“WE WILL NOT KILL ANGIE”
LOSS OF EMPATHY IN AMERICA
An incident is happening right now that I cannot let idly go by, something which I see as a dire humane issue kindly aligned with the death of human spirit. I say kindly because we like to associate bad behaviors today with good things.
Like pimping used to be disgusting; an evil trade where men sold women into servitude for an hour’s pleasure and used the rewards for luxuries while the women suffered any abuse for a dictated price.
Now, it's the hip word of the moment and something to be regarded as a status class, regardless of how degrading and offensive it sounds to fathers of daughters everywhere.
Gay used to mean frivolity and merriment, but now it’s just slang for homosexual.
Taking care of family meant meeting every year during holidays despite angers, petty jealousies or entanglements, to spend a few precious hours with those we hardly see and wish each other another year of glad tidings.
Today it means a cold glass of soy milk and a warm TV dinner in front of the latest Xbox of the moment. A call home would seem an intrusion or bothersome, but done grudgingly after the party’s over.
We’ve become a society of unfeeling uncaring folk, that only look out for what is in front of us, not what is around us or outside of our private little domain.
We look at each other strangely as if they (our neighbors) might do something strange themselves at any moment and while they spy on us through the shaded windows of their homes next to ours, we spy on them through our tightly locked doors.
I wrote on empathy a while back, and America’s lack thereof, and now I see first- hand how little we care about each other when time is so precious.
My sister-in-law (my girlfriend’s sister) is sick; she is more than sick, she had a “Brain Bleed” where pressure had built up in the blood vessels in her brain and started seeping out from the pressure – it started bleeding into her brain {as it’s been explained to me} (no, it was not an aneurism; they blow, this was seeping) and it made her pass out… but not before calling 911 because she knew something was going wrong in her head and before they got to the house, she got nervous and was (we think) trying to get to her car to drive herself to the hospital, because the paramedics found her outside on the lawn in front of her house).
Long story short, she had to have subsequent surgery on her brain because while all this pressure had built up inside her head an AVM was building up with other capillaries threatening to explode too, so the doctor had to remove them (that patch of blood vessels before they blew) and so her brain would stop bleeding and the swelling go down.
Now through all this we have been supportive of Angie, knowing that it is going to be a long way back from this kind of surgery, so we listen to the doctors and pray every day, but some people…
Some people who seemingly have no empathy or even sympathy want to end the paperwork on Angie Savoie’s life and be done with her!
Three times now, we have encountered this attitude of, “Why don’t we just let her go?” When all the while Angie is trying to tell us that she wants to stay and live, and fight to get back up on her feet.
First there was a Social Worker who thought Angie was never going to improve so why not “get the family ready to end her suffering and pull the plug.” She didn’t literally say that, but it was implied. Then we encountered another one who wanted to try and talk the family into signing her off as non-responsive and they should stop administering assistance, by that, just let nature take its course, no medication just morphine to ease the pain till she went quietly in her sleep…
And lastly, Melody encountered a doctor who seems of the same mind set, after seeing Angie one time, obviously in one of her “not so good moments.”
Angie can be lively and active some days, and she can be down and not so mobile others, so as to do much but stare. But her nurses and everyone who encounters her on good days know that she’s in there, she’s responsive and knows what going on around her and answers and communicate to those around her the best way she can.
See, there needs to be an easy fix for everything these days. And Angie is not an easy fix. Quick and easy doesn’t fit that definition then it’s no good and of no use… people are now that disposable too, I guess.
It seems reprehensible to me that human beings can be thought so little of that at the slightest discomfort to the officials such as the social worker(s) who must have needed to clear their desk of the paper-work Angie is building up, which by the time she is well, will probably be insurmountable.
But that is just paper work; we are talking about the life of a human being who is vibrant, alive and lively inside her head even though she is unable at this time to actually speak verbally her needs or wants.
She communicates very well her wishes to the nurses in attendance and the doctors who visit and take care of her (except the one who had not really met her and was going on assumptions formed from a visit on a bad day for Angie/maybe she wasn’t feeling well, or anything) but it left a bad taste in my mouth about just who is running things up there at the facility she is in.
Dr. Eric Hauk, the neurological surgeon who fixed Angie’s brain after the bleed incident was a remarkable man. He is optimistic that Angie should make a complete recovery {complete in that she should be able to understand and talk again and have useable adaptability of her limbs and muscle control which will only get better as time goes by with physical therapy.
I mention this Doctor because he is such an amazing man as well as he is a professional doctor/surgeon who saved Angie’s life. And for that we are so very grateful. But he has also mentioned the fact that people here in Oregon seem to want to give up so easily on someone in Angie’s condition and just let her fade away into death because they don’t really have the staff or the quality physicians TO DEAL WITH INVALID PATIENTS LIKE Angie.
Which is sad really, when you think that this woman was once so vibrant, so alive and full of life and outgoing energy.
You would have loved Angie Savoie, a picture of effervescence, who was always quick with a smile and would talk your ear off even if she didn’t know you. But that is Angie and it grows on you as you look for an escape but you loved it anyway because Angie can make you laugh when you feel like crying and find humor in the most mundane of things
But again I get off topic. People don’t care anymore about people! Sounds redundant I know but we don’t. We seem to only care now if it is about us not our neighbors. Sad.
We Americans used to go out of our way to help others. In the fifties and sixties we didn’t even worry about locking our home doors. We knew no one was going to walk into our home and if they did they were bringing something or coming to see what we had for dinner!
Good times that seem a fantasy away. Times when we loved one another, times when an open door meant welcome and a child on a swing could be safe by itself if mother looked away. Good time lost to apathy and loss of innocence.
No longer do we cherish our birthright of loyalty to other and our country. Now everyone mistrust the government because they have been lied to about so many things they don’t know what to believe anymore.
The church has taken God off His glory pedestal and labeled him a lie and a fable with a good book of stories that make good sermons on Sunday but fall short when needed to be believed. We’ve lost the need of one another. We’ve grown selfish and afraid to feel the freedom we once held dear.
Now everyone is afraid and fears what the other might do or say and we’re buying the ticket that terrorist are at every door. We need to stop. Stop and feel the world tremble beneath our feet. It is crying out that we need to understand that it is crying for us to grab hold and feel its breath slowly ebbing away by our negligence and lack of forethought.
In ten years we will be rationing water. Rationing water, could you ever have thought anything so absurd? But that is the world we live in today and if we are to preserve something for our progeny and ancestors, we better act now.
Angie is just one person in the hospital. One woman, who the world is trying to forget, to push aside and let die because her upkeep is so difficult sometime. Her tracheotomy needs to be suctioned daily and her other daily need must be met. But we refuse to let this beautiful flower so full of life be snuffed out by uncaring social workers with more paper-work on their mind than compassion.
Angie Savoy is going to get better because we care and know that she is a fighter that doesn’t want to give up. A fighter who wants to get back up on her feet and be a part of society again.
And we’re not going to let them kill her! Please join in show your concern. Write to us on facebook, myspace or call the radio station, wish her well. She needs it and we’ll all appreciate it too!
Let them all know, Angie Savoie wants to live!
