remembering hilda from the social housing unit and the system from doomsday

It is never good to think back.

Now at the age of 62 little things start the grey cells networking like mad to remember.

A simple quiet luncheon with an older sister yesterday first flooded memories of where i had once lived.

It was related to my hearing.  Doing without help my twin sister and i were disadvantaged from the beginning.

It did impact on our lives.  Cause and effect with the difference too between two nations on us as we separated in adult years.

Where one was literally set free the other twin, my self became entraped in a horrible system, a draconian system which virtually meant the mind and body withered so much i became lost to the world.

It all could have been the same for my twin sister, but making a strong decision to get out and away was the best way forward and could have been for myself if i even knew what i wanted to do on leaving school.

Going to a major city of the world London, an imperial master with wealth, experiance and having an advanced culture and progressive thinking ideas with global interconnections gave my twin some opportunity whereas a small country in my day going  no where fast left those behind with no clear path at all.

If you are troubled too, its was disaster.

My twin was troubled, but the way of handling this was so different.

She was encouraged that she could and would make it, she could and would do it.

She was encouraged that yes, its possible.

With myself i was encouraged to stay away from people.

I was told i would not make it.

I was encouraged to simply plod along and do what i could the best way i could.

It was so different too for choices, there were none in ireland.

While i was queueing for the food mountain beef and cheese and barely surviving on the dole and then disability, my twin was preparing upward for a career.

What career even could i think of and how on earth could any be funded if i did?

University was for the elite then and only families who could afford it could attend.

I wasnt one of them when our dad had retired when we were twelve.

But this difference sparked off another.

The unheard of difference of social housing, effects of deprivation being a whole new ball game to a middle class psyche and mindset

I was sitting with a university professor’s wife who mixed in these types of educated, elitest and high octane groups.

Philantropy only really occured in Freshers year, thereafter abandoned for the intellectual persuit of excellence to devour knowledge but little else ever happened when it came to the working classes.

This was evident when i could only get so far in my tales of experience in the lower end of the social strata.

It had become unpleasant to the professor’s wife and ‘lets talk about something different’ as she shifted uneasily in her sit.

Grant it we were supposed to be having a pleasant luncheon out as three siblings.

But difference created in my world meant that i saw difference for decades and absorbed that culture readily as none other was available.

It wasnt myself going down the ladder in life, it was placing myself where i could only be.

Through deafness, disadvantage, depression, economic stress and lack of culture or programmes set up like in the UK.

There was nothing in the Ireland of the 70’s.

I was encapsulated into the social housing units which were lethally dangerous for their tenants.

They were tenaments when i was in them first, real tenaments and condemned as such soon after i arrived, four years after in fact but i had to endure tenament life.

But funnily or ironically they were freedom setting for myself.

People really cared and i loved it.

I embraced the fact i could do nothing better now and just tried to do what i could, as the psychiatrist was encouraging me to do.

There was no vocational training, no grants for third level training and no collage for disabled adults who could never go mainstream anyway.

To tell my sister that i had many a regret for being in the psychiatric system and how it let me down we began speaking of the person herself who was actually trapped in its grip more than myself.

But for us, us weak people or so we were effectively told, we didnt know it at the time, this sort of system was destroying our every chance to advance even as much as Ireland could allow, and in certain respects, most of us could have done better.   it was killing off all avenues and there were tiny ones open but psychiatry effectively stopped you growing in ireland.

The usual way of course was through medication.

Ireland was not effectively well trained in what to do with psychiatric medications.

As now where all these pills and potions were being dished out for even weeeping when grieving (now), we were then in full belief of the efficacy of the potion and pill.

They were the cure all for all.

It isnt so and it doesnt work this way and never did.

The media and the ways of media were beginning post 60s’ alongside the way messages were getting through by the first TV sets and the LP’s and Radio, so media as a skill was becoming a way of finding out information for the masses, including the brill effects of LSD and cannibes and all manner of mind bending drugs.

But mind bending drugs were not only the illecit, all mind drugs are bending.

And this is incredibly forceful and persuasive in telling a group’s educated that these drugs are firstly safe, and secondly good medicine.

Erosion of this fact is not actually getting through to the masses now where more babies, toddlers, preschoolers and kindergarten kids are on the very same medication i was on when i had first hit them at 21yrs.  And this was the norm then but now the big pharma is attacking all classes, all creds and all social groups with mass media promotions of the brilliance of the pill.

growing up in the tenaments was in the main a happy affair.

I met in social housing in Ireland of the day a systemic abuse of power for us lowly and this is well documented by the late mary raftery as she exposed the truth that was ireland in her last documentary ‘behind these walls’

A decade prior to my birth or actually during my growing years Ireland as a nation had more individuals and young locked away in the lunatic asylums than the whole of the rest of europe put together!

This is quite staggaring considering our size population wise.

So we knew about difference well.

washing day mean all the clothes were washed by hand.

Ireland does and it doesnt take much even now to be demonised instantly,

My difference of course was my lack of educational choice and a personality wired for depression and a different way of thinking.  That all for another essays analysis.

Let me get back to how i let a sister quirm and why it had this effect on her.

She is a full decade older than myself.

She grew up the priveledge daughter to get to university and then marry her student lad who went on to become a professor.

Her life was good, entertaining, enrichment educationally and culturally and no sign at all of depravation or class shifts.

My shift to the lower end of the ladder made uncomfortable listening.

Voicing what i had met to sort of expect my sister to realise what i had seen when i had basically dropped out of society was my way of feeling regrettful that i was in that level for so long and also in psychiatry for so long.

I regretted not being able to cut the noose of entrapment by pills and indoctrination of very basic medical practises which were all inclusive whether you were a lonely young woman as i was or a paranoid schizophrenic we were all lumped with the same package.

I regretted i told them of how one woman could do this.

Keep you held in a circle and i cupped my hands in such a shape as not to let the light shine through.

It was that.

No light shone for me and no hope ever was given in any shape or form to a brilliantly intelligent person.

It was our culture between being a country way behind any other through its nations own downfall after the famine and during colonisation.

It was our culture to expect that most would be put away who were different.

It was our culture not to accept difference and we still have that culture and i feel i know why.

But trapping a sister who could have had potential if shown the way, by another who was as advantaged as us in the same schooling system was wrong.

It was in effect ignorant thinking and ignorant education for a profession that was not well understood at the time.

I met horrible experiences and some i recalled to my sister.

How many cannot presently cope with the shutting down of some institutional fall back.

Citing incidents such as Hilda being found drunk and walking down the middle of the tenament blocks in the cold in her bare feet i recounted how i brought coffee to her home, i told her of what i had seen there, choas, filth, dirt vomit and a woman left to it, by all.

That would include state, health, family and society.

She wasnt coping and she was not the only one.

This was toward the time i was beginning to find my feet where i was far more open to helping the others now so much worse than i but not so different to my own personal hell in the beginning.

Pouring coffee into a drunken sad woman was pitiful and all the while with permission taking images of the state of her place.

Noting the electric guitar her soulmate proped by the bedroom door and the beautiful woman of the eighties jamming in the pub as a jazz singer was a far cry to how the lady had fallen.

And why so?

Because she too knew of potential but also too of sadness like myself which she could not handle.

Being in an institution, having children and not being able to cope would have done it in my eyes.

As it had for Hilda, sending her into a personal spiral of doubt, self doubt and unimaginable confusion.

Having children herself probably started a ball rolling of ‘who am i?  Where do i come from?’ for Hilda had not known.

Hilda could never know for state and church to this day will not release any details for all the women and men of ireland who were given up for adoption or put away or into institutions of where their roots were, where their parents were and who they were themselves.

Unless the adult in the relationship at the time would consent to being exposed as the mother or father of the adopted the children, now adults had no right whatsoever, by state or church to know and to know what to tell their own children where they came from.

Hilda ended on scrap heap treated as a hopeless alcoholic unfit for living even.

Trapped again in a system of getting blind drunk and blotting out memories of being in an institution, being abused in one and getting money off the Redress board for being so.

Blotting out all this, the medics then said to the guards and to me ‘there is nothing we can do for her,she is an alcoholic’ and repeatedly sent her back to a small social housing unit with memories of hell, without her children who had been taken off her and left ot drink again to drown the sorrows.

It began a group think, Hilda was useless and a hopeless case.

But the electric guitar and the fantastic attractive lady jamming with a jazz group told a different story.

She herself reluctant to tell this part of a positive life so much was she drowing in her hell of again i say my hell the hell we get into when we are drowning in trouble.

Our own deep shit.

But to state, to the neighbours, Hilda was the alcoholic.

She wasnt the person Hilda.

I saw it by the way the state even refused her the use as she pleased of the money she got off the redress board, as compensation, it was hers by right, but she was made a ‘ward of court’ and had to beg the solicitors for the right to some of it piecemeal.

That is imprisonment all over again, but of a different name but again state power and state abuse of power.

The same goes again for her choices of uplifting her living.  There were none.

You were left.

with no gardens you went down to the street for 'air'

When they began to start a programme of saying the right way to go with mental health was to treat people in their own communities and not hold them in institutions, didnt mean throwing them out on the street and abandoning them lock stock and barrel.

When i was being put in the psychiatric hospitals in the 70s up to the 90’s there were no security men at the door of the hospital.

There was free flow of patients and their visitors and the institution was a hub of a collective.

Now it may not have been very modern to do all this have so many there but a good deal needed it.

When i brought hilda up there after one of her bad bouts of drinking to be cared for for a while i found no one in the huge canteen but a lone security man having a cuppa on his own.

I saw another with a chain of keys hovering by the front desk, and i was flatly told i couldnt leave her there.

I was already very sick with crohns and it was getting late.  I needed my own sick bed.

What happened next can only be documented as having happened but it is in disbelief that it did and people are astounded.

Out came the security guy, oh yes he could have been any non national that is now doing work the irish wont, but he was there, this security guy came following me to the van, the adapted van in the disability bay, i have a mobility problem to name but one.

He slapped himself against the back of the van.

Of course he didnt mean to be mince meat but i tried to, not literally but i did force him from there by slowly backing the van out, he shifted to the side and slapped his body against the side, his arms outstretched and then did the same to the front.

Never before have i experienced such behaviour.

Seeing a man in a suit without his jacket so thinking he was of authority (i later found out he was from the ‘accounts’ department, i kid you not)!  I opened the door and exclaimed ‘what is going on?’  well he told me, by his actions.

He reached inside and whipped the keys from the ignition.

And left me there!

Half in the disability bay and half out i was now kidnapped, and what he did, as i heard later from a lawyer was ‘technical tresspass’  and there i was sitting in the dark wondering how the hell i resolve all this.

I rang the Irish times and also the guards.

‘will you just come up here and see what has happened?’  i was aghast to think ireland could come so far as to deny a person free access to her car to leave a state car park to a state/privately run hospital.  The great St. John of God!

I couldnt believe it.

But things were changing in ireland, for the better.

When i told my sister she sat rivoted to her seat, she  couldnt believe it, she hasnt seen that side of life.

She hasnt had to rescue lowly neighbours in such troubles.

She also hadnt to live in tenaments that had steps to them which are now pronounced utterly illegal, see Ireland is moving forward, the modern way.

But alas, they do not care for the sick as they once had, because they were now moving forward the modern way (of course failing to do anything about the people out in the community isn’t the modern way).  They failed them.

They did not think this one through.

No extra community nurses were allocated in fact, now all the displaced sick were jotted everywhere out in the community alone and forgotten, except by the guards and people like myself and sometimes the church.

But forgotten, pretty much now like those who have lost their homes.

But also the homes that those tenants had in back streets were still the slums.  They were dressed up  a bit and had running hot water put in and also had a bath put in or a shower, this now meant they were hitting the european targets for a better place to live.

They forget though that these people had to enter and leave their homes, one way or another, and that meant stairways, illegal steps.

You now have to in law for decades, design stairways so that you can put a full foot on a step as you go down the stairs or up the steps.

Not so in these, tiny boxs the stairs were step and tiny, there was no space in the 18th century homes still used for the lower classes.

What happened of course were broken bones, meaning nurses who lived there and some did were left open to broken bones, and one had a compound fracture to her wrist and elbow from such a fall and never worked again, a valuable source of income to a poor family.

So too did a male given full custody to two young boys he adored.  Falling down those stairs he lost his life and was found when they broke down the door lifeless with a broken neck.

Bones broken by many on my street and also to a learning disabled feeble man who broke a leg and wrist, who actually wore calipers and was living in an  upstairs social housing unit (nb they are never called homes), he spent months in the hospital and then sent straight back up to the flat, in his seventies,  with calipers, he wasnt given a downstairs easier place to live, there were none.  It was offered a drug riddled street as i was offered an alcoholic fueled cul de sac.  He refused and stayed, i accepted and ran like a war victim.

eight floorboards between fireplace and sofa where my twin slept for eight months with a diagnosis of parkinsons disease meant not even a manual wheelchair could be unfolded - this was an 'upgrade' for a disabled woman?
also placed alone amongst male alcoholics - all of them in one cul de sac?   insane

alcohol so much in abundance in a lower social housing unit without stairs mean a huge change was about to occur, running away like a victim of state abuse, which it was

We were the forgotten.

we were forgotten as people, human beings, we were forgotten

 I lament the past.   The life of psychiatry my first notable imprisonment and then the social housing which couldnt have been more dispiriting to a bright and educated person, but i did accept both, more so social housing for i was with people i loved.

You couldnt even begin to forgive psychiatry and their ways for destroying my life entirely and i place the blame there for now being in my 60s i am percieved as this sort of lunatic.

But as i go back to the beginning of this essay, this is what ireland does with difference, we are good at classing people and by very small margins of clarifications all roiund.  It doesnt take alot at all.

In this blighted house: Stations of the Cross for Caring people

In this blighted house: Stations of the Cross for Caring people: Jesus is condemned to death Let us take a few moments to think about and pray for all those condemned to death in prisons worldwide. M...



i think this is a beautiful piece of writing and wish to share it with all on this day for everyone to reflect on the modern life and lifestyle. where humans also come to grief and into conflict.

amen

a bad day in the setting of a village turned town

who could blame me in hating where i live?
I do hate it.

this was to be the last and final resting place for myself and my twin sister.

but it isnt going to be, for me anyway.

i think after all this time which is five years, its been loathesome from the beginning til now with very little let up.
when i say from 'village to town' i mean that, in the context of the irish village to town.

i was virtually lynched.
my poor twin had to withness this and watch it, feeling helpless and rather guilty, but she had no reason to feel this, but she sure was left feeling helpless and dragged down by it all.

does anyone understand how it feels to feel afraid to go into one's own magnificent garden that you bought, nurtured and created?
i do.
does anyone understand how it feels to walk a couple hundred metres and wonder who my neighbours are, what they think when they see me and for what reasons?
i do.
so does my twin.

if others say 'what matters what people say.'
well it does to me, because i am sensitive and i have had a poor life living in high low self confidence and self esteem.
but before i came to this village, i was high on self esteem and confidence.
i had trancended difficulties that many wouldnt even have to attempt to surmount.
i did it and was tremendously pleased with myself.
until i came to this village which ripped my soul asunder.
when i say this village has nearly destroyed me, i say this with my hand on my heart and i am not the only one who can vouch for this, apart from my twin many can vouch for it.

i want out.
and i want out fast.
meaning asap i need to get back to kindness and care and something of comfort, a town i can feel part of and feel lifted up not constantly put down and put upon.

i wish i could be more explicit but right now i cannot.
because i still have to live here.
i have promised those who live in this town i will tell them why i feel the way i do when i leave.

but before i do i want to tell both the townspeople, and many others, enter this parish at your peril.
remember they will inspect you instantly and ask questions later.
they could label you immediately without finding out whether they are right or wrong about it, i mean now of the defamation kind.
there are rules here like none other, certainly i hit 59yrs of life without ever thinking this sort of thing existed.
they can tell you five years later, actually there is no policy for what we did there, (HSE).
and there is no solution to it becuase no one feels its worth solving, not for them anyway but it doesnt care whether i feel its worth it, which i do.
one of the first thing i wish i could do is rip down the bloody notice at the entry to this village, that of 'the best place to live in 2008'
do they not realise its 2015 and certainly things have changed for my experience is anything but offering flavour of the month or year here, because its been the exact opposite.
anyone been afraid of facing the mainstreet unless absolutely necessary, eg going to bank or getting pension.

as for the doctor i have now, two visits and my first that would accept me here after four years is another example of well pretty horrid i have to say.
this was withnessed as i brought someone with me.
and it continues.
what people find so delightful here is anyones guess because as an educated person who has lived all sorts of lives, i see nothing polished and good about it.
to me its a nasty little hub, maybe terrific for some, but how long do you have to be here before it is?
five years seems a lifetime and its not getting much better in fact for me its become more and more unbearable.
how i ask for help to get out is also another thing.
how do i?
and would could.
would anyone be at all interested?
i doubt it

will it end...when will it end...can myself and twin sister find peace and a bit of happiness?

both of us are tired today, very.

tired tired tired tired tired tired

Newcastle UK test which discovered why we are so tired all the time, but not the cause and not the answer.

Margaret came with me to my new GP.

i was terrified of her after my first meeting with her.  today she announced that they do only one set of bloods per year, i presume that is for public patients.  that actually was a shock to me, i have never heard of this before.
don't get sick then and ask for bloods if you have had one in a year.
this is actually bizarre i have to say.

my twin is tired, tired, tired, tired.....too.

moving on twin and i had a bit of a tiff.
the stress of where we are and what we are going to do, how to make decisions when options are so little and we have next to no help in making them or having ideas materialise for us.

we feel incredibly alone and frightened.
i think with good reason.

again the bloody issue of the wheelchairs, still four years on not sorted.
again too the unhappiness i feel down here and our weariness to decide what to do about it all.

this is all a result of one very large organisation.
the HSE.
yes, i know some of them see my blogs and bother to come here to read.
few are willing to help us.
few care.
but why then do they do the jobs they do?
why do they pretend to care and get paid to care when they do not?

to me more are now so unhappy with the hse it beggars belief.
litigation is through the roof.
not only now are the HSE shoring up funds to support their losses, but also sending back others when they fail to spend designated budgets.
its so crazy.
in between the patients are lost entirely.

Ireland now is only one of two countries in the EU not to ratify the convention on the rights of those with disabilities, this leads to strain and unequal treatment for those of us disabled.
so they basically can do anything to us.
this of course is against human rights but without this clause that they support our rights, we have no rights.
there is nothing to stop the government not ratifying the convention so say the lawyers at Galway University.
there is nothing impeding this, except the wish that the government want, to have us under their control so we do not have a say.
but we can have a say when it comes to the election.
more then the disabled will vote with the vote.
we will walk away after deciding that we need this government out of our lives, for downright betrayal full square betrayal both of our need and our rights as citizens of this state.

we are both tired tired tired of it all

still further more are asking, if the economy is improving, well where is it improving?
whose lives are further enriched in recent times by the economy improving.
i hate to tell them, no one i know either workers or non workers, the struggle is the same and more at the food banks and soup kitchens.
like never before.
our last soup kitchens were set up by the Quakers during the famine.
we have a famine here for most of the poor but  none of the rich, who are getting richer.

i still say no matter what way you look at it, solving budget overspending by giving out eleven year old cobbled together old wheelchairs, that go into walls with a patient in it, is not the answer.
there is an answer.
i doubt the hse is so skint they cannot provide for us.
it just that they cannot manage either the service or the budgets.
they lack that skill, and its a skill.
there is duplication and overkill on bureaucracy.
they have a bank for the lawyers who are employed by the HSE and another for the litigation, another for the 'just in case' and leaving none for the 'urgent cases and the needy cases.'
this is the way they operate.
rather than have the lawyers and the litigation cases, why not have best practice which will kill off the lawyers need and the litigation need.

if you work well then you wont be sued.
it works in theory, but also in practise.

everyone knows its all a shite shambles.
even the HSE know that.
its hell to be at the receiving end and hell to work within it.
its a case of man bites dog.
but suffering is now endemic and dangerous.

we have a serious case here.
we have too many serious cases and i am extremely worried.

oh, as i got up a few stairs today to see the doctor she exclaims aghast, why do you need wheelchairs, you got up those stairs, i tell you i despair, and its very much a case of
'Jesus wept.'
my twin and i limped exhausted back to the van with our two sticks apiece, if only people could FEEL the pain, the tiredness and the sickness.
since when are the only group of people seen to need a wheelchair those with snapped spines.

here is my 'educated guess'  i am sick!

come on, will you try at least to pretend to be educated.

happy land - is it?

i have not posted in a long while.

this is called tiredness

i guess just very tired.

trying to sort messes isn't easy and its tiring.
trying to live in a mess is tiring.

the biggest exhausting issue i have remains living in Happy land, Ireland (huh?) with a disability.

the same, the same the same yawn yawn yawn and more like tears, tears and more tears and a major sleep disorder....i am not sleeping.

the lack of sleep is due to profound distress.
try it.
waking each day thinking of the HSE.

yes, this has been said before.
and its more of the same again, over and over.

what really astonishes me is that no one in Ireland is good at resolving complex issues, or any issues for that manner.
they just grow, like a septic boil, they grow.
nothing actually gets done here.

because certainly it takes forever to solve problems.
emails amount in their thousands.
letters almost the same, certainly the same amount of pages.
phone calls are double the first and second of above.
engagement with HSE officials rank in the hundreds.
engagements with departmental officials and departments rang in the hundreds.
ringing, emailing, letter sending to td's councillors and senators, also mount up to hundreds.
you can cite the websites as much as you like, because i have been through them all.
there are policies and procedures coming out of your ears, none are adhered to and its all a gloss over - nothing, nothing happens here.

we do have policies, we do have guidelines, we do have projections and prospectives and agendas, we have all that but they get lost in the melee of er, nothing.
nothing happens, nothing gets done, nothing gets followed.

you can find a place where you are exonerated, but you cannot find out how to get exonerated!
you can find anything but it leads er, nowhere.

what is rotten about Ireland
with not alot changed since this image was taken

we are talking of Ireland and we are talking about justice, health, equality, disability, ageism and economics.
we are talking about a crooked bent country hell bent on putting it out there we are a fab happy land with happy landers.
we are anything but.
the only good thing about Ireland is its beauty and its people, if you can over ride the undercurrent of deviousness and lack of willingness to engage in a purposeful manner in all things that need er, solving.
but we laugh, we drink and we have green lands.
lots of it.
we will be celebrating winning soon, that is winning our country from oppression.
we are inviting the oppressor to a fine multimillion slap up lavish celebration.
but we are now losing the country on a grand scale possibly even grander than when we first took hold of it, when we won it.

there are people here who actually see what is happening.
what matters though is, there are people here who actually see what is happening and say, er nothing...nothing happens see...in happy land.

there is this laid back, in case.
in case i get the sack.
in case i am disliked (not that is a biggie in the Irish context of things)
in case i get rubbished, or far worse.
but what could be worse than being honest?

why do people in Ireland not say it as it is.
well i will tell you why - its oppression.

the fact that people remain silent is because there is a backlash to goodness.
its called oppression.
we have known it before now we are doing it to our own.
there are good people there, but if you say, squeak about wrongdoing you are crushed.

we have a bloody inferiority complex that the outside (rest of the world, if they even know where we are in the world) should not know how corrupt we are.
well they DO, they are getting to know and what more, we are not getting better, we are getting better at being corrupt.

but for me, at 62yrs at the end of my life and i didn't have a life, not one that any would recognise as one, i am tired.
all i want is to see if it possible that i enjoy a decade out of my life of plenty of misery.
i don't think this is asking too much.

sitting, waiting, dreading returning home.

but to achieve this would only occur if i took the greatest leap ever and got out of the country altogether.
because i am not convinced that the ways of the Irish can ever become so level that all will have an equal chance to an equal level of happiness and quality.

waiting for the train to arrive

i do not believe in Ireland anymore.
i believe we don't own it, don't seem to want to own it and do not own the way we do business, the crooked way we do business.
this includes our ways of dealing with health.
its becoming like the economy.
fast bucks for Nada.

we do not seem to care and i am feeling all and every bit of this.
i also feel abused, neglected, harassed to death by the health care services.

when i leave wicklow and believe me i will, i will be hard pressed to feel able to take anyone down here again even to get a glimpse at its beauty.
i feel very betrayed by wicklow.
i invested my life in wicklow and certainly i got more than my fair share of utter grief.
its been so appalling words fail me.
but i have had Pm's on face book, that many times dreaded medium telling me that my feelings are their feelings, exactly.

meanwhile i am tired.
we are making so little progress here.
and i am still going through hell on earth, with the hse.

exciting new health developments in ireland and also UK

WE ARE VERY PROUD TO BE PART OF ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE THE CARE OF DISABLED AND ALLOW THE DAIL TO SEE THE RESEARCH ON BEST PRACTISE IN THIS CASE FROM DR. ROSIE GOWRAN, MY TWIN SEEN HERE, LEFT DR. MARGARET KENNEDY SAYS TO MEMBERS OF THE DAIL HOW IT IS TO BE A WHEELCHAIR TOTALLY UNFIT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL NEEDS OF A OLDER PERSON WITH A NEURODEGENERATIVE DISORDER.

celebrations are in order.

meeting of the families who have mito children and adults with mito get together 

after a long journey of discovering and science the debate in the Parliament in the UK on three parent fertilization to avoid the continuing line of mitochondrial disease has been passed in the house of commons.

this is a major break through.  parents for which the mother is the carrier of the genetic defect can now attempt to have a healthy child by introducing mito cells from a healthy female.

it is not genetic engineering.
mitochondrial disease is devastating, many young mothers face the chances every day to dice with the idea of producing babies severely ill and on the death list the day they are born.
it is not a good situation and we all must agree that to by pass this is terrific.

i know many mothers out there now struggling with both severe ill health in multiple children and also mothers trying to decide with their partners will they attempt again a child and maybe they will be lucky this time not to pass on the gene.  following this the mito angels fly too soon leaving heartbreak and profound grief.

i am delighted for all child bearing mito mothers.
this at last is a chance they have been waiting for.

now for Ireland and one county has asked a question.

cllr. pat kavanagh Ind. wicklow county councillor decides to cut the legs off my twin sister as i too try to cut the head, but in truth we are crying out for services for those with disabilities, the cuts have been hurting badly, Jacqui johnson is also scissor happy on a day we watched enda 'smile on by' without taking blind bit of notice.

we protest because the state of provision of care and services is so very bad.

one county has bit the bullet to ask the question and beg and hope that many more will follow this train of thought when all councillors of the wicklow county council agreed yesterday that the HSE was not fit for purpose and the role of the client/patient under the Disability Act is in fact being bypassed and flaunted.

we protest because the right of  a disabled person is - nil.  we protest at the lack of provision of wheelchairs suitable for individual cases, a fact that WICKLOW COUNTY COUNCIL PASSED UNANIMOUSLY TODAY THAT THIS SITUATION OF LACK OF PATIENT INPUT AND EMPOWERMENT IS CAUSING CONCERN, THE FACT THE HSE IS NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE AND A REAL FACT WE HAVE TO LOOK AT ALL OF THIS NOW.

i congratulate cllr. Pat Kavanagh for drawing to the attention of the chamber such dreadful workings and client abuse in wicklow council and so as a motion being passed unanimously declares outright that the HSE is NOT fit for purpose and does NOT treat the patients/clients in their care well, equal or allowing them their rights to be heard about their care and needs.
well done wicklow.
to be clear what the motion was which was passed yesterday i shall cut and paste to you here:

I am delighted that my motion regarding assessments for disabled service users was passed unanimously at today's meeting of Wicklow Co Council and will now be passed on to the Minister for Health;

Notice of motion in the name of Cllr. P. Kavanagh (received 17.11.2014) (deferred from previous meeting)

‘Wicklow Co Council calls on the Minister for Health to review and regulate assessment policy and procedure by the HSE, and in particular HSE Wicklow, to ensure that those assessments are fully client-centred, timely and thorough, and that the rights and wishes of the client are respected and accommodated; that therapies, mobility aids and housing adaptations are fully agreed with the client before being issued. Furthermore, that therapies, mobility aids and housing adaptations are recognised as a Right, not a luxury, and defined as such by the World Heath Organisation (WHO) and Disability Act 2005 to facilitate independent living; that provision be made within the budget for therapies, mobility aids and adaptations which are of high quality and fit for purpose, and to ensure quality of service, that some form of client appraisal is factored into the assessment procedure.’

when hospital becomes a very sick place to be

when a hospital becomes the object of terror and fears, it has so because its operations is so dangerous that its actually terrorizing its patients and clients.

may i change the word 'disabled' to 'so sick so...' get equal get vocal
you will if your life has been in danger in an
Irish healthcare hospital or A'E

when i use the word 'clients' i mean this.
if you pay for a good hair cut, you pay for a good hair cut and you can complain if you do not get good value.

my twin protesting about HEALTHCARE

how important is the health care then.
we are clients.
all within the healthcare services are there because we pay them to be, to care for us.
From the surgeon with high skills, to the Head of the Department of Health, to the consultants, the nurses and the administrators.
NONE would have a working life, a wage without us 'clients.'

we are there because we need them and its equal to the 'good hair cut'

anyone ever been to a hair stylist as a experimental dummy for a junior?  well i have in my student days and the scissors cut into the back of my neck.

Now this was the cheaper version of the real McCoy, i was being experimented on and hoped that the result was good enough for the cheap or no fee given.
but in fact, all of us pay towards health care indirectly.
we have no alternative.  it is placed there, (the cost of) in direct and indirect taxes.

Even if we do not pay enough for Health we should at least expect to have paid enough to stay alive in a healthcare facility because to be terrified to enter a hospital in case overcrowding causes illness, mayhem causes mistakes and your life is on the line even after entering for some time minor then we are in basically - deep shit.

Ireland seems in deep shit right now.
we have hit that hammer hard and the clanger and clanged out to 600 plus one more.
the highest ever numbers on a hospital trolley or chair in an A'E facility here.

we have had mild weather and only in the last fortnight we have had zero temperatures one or two nights in this time.
bugs come in, you go in and you are in utter dread and fear of what next.

if you are already compromised in your health and are already sick, how scared can your country allow you to get or be, before they realise we are oh boy in deep shit.

where is our Minister for Health right now.
when we are facing an even worse crisis in our hospitals than ever before, has he taken a longer holiday than all of Ireland (all of Ireland are back to work) the Dail our gov doesnt come back until the end of the month.

Hey man, you are being paid a vast sum.
can you help us not die in our healthcare facilility while you ski on some austrian or swiss slopes (i think they have snow to do this, which is our pity actually).

you have let your people down.
we are not a big country, we are peanut size and i mean it.
we are peanut size giving most of our cash to germany.
we are peanut size with a massive health issue in our peanut size country and our peanuts of ministers are scattered all across the globe and not here.
we are letting our people die, and our peanuts are rolling around laughing some place else but in this island.

this time a small injury and comforted
next time what could or can it be?

i am terrified of entering a hospital in Ireland.
with a rare disease and far more besides, many things can spell the end of my life and i have been told, do not come in for long or if at all because its dangerous for you to get a bug here and so i tell them this on my arrival.
i practically wet myself with fear.

how bad is that?
how bad is it when citizens of a small country are frightened of going to a place to get better when they could end up in a box with a funeral being prepared thereafter and you are heading for the hereafter?


we have a bad situation here in my country.
we need some warriors here to help us, will my country stand up and riot over the healthcare inhumane treatment and the human rights violations all across the board.
i personally have felt far too much of this service.

although the water debacle has spelled the death knell of the present gov i want the irish to say also rise up and do something about our medical care services NOW, not when money is coming back for it has to be found now.
whats there is being used up in litigation from badly served clients - suing is the new management planning of the HSe.

not only disabled but very sick
any time in hospital means 'you are in deep
shit my gal'