My sister has a son who has autism. he has some verbal skills, but usually not more than one or two words together.
He has been suffering from headaches for a very long time now and my sister has discussed with his doctor that he may be having migraines. how can you express that when you are a low verbal autistic person? the best he can do is say "head" or "headache". he can't explain just how badly it hurts or how the pain is so sever that it makes him nauseated.
there is another possibility. when his meds have taken a dip because he metabolizes them too quickly or that they just don't work as they should, he tends to have outbursts, often resulting in physical harm to himself by way of hitting his head on things. my sister is concerned that he may, over all these years, have caused some kind of brain damage or other issue with his head.
yesterday they decided that they needed to get some treatment for him. To get some help to manage the pain he is in and to find out what is wrong. he has a right to be comfortable and healthy just like any other person in the world. but when they took him to the hospital, the hospital flatly refused treatment based solely on the fact that he has autism.
if you are wondering, the hospital in question is Immanuel Saint Joseph's Hospital in Mankato MN.
boycott them if you are in the area, because this is not the first failure on their part to adequately treat a patient, but I have to say that this is certainly the most appalling.
it isn't about money, because if that were the case, they would have taken him in and ran test after test until they found the problem or until they found that another hospital would have been better able to serve them and referred them to a specialist.
No... they just didn't want to deal with a high maintenance patient. they refused them because they were simply too lazy to try to help. they would send him home with the same problems for a weary woman half his size to deal with him in a place that is really not set up to restrain a patient who may have a violent outburst. a woman who is NOT medically trained and who is NOT equipped to medicate with anything more than useless Tylenol.
therefore this post is aptly titled epic fail, because it was a failure of EPIC proportions.
Thankfully my sister and brother in law were able to find one doctor who was on their side. it took a very long time but they got someone to listen to them and they are being sent to a much more capable facility. Thank God.
funny thing is, ISJ claimed to have called 11 other hospitals and all 11 hospitals were not able to take him. How is it, then, that one doctor was able to make one referral and get them a place in a better hospital? I would have to surmise that ISJ did not, in fact, call anyone at all.
instead, they simply say 'the behavior that this person is exhibiting is nothing more than his Autism and therefore nothing is wrong with him because his vitals are just fine' is just so completely unethical as a doctor not to mention STUPID. Aren't you supposed to be educated when you are a doctor? even if you don't specialize in autism you should at least be able to know that to say such a thing is totally asinine.
If you can't tell, I'm completely incensed by this. I think I might be more outraged by the fact that there is nothing I can do about it.
we should call the news. not local they're rubbish. but there are enough people around that watch out of the cities... we should call Eye Witness 5 and Kare 11 etc. this really should be spread around until ISJ is forced to offer real care for ALL people.
