“Action is the antidote to despair”
Joan Baez From: A-Z Quotes
Are you haunted by the imagery and memories of medical treatments, unrelated to vaccines, which resulted in harm rather than benefit? (Hereafter “adverse medical event” or AME; “ad’·verse; preventing success or development; harmful; unfavorable;” Google Dictionary.) Are you aware of AMEs that haven’t been officially reported? Have your requests or suggestions which may have prevented AMEs been dismissed or ignored? Has your official complaint to a State Medical Exam Board regarding an AME been dismissed without explanation? Have you found it impossible to amend an inaccurate cause on a death certificate? If there’s been a third person taking notes in the exam room with you and your healthcare provider during the past few years, have you learned why?
If you answered “Yes” to any of the above, you have something in common with my mother, Norma, and I. You have something to contribute to improve healthcare. She experienced her final AME. I’m experiencing the effects of the rest of the above, (in addition to those of the horrific at-home pet euthanasia of her cat companion a year later, courtesy of the local veterinary clinic). It took me months to realize how bad was Norma’s care and the aftermath. I’ve been trying to address all of it ever since. I’ve only learned that we caregivers and patients have no significant voice in such efforts. It seems the professional medical community has banished us. Yet we’re one of the most valuable sources of assistance!
We can expect to be quite ineffectual as individuals in dealing with the professional medical community. But what do you think of us serving together to form a network of caregivers, patients and anyone interested in avoiding AMEs, to gain a significant voice in improving healthcare and related matters such as complaints, death certification and hospice? We need an aggressive, continental network of united voices if we’re ever to gain the influence we deserve. But knowing what needs doing doesn’t mean being able! I’m unqualified to launch such a network and would probably be overwhelmed if I tried. But if we launched such a network together, whose website name contained “badhealthcare”, we may be able to accommodate the many helpful co-workers who could respond…despite their being ignored and silenced for decades. I find nothing like this initiative or its name online.
Have you any experience in lobbying, organization management, social media or website establishment and management? Have you any experience in public relations, research and writing that are crucial to such an initiative? If so, let’s get going on this! If not, and all you have is your story, you’re yet in!..regardless of how long ago it occurred. Such stories are this initiative’s fuel!
Please consider working, as I always will, to make certain that our suffering and that of those who are, or were in our care, isn’t repeated or wasted and that their legacy is accurate and therefore valuable. Such work may not be completed in our lifetime, if ever. At least launching such a momentous initiative is certainly historic.
Please use the comment form below to record your response to this appeal. Better yet, send me an email! Let’s see if we can begin this long overdue, much needed initiative as our response to the needless trauma that we’re experiencing in our healthcare systems.
I’ve omitted much detail to keep this from being even longer. There may be a future article with more about what I’ve experienced and learned regarding the US healthcare system in my efforts for corrections and improvement.
I acknowledge Seniors Lifestyle Magazine’s willingness to publish this article on June 6, my late mother Norma’s birthday.
In appreciation and hope-free service: Michael J Riegert, mjriegert1@gmail.com (I don’t require certainty of success in order to serve.)
