NANCY’S PRESENT CONDITION:
The core ulterior motivation of the state to permanently
conserve Nancy Golin in preference to her parents is to utilize conservatorship
rights as a device to prevent the vindication of legal rights by a horribly
mistreated developmentally disabled adult and her ordinary caring family in a
lawsuit against the state.
November 25, 2009: Nancy at visit today, see photo at left. More updates
soon. Thanksgiving visit stopped on pretext at restaurant after attacks by belligerent
“visit supervisor”/social worker, after only 5 minutes. Parents forced to return
home after driving 3-1/2 hours each way without seeing their daughter on
Thanksgiving. Parents accused of
“inspecting” Nancy, “against the regulations” they say, merely by looking at
her. Should we feel ashamed? Should we be forced to wear blindfolds? How silly
can this get?
One picture is worth a
thousand words. Image of abject hopelessness and lack of expression. Permanently
bent over.
Compare
with photos with family before false imprisonment by sarc.
September 9, 2009: Nancy brought to visit sobbing uncontrollably for
reasons we can only guess, with her cheeks flushed. Nobody can explain.
Flushing like this can be a sign of a lifethreatening condition induced by
psychotropic medications. Is this the reason? Eventually after an hour of
bawling, with comforting by her mom, she quiets down.
How
would you like to have to watch your child this miserable with no way to know
what is happening, no way to help her and no hope in sight? What is happening
when we are not around?
DECEMBER 16, 2008: Visitation
Conditions cut back again for family! Liske writes another letter announcing
more “changes” based on frivolous and unfounded claims, dismissing Golins’
approved visit “supervisor,” John Lehman, requiring that the Golins have
formally supervised visits with one of SARC’s own paid contract
supervisors. Visits were cancelled for
Christmas, as they have for each year.
California’s Senator Denham appeals to DDS for a Christmas visit and one
is allowed at the very last minute.
Thereafter, Liske retaliates by effectively foreclosing all visits. Golin
responds to Denham’s request for a letter to DDS responding to Liske, MARCH 12, 2009. Volunteer family visit supervisor John Lehman responds, too, MARCH 17, 2009.
After 5 weeks, DDS responds verbally to Sen. Denham, they are unwilling
to intervene to reestablish visits even at request of a state legislator!
NOVEMBER
9, 2006: Visitation conditions
cut back even more for family! See letter below from Tucker Liske, San
Andreas Regional Center, and response of Jeffrey R. Golin, father of Nancy. This would make it almost impossible for
Nancy to see her parents, and once again right at the Thanksgiving/Christmas
holiday season for the fifth year in a row. Disruption? There was never any disruption from the
visits, see affidavit
of John L. Lehman, visit supervisor for Golins, who now is fired for no
reason other than supporting the family. This is pure retaliation against the
parents and Nancy for the lawsuit SARC is unhappy with, and as a result
of embarrassing revelations of abuse and neglect which came out as a result of
the investigation by Mrs. Golin as guardian ad litem. If anyone has been
“disrupted” by bad “behavior” “detrimental” to Nancy, it has certainly been
Nancy’s family!!! Our
family life has been terribly disrupted. Note the vague,
generalized statements Liske is making, without any support, and my challenge.
Requiring visits to be supervised only by SARC’s paid social workers and no one
else exposes the parents to more false allegations, which the Golins’ lawyers
recommend against. Liske actually is a creative
fiction writer (see also) on the side,
an apt sideline.
·
Letter
from Tucker Liske, District Manager, SARC, November 2, 2006
·
Response of
Jeffrey R. Golin, Nancy’s dad, November 16, 2006
9/10/06
– 10/7/06 UPDATE: After receiving
summons in the current lawsuit for damages, SARC retaliated by cutting back on
visitation rights, severely so.
Now instead of being able to go out with her all day
as we had been able to do since the beginning of the year, we are only permitted
to see her in her house for one hour per visit. In spite of the fact that there is staff there at Talla House, we
still nevertheless have to bring a visit supervisor with us. No visit supervisor,
no visit. That puts a tight restriction
on our ability to see Nancy because we now have to impose on a third party to
take time out from his busy schedule to come with us, merely to see her (see Declaration of John
Lehman). These conditions were imposed
roughly on or about May 30, 2006. Now we cannot
take photographs of her, and we can only see her this way around 2 times per
month. We have been threatened with termination of all visits if we take any
more photographs of her.
We have seen ligature marks (bruises and
chafe marks) on her wrists and arms, indicating that she is, perhaps, being
tied up or tied into a wheelchair. There are now two wheelchairs in her room.
Nancy appears to have lost the use of her left arm and hand now. She looks
depressed and lost.
SARC has removed her lower front teeth due to
long-term Dilantin use, despite our warnings, and have replaced them with a
bridge. They have allowed her teeth to rot out from five years of dental neglect,
and Wendt now has the nerve to try to blame it on us parents, when records clearly
show she was in good dental condition and was receiving excellent dental
services when she was with us. We are
not able to see her medical records and cannot make any recommendations as to
her treatment or care.
We are continuing to pursue our lawsuit
in state court and hope this will provide a remedy for this type of probate
conservatorship abuse.
3/11/06:
Update
We PARENTS have been attempting for the past five months to
work cooperatively with San Andreas Regional Center to improve Nancy’s care,
while litigation for past and current abuses proceeds. SARC Service provider
Suong Nguyen has been very helpful and courteous to us within her authority,
but her authority is at the bottom of the ladder. Some medical information is being provided by staff nurse Lisa
Wendt and we are grateful for her help.
Nancy is now being medicated on ten different drugs, many with opposing
side effects. Our suggestions are being listened to, but not necessarily respected.
This may have had something to do with the political pressure from state
Senator Jeff Denham’s office.
Visitation hours have been increased, but the arbitrary requirement for
supervised visitation has not been relaxed, and yet still no justification has
been provided for this apparently punitive limitation. We are grateful for the improved information
that we are getting, but we must still report factually on conditions as we see
them. We have made it clear that our
goal for Nancy is and will always remain to return Nancy to her and our home,
and that we are seeking a process by which that could be achieved. No response has ever been given to that request.
the fact is that Nancy’s condition looks much worse
than ever before. Nancy appears to be being slowly destroyed before our eyes. According
to SARC, Nancy is no longer getting any psychotropic drugs, but her tardive
dyskinesia (TD) has markedly deteriorated.
Her beautiful expressive smile has now almost permanently twisted into a
grotesque grimace, and her tongue sticks out constantly and she is frequently
drooling. She has dark circles under her eyes. She is unable to use her hands,
which are clenched into a fist constantly.
These are signs of loss of motor control due to neurological damage.
Classic symptoms of tardive dyskinesia.
Her doctor said he never saw anything like this before, and opined these
were Parkinson-like symptoms. Her face is puffy. Her shoulders are deformed and
she has no flexibility in either elbow. She hands shake. She can no longer tie
her shoelaces, feed herself, or remove her pants to toilet herself. Worst of
all she looks absolutely miserable and hopeless. Her eyes well up with tears. On 3/4/06 she came out absolutely
bawling with tears she was so miserable, we never have seen her so
unhappy. She coils herself into a fetal
ball and shuffles along with her head bowed parallel to the ground. She is constantly
in a stupor and cannot make eye contact.
She is looking more like an institutional person every day, the same way
all their other drugged wards look. She
is terrified of running water to wash her hands for some reason. Why? Has someone scalded her? The sudden deterioration
has become marked within the last two months.
Has she suffered additional fractures? How can we know?
How can we know for sure she is no longer receiving these drugs,
which are the only possible cause of such dramatic TD? It seems sure that she is getting them
somewhere, and we cannot find out or make them stop it. We can only wonder: Is SARC now brazenly assaulting her with
hardcore psychotropics, as a demonstration of their power over her, to instruct
us on the futility and danger of suing them?
It cannot help but cross our minds, as bad as she is looking during the
pending Supreme Court decision. We were
warned by Mrs. Talla in early 2004 that if we didn’t stop litigating that she
feared they would take it out on Nancy.
Our hearts are breaking at the marked deterioration. This is not “natural progression” of autism
as they are saying. Autism does not “naturally progress” this way, unless it is
“treated” by psychotropics. Could this also have been due to the Reglan she was being given, which
was the result of a liability lawsuit settlement for causing tardive
dyskinesia.
There was talk about
removing her front teeth, because of induced osteoporosis caused by using
Dilantin for anti-seizure medication, about two months ago. That is what
happens frequently to developmentally disabled people we meet who were treated
with this anti-seizure medication, they have had their front teeth removed
because it is too expensive for the state to save them. Ironically, in Nancy’s
case, they were not able to provide dental care to her for the entire 4 year
period she has been in state care because good dentists rarely ever take MediCal,
and SARC does not want to pay for care from their own pockets unless it is
covered by insurance, even though they receive generous financial supports for
the state to do this. Yet we are still not allowed to take her to doctors or
dentists ourselves, and pay out of our own pocket as we used to do to make up
for whatever insurance lacked. This
would have been extremely disabling and disfiguring and we fought it. We had constantly warned them about using
Dilantin because it is well known to have this side effect and had been
previously discontinued in 1993 for that reason, but they continued it anyway.
SARC attorney Street, who was supposed to represent Nancy, mocked us in court
for supposedly believing we had medical knowledge superior to SARC’s doctors,
and the courts deferred to the state rather than our experience with her own
doctors. It reached the point where they felt that her teeth were in danger of
loss, so Lamb acting as her pseudo-advocate instead of Mrs. Golin took her to a
dentist. Lamb was unable to get her to
cooperate and they reached the conclusion that braces were not possible. Nancy
refuses to open her mouth for a dentist or Ms. Lamb and clenches her teeth,
because she knows what they want to do. Hopefully that decision has been
stopped for now.
However, we were informed
that instead of discontinuing anti-seizure medication Dilantin, they are using Fosamax to try
to restore her bone density so they can avoid tooth removal, while they are
still continuing to use the Dilantin which reduces bone density. Fosamax is a drug that is severely
contraindicated for a person with esophageal ruptures and Nancy was nearly
killed with esophageal ruptures, caused by the psychotropic drugging resulting
in uncontrolled seizures. SARC concedes
that this is a “delicate balancing act”, which could collapse at any time. SARC insists that Nancy has not had any
seizures since April, and this may, or may not be true. It is equally possible that seizures could
have become an even more closely guarded secret, which would be very dangerous
to Nancy. How can we tell?
When Wendy our new visit
supervisor demanded to know why Nancy’s rights to visit with her parents without
a visit supervisor were being denied her in “her own home”, the only answer
that Tucker Liske would give was, “because there were court proceedings”, and
apologetically her service coordinator weakly explained, “well, the Golins
are old now, and so is Nancy”.
2/6/06
Today we were finally
informed by e-mail by San Andreas staff R.N. Lisa Wendt, who is controlling
Nancy’s care, of the real reason for Nancy being “secretly” hospitalized in April 19, 2005 (see below) ten months later. We were grateful to finally receive this
explanation, long overdue. She informed
us that Nancy was rushed to El Camino in status
epilepticus, a term which we had never heard of before because Nancy
had never had it when she was in our care. We had to look it up. It means that
seizures last more than ½ hour or more and they cannot stop them. Mortality rate is 20%, and
that does not include coma, stroke, heart attacks, blindness, loss of bodily
function, and other permanent neurological damage. This is the fourth time that we know of where Nancy almost died
in state care.
Two weeks before this,
during an attempted visit with Donna
Crowder, an LVN, it was found that the care home operator Mr. and Mrs.
Talla had apparently left her teenage children in charge of the home where
Nancy was being held while they vacationed in the Philippines, in conjunction
with the ubiquitous Filipino aides. These untrained aides, no more than
babysitters in fact, had been delegated a prescription for Ativan according to
Wendt to use as needed (PRN), whenever it appeared that seizures were not
stopping and it was not deemed necessary to take her to an emergency room. The aides at Talla House were unauthorized
to give any medications by injection, but we had seen and photographed needle
track infections on 1/13/05 from countless shots inappropriately placed in her right
gluteus, in sites that no trained nurse would ever have used, many sites having
been used over and over again. She still has permanent pits there from these
shots. We reported this to the local
ombudsman who found nothing wrong on an inspection visit where she did no
inspection. The ombudsman bought the
story that these were merely boils. It was reasonable to suspect from the
circumstantial evidence that her untrained aides at the home were simply
whacking her with Ativan on a regular basis to render her comatose at 6pm every
night so they could avoid the necessity of watching her and that she was no
longer responding to it, and that is how they almost killed her on April 19,
2005. Without anyone watching them,
they were free to do as they pleased. Alternatively, they were discontinuing Dilantin at the time. Did they discontinue it abruptly as Masada
often did, or were they gradually tapering it off as it is required. Abrupt discontinuation of Dilantin causes
immediate and terrible seizures, but there we go again being doctors!
Meanwhile, SARC still
refuses to provide oxygen at the residential care facility, in case of more
seizures, claiming it to be no longer necessary. Oxygen is essential to avoid neurological damage after seizures,
and to reduce the severity of seizures.
Nancy always had oxygen ready at home when she was living with her
parents. Again her parents were mocked by Ms. Street for assuming this medical
knowledge before trial, even though it was common knowledge among neurology professionals
and imparted to the Golins during their care.
8/23/05
Nancy is a
state litigation hostage. a prisoner of state CORRUPTION AND GREED.
To this end, there have been no releases of vital
medical records about Nancy for almost two years, due to the abuse of her state
conservator’s state appointed powers to control medical records. The State Department
of Developmental Services acting through San Andreas Regional Center controls
all her medical decisions exclusively and does not release any records about
her to anyone. We had one letter from SARC
(annotated) dated April 9, 2005 summarizing the information but without any
concrete information. This letter was not reassuring. For one thing, Nancy is
being given a drug Keppra that causes depression so severe in 30% of the cases
that users report strong urges to commit suicide, and may not even be that
effective. What does Nancy do when she
is being given a drug that causes suicidal depression and she can’t complain to
her doctor about it to make him stop giving it to her? Is this extreme mental
torture? Masada is giving her one drug
after another, with a new drug designed to counteract the side effects of the
last drug and so on.
As shown in the recent picture at left, Nancy’s contractures are much worse. Contractures are permanent contractions of
muscles due to neurological damage. Her
head is now almost glued to her left shoulder due to her neurological damage
due to drugging, which causes damage to her ability to control her muscular movements.
This is an almost permanent deformity now.
Both hands are now contracted into fists as well. She is having difficulty swallowing. There is only one thing that can cause this,
psychotropic drugging, which home operator Talla says she is not getting. The pictures tell a different story.
Injuries in State Care to Date:
·
Collarbone
Fracture left clavicle, unreported and untreated, estimated date May 2002 (Dr.
Duc Nguyen) (page 1,
page 2)
·
Dislocated
shoulder, separate injury, estimated date between August 20, 2002 and November
7, 2002 (Dr. Duc Nguyen) (page
1, page 2)
·
Unexplained
March 2, 2003 MediCal Billing for ER visit for skull fracture and
fractured femur, March 2, 2003.
·
Ruptured
esophagus, Gastro-esophageal reflux disorder, huge hiatal hernia, due to
convulsions caused by uncontrolled seizures, ordinarily leads to
lifethreatening esophageal metaplasia and dysplasia (malignant replacement of
tissue) (Dr. Hashem Farr, 2/20/03, 6/11/03).
·
Seizures
not under control due to lowered seizure thresholds due to psychiatric drugs
administered by unskilled careworkers, poor anti-seizure medications.
·
Tardive
Dyskinesia (tremors, tongue thrusting, lip pursing, contractures, muscle
rigidity, neurological damage) due to inappropriate psychiatric drugging.
·
Signs of renal or heart failure presented by severe edema in lower
extremities, seen November 2004 (pictures above).
·
Severe mental cruelty and emotional distress from being
separated from her parents and the appearance that they abandoned her.
·
Secret
Emergency Hospitalization, April 19, 2005
·
On April 19, 2005 just two weeks after this letter
purporting to be an attempt to “improve communications”, Nancy Golin was rushed by paramedics to
El Camino Hospital in Mountain View.
No one came with her to the hospital.
No one explained why she went.
Subsequently she was admitted to the hospital and placed in the
transitional care unit on monitoring.
We saw her there for ten minutes in the ER. She was in very bad shape.
We could do nothing. We could
find out nothing. She was there in
secret for one week. The events of this week are affirmed in court affidavits.
By orders of her state conservators through a
mere registered nurse, all information about her
condition and treatment was cloaked with a blanket of secrecy, which applied to
all inquiring parties. Hospital
representatives were ordered by them not to acknowledge even her presence in
the hospital to any outsiders including reporters, parents, advocates and
nurses, and outsiders calling for her were informed there was no one by that name in the hospital.
Only limited contacts were permitted with her, and we parents saw her
there. Doctors would not reveal the
nature of the emergency, the treatment or the possible outcomes to any
of the inquiring parties. Doctors
acting on orders from SARC alleged that Nancy Golin herself had issued a
“no-information request” in spite of the fact that Nancy is incapable of understanding
or requesting such an order. Inquiring parties
trying to visit were hustled out by security guards. Her state conservators
interfered with her proper medical treatment at the hospital in an effort to
cover up their apparent blunders, and kept out outside doctors. Her state conservators, backed by the full
faith and credit of the State of California with all the powers of licensing
over the hospitals, doctors and nurses, virtually took over the hospital and
told everyone what to do and not to do.
She remained in this
hospital for one full week and then was discharged back to the same care
provider. The only explanation that was
given was “medication related issues”. This has happened before but never found
out before in this way. Our notification apparently was a mistake absent which
we would never have learned of this event.
Her condition was status epilepticus, induced by a very severe E-Coli
intestinal bacterial infection in the urinary tract, usually associated with
feces. This condition was so severe
that hundreds of thousands of colonies were found in her urine. This infection is enough to precipitate very
serious seizures even if nothing else was present. The contamination with
E-Coli is now believed to have been caused by keeping Nancy in diapers while
she was being restrained in bed for days at a time, with no one cleaning her up
unless the parents were coming for visits.
There is evidence that the care home operator was concealing this
abuse. The emergency was so serious
that Nancy suffered a partially collapsed lung, and her heart almost stopped
and had to be kept running via an external pacemaker and CPR, and she almost
died in the hospital. Meanwhile, Liske
and Wendt of SARC sent letters to the doctors instructing them that no one was
permitted to visit her in the hospital even the parents, that there was to be
no release of information, and that the parents were required to have closely
guarded supervised visits of only 5 minutes at a time due to past allegations
of abuse, in order to keep Nancy safe!!!! Really?
And who keeps her safe from SARC??? Somehow the savage irony never
appears to have dawned on SARC when they said this. Instead SARC hired a sitter to sit with Nancy, rather than being
comforted by her family at her bedside as she had every right to enjoy.
It could have been drug
overdosing by unprofessional below-minimum wage caregivers (or children of the
care home operator), tardive dyskinesia (neurological trauma), severe reaction
from drug side effects, renal failure, gastroesophageal trauma and injury,
uncontrolled seizure activity, heart failure.
There is no reliable onsite medical supervision at the home. Many of not most of these conditions could
have resulted in the undisclosed “knock out drugs” that the medically
unsupervised attendants at the home are believed to have been irresponsibly
administering in secret to her every night to render her comatose at around 6pm
at the care home.
We are extremely concerned that it exposes her
not only to the possibility of negligent infliction of personal injury and emotional
distress but intentional retaliatory infliction of injury and emotional
distress as well as a result of this pending litigation as was once warned
by the care home operator, Mrs. Talla.
A few weeks earlier, the
same secrecy and containment resulted in a report to the State Ombudsman of
abuse concerning the care home provider, which was ignored. By denying any
information about her hospitalization and monopolizing her care, the
conservators freely exercise medical judgment beyond their abilities without
the necessary caution or concern for professional ethics and thereby jeopardize
her life without any effective supervision or responsibility.
We parents filed an emergency motion in the US
District Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, for temporary injunction to protect
Nancy from further medical abuse to protect the status quo during our civil
rights appeal as a result of this event, on May 2, 2005. We were not allowed to present our motion or
argue it orally. It was presented by a
Court of Appeals staff attorney to a panel of two distinguished jurists that
sat on May 11, 2005. We had great hopes that justice would finally be
served. It was not to be. The State’s
unresponsive response brief was not served on us and we were thus unable to
reply to it. The State merely argued that making medical decisions was within
their prerogative and they didn’t have to tell anyone anything about what they
were doing to Nancy. Tragically, the motion was denied without much comment,
and it was ordered that no further such motions be made. It became clear from
speaking to the presenting attorney afterwards that she had not learned even
the most basic facts of the case.
Page last updated November 25, 2009