much about this phone call, but I do remember that I was very, very upset when he finally hung up on me. I was literally in tears. He was very unprofessional. He called me a stupid kid, which is a little absurd because I’m 38. It was awful, and I never got to talk to my mom.

I hope that someday someone from Halifax Hospital reads this and looks to see who named Ted was answering the phones at 9:00 pm Eastern on February 2, 2012. He shouldn’t just be fired. He should be slapped and then fired.

Asleep Again

February 2nd, 2012 @ 4:15 pm

I called to try to talk to mom in her room at the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit. A “tech” named Wayne told me that she was asleep and I should try calling again at nine o’clock (Eastern time).

A Letter to Stephanie

February 2nd, 2012 @ 10:00 am

I called Stephanie P. at Halifax Hospital because there was no return address on the Guardian Advocate test I was sent, so I had no way to know where I was supposed to send the completed test. She gave me the address and I mailed it to her along with a cover letter.

Stephanie told me that she knows who I am because she often handles giving the cards and letters I send to mom to the nurses.

Guardian Advocate Test

February 1st, 2012 @ 10:00 pm

I completed the ridiculous Guardian Advocate “test” that I was sent by Stephanie P. at Halifax Hospital.

The test was a single piece of paper with about a dozen questions on it. I was also sent a booklet detailing everything you could ever want to know about being a Guardian Advocate. Scattered throughout the book were yellow Post-It notes indicating which question on the “test” was answered by that section of the booklet. You would seriously have to be one notch below illiterate — or just completely stupid — to not answer every question perfectly.

This whole thing is insulting.

Update: I mailed it back to Halifax via USPS on the morning of February 2nd.