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There is no such thing as 'the health care industry'. There is only a Medical Industry. Health care consists in caring for one's physical self in such a way
as to maintain good health and avoid illness or injury for as long as possible before age has its way.
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Of the books sharing this title probably the best known is a book written by a imprisoned criminal and published
some years ago to modest acclaim. Generally the phrase refers to being in an unpleasant and dangerous situation.
I have certainly been there, and unlike the criminal author, I did nothing to deserve it. But I survived, despite
the best efforts of the Medical Industry. Which is what the story is about. It also revealed to me the reality
of what a friend (RIP Frank) told me often: people are just no damned good. He said a lot more, but that about
covers it. There is a temptation to think so at times, and I know well why. The author of the aforementioned book
was a criminal and worked hard to get to where he finally arrived. Perhaps I'm just one of the unlucky people
such things happen to, but the beast doesn't care. Or maybe it does, and deliberately torments us a little more
just for fun.
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Human trafficking is a much-used term these days, but in various forms it is probably as old as humanity. For much of history chattel slavery was the
primary type of trade in human beings. Today numerous permutations exist, such as the organized sexual exploitation of children or requiring illegal
migrants to pay for their passage, often by transporting illegal drugs. In the modern age, certainly from the twentieth century other methods (enabled
by technology) of exploitation have become possible. And being profitable they proliferate. The Medical Industry in particular has profited, as new
opportunities have become available. The mental health (or behavioral health) 'services' market has been growing steadily for years, and with the
decaying society creating new types of victims (real or imagined) that growth is likely to accelerate.
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The following is an interview conducted in July 2025. Jessica A. Marshall is a free-lance writer who formerly worked as a systems architect for a couple of large companies. A solidly credentialed geek she is known on some (very) low traffic blogs and social media sites by as Jessica Atreides Marshall and occasionally jokes about changing her name but always decides that however little your middle name is used and even if the middle initial doesn't change doing it after thirty years is probably not worth the trouble. All other data including the number of cats is classified Most Ultra Absolutely Super Secret. Just kidding. Jessica Marshall: You began the previous edition with Jonah 1:17 and ended it with Jonah 2:10 - Jonah being swallowed by the big fish and eventually being... disgorged. Hence the title. Alex Stewart: (laughs) Yeah, I always guessed that the phrase 'belly of the beast' had something to do with Jonah. He only got three days and I got ninety-eight or so but I suppose if you're in a dark place and don't know if you will ever get out... and when you consider that Jonah was in that fix for being a bad boy.
JM: Were you a bad boy? AS: Ask most people who know me and they would say no but... I have a reputation for being a pretty good person I suppose, no scandals and I don't do anything... much these days (laughs) to cause one. I don't do bad things to other people - and have no use for those who do - and have never had any problems getting along with people. But three... four years ago I guess I should have remembered the proverb about pride. JM: And falling? AS: Yeah. Not pride so much... I was a superstar in the minors of that kind of business and had been for years. Every day I got to work early and almost always had someone, or a couple of someones, waiting for me. How do I do this? Can you fix this? It felt good but I didn't let it to go my head. I enjoyed my role but didn't consider myself better - or even more important - than the office people and the maintenance folks. No, now I think about it...it wasn't that kind of pride. JM: What kind then? AS: Feeling bulletproof? Maybe it was that. I was working fifty hours a week at the office and a few more at home. And I was the first one they called when something broke. But I neglected other things. Couple of Big Macs for lunch, scarfing down a pizza at night, couple of beers. Or three or.... JM: You didn't take care of yourself. I know how that goes, and I've seen it enough. (laughs) And done it. AS: Yeah, you were a systems analyst in a couple of big shops. A lot of people in that business are unhealthy but not always because of work distractions or pressure. JM: What else? AS: You saw it. Some really smart people, kind in those jobs, are often a little... I don't know what you call it but... |
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JM: Yeah, I can see that. AS: Actually I thought I was doing decent job of trying. Plain oatmeal and orange juice and black coffee for breakfast, a hundred pushups first thing in the morning and walking a mile or two every day I could be outside. But I was still nearly sixty pounds overweight. On someone of my build it doesn't show as much but it's not good. I felt good but I wasn't. JM: And one day you just suddenly.... AS: Yeah, Idunno how sudden it was. The last entry in my journal - I wrote it in the parking lot when I arrived - was 0722. For the next few months I was otherwise occupied. From what I was told I went to my office and at some point - based on my usually routine it was about 0930 or so - I went down to Alyssin's office - she ran a small office about three or four customer service people. The ones that handled problems. We talked every day about that time and quite a bit other times and outside of work. I was in her office when it happened. JM: What was it? AS: The usual. I was beginning to have some pain... chest and back on the left side... she said she asked me if I was all right and I bent over in my chair and then fell on the floor. She punched HR on the phone and told Mary Ann we needed an ambulance fast. By that time I was out of it - whether I was aware of any of it I don't know because if there was it all got wiped later - and something like fifty days later I woke up and started having memories again. JM: So the ambulance came and took you to the hospital? AS: Apparently so. You know where I worked? In Paragould? JM: Right, your office was up north on Highway 49. AS: It's about ten minutes or so with the ambulance lit up and figure on a few to get me in and back to the hospital. That's assuming an ambulance was readily available. JM: Is that not always the case? AS: Someone I know is on the city council. There's a pretty good-sized hospital in Paragould and it operates some ambulances, I forget how many but probably no more than two. Ambulances are kind of like limousines - they spend a lot of time sitting - I don't know which is more. The rule is that unless the hospital ambulances are not available and won't be soon another service can't be called. I don't know how much difference it made - I wasn't bleeding out on the sidewalk - but anyway they got me to the hospital alive.
JM: What happened at the hospital? |
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AS: I don't know what the protocol is - Methodist [Editor's note: The Paragould hospital - then known was Arkansas Methodist Medical Center - did not have cardiac surgery capability.] but I was there just a few hours. They decided that I had or was about to have a heart attack and needed to go to a hospital where that could be done. The only notable thing is that they did a cardiac catheterization - probably standard procedure - and the contrast dye they use is something that just might trash your kidneys. In my case it did. JM: What happened? AS: Kinda strange - I was told later by someone who claimed and was in a position to know - that they jabbed one of my kidneys with the dye needle. Not that it mattered - what happened happened and what happened later didn't have that much to do with it. Either way the dye can cause kidney failure and in my case it did. But they didn't know that for a while. JM: Why was that? AS: Apparently it takes anywhere from 48 to 72 hours... doncha like those.... nevermind... for the injury to become evident. By then I was having bigger problems. JM: What happened? AS: Well, they took me to St. Bernards - I call it St. Barnyards and apparently so do others since that's where I heard it - in Jonesboro. Later I wondered why but there's no need in wondering about such things. JM: Why is that? AS: The medical industry. Whether it's local politics marginalizing unofficial ambulance services or hospitals choosing where to send patients it's all just business. If I didn't make it it's just the way if is even if getting to a better hospital sooner would have saved me... nothing personal. JM: Would it have made a difference? AS: Maybe. They sent me to St. Bernards. There was a closer and better hospital - NEA Baptist - right there on 49. The ambulance could hang a right and be at the ER in a couple of minutes. But they sent me to St. Bernards. I lived there for years - you're at the emergency room at NEA in fifteen minutes or at St. Bernards in another twenty. On a good day. JM: St. Bernards is downtown. Yeah... AS: Another five or six miles, Idunno, of narrow streets and traffic. JM: Was that a factor? AS: Probably not - it just shows the nature of the medical industry. The patient doesn't matter - only the bottom line. If I'd died it would have been just another unfortunate case. Anyway I made it. JM: And then?
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AS: Apparently I wasn't that critical so they scheduled an operation. I don't know all that stuff works - I guess they stabilized me or something - recently one of my older siblings was told by her doctor that she needed to have heart surgery soon - so I guess it was kinda like that. It was a couple of weeks before they got all the insurance stuff figured out she had the operation and it was all good. JM: So you had a bypass operation? AS: Yeah. A little inside of 48 hours later had a real heart attack. I'm just going by the hospital records and what witnesses said. It was a Sunday morning and my two siblings who were there all the time but had left to go to church thinking I was in good shape. Someone at the hospital called and... they were just going into the church and the phone rang and someone at the hospital said "we've lost him." What that meant... I would guess it meant I was dead. JM: That must have been... pretty awful. AS: Probably but... we're usually... I don't know - at the time I'm sure it was. They went back to Jonesboro - it's a 45 minute drive on a good day... and by the time they got there... anyway my heart stopped... and I wasn't breathing. They said it was twelve minutes before they got a trach in and got my heart going. JM: Twelve minutes? You.... AS: Shouldn't be alive? Yeah, that's apparently what they thought. One them told one of my sisters I probably wouldn't ever be right, something like that. JM: You don't remember any of it? AS: Nope. That was December 2020 - the seventeenth or eighteenth I believe... I'd have to look at the records. I don't remember anything until sometime in April. JM: You were out all that time? AS: They had me sedated - what they were using at St. Bernards... I'd have to look at the records but I would guess some stuff... I remember seeing fentanyl in there.... that scared me. I was in St. Bernards for exactly a month if the fifteenth of one month to the fifteenth of the next is exactly.... anyway on the fifteenth of January they sent me to the hospital in Jonesboro. If you call that a hospital. JM: Arkansas Continued Care Hospital? AS: Right. Funny thing is that I had seen it a few times - I lived in Paragould but have a place in Wynne and go there every weekend. It's an old hospital - used to be the Methodist Hospital of Jonesboro or something like that. It closed years ago - I seem to remember some company in Tennessee had bought it and closed it when they had some problems. It was a real hospital then - had a helipad and I used to sometimes see helicopters coming in over the 63 bypass to the emergency room. It had been closed for a few years and then the Baptist Hospital outfit in Memphis and some business in Jonesboro, I believe it was called the Internal Medicine Clinic or something like that, pretty big operation, set up a branch in Jonesboro. While they were building a new facility - the big new one on Johnson... that's 49 north on the way to Paragould.
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JM: So you arrived there on the fifteenth of January. AS: Yeah, my 65th birthday. JM: Wow. AS: Yeah, but of course I didn't know it. Spending your 65th birthday in a coma or whatever. How many people get to do that? JM: From the middle of January to.... what is it... sometime in April you were just there in a hospital bed knowing nothing. AS: Pretty much, but I had the dreams. Or hallucinations more likely. JM: Your brain was working but... what... no way to communicate? AS: If it hadn't been for the drugs maybe. JM: Drugs? AS: I found out later. Sometime in April I came back into the real world. Slowly but I came back. It was because my sisters - they'd been there the whole time - had seen what the doctor - if you can call him that - was doing to me. JM: What was that? AS: When I left - I was still pretty groggy and just was able to get to the exit and into a car with a walker and a couple of people holding me up - my older sister asked for my records. Hospitals have to do that if you ask but they charged $250 - when I got the ones from St. Bernards and the Methodist hospital in Paragould they didn't charge anything - but at the time I was still pretty slow. One of the drugs they were using up until the day I left was Seroquel - you can look that up - and it was one of about a dozen drugs they gave me prescriptions for. I only began to become completely lucid a week or so later. Of course I could barely get out of bed so... JM: Is there something special about Seroquel? AS: Idunno... just my experience but it apparently slows you down. I was pretty sluggish that last two to three weeks and I guess maybe that's the idea. Maybe they didn't want me to get back to normal - if I had continued taking that I might never have. It's one of five anti-psychotics they were giving me. Simultaneously. JM: Five? All at once? AS: With about two dozen other medications. The others weren't psych meds but thirty drugs at once doesn't seem... whatever. |
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JM: They were putting thirty drugs in you? AS: Some were supplements or whatever, blood pressure medication, stuff to prevent infection.... I looked them up. Probably some of them were what made me so weak, that and being tied to a bed for weeks. JM: Tell me about that.
AS: The first thing I remember... the first memory that I know was real... I knew almost immediately I was in a
hospital. Didn't know why or how I got there but I'd been in a hospital before and you know. The lights were off
and there was a little light from the window so daytime but what time I had no idea. It was still... cloudy and wet
some.... funny thing is I remember snow so it seems I... did I tell you... no, probably not since... OK, we're where
I first became aware of real world stuff...
JM: What happened on those occasions?
AS: I don't which was first or second or third.... I had a visitor. From what they said and what's in the records I
was talking and eating and sitting up sometimes and I seemed normal - except to my two sisters and they knew that some
of the stuff - most of what I said wasn't true. Some seemed to be from experiences I had, like when I was in the
Air Force - I said I did twenty years and retired but actually I only did four. Something I said about burying some
money somewhere - I never did that but I kept some large stashes in both my houses. About fifty thousand one and about
forty in the other all in C-notes and twenties. And I had a lot of silver and some gold but never buried it - it was
hidden where finding would take some work and some smarts.
JM: No doctor that can replace a feeding tube? In a rehab hospital?
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AS: Well, as far as I know there was only one doctor in the joint and I later learned that he was working other jobs. One of them about fifty miles away. So even if he was able to he might not have been there. Anyway I became wide awake in the back of an ambulance. I looked up at the bulkhead behind the driver and there were several license plates - Arkansas and I believe a couple of states like Missouri and maybe Tennessee or Mississippi and remember wondering why... if they needed them because they transport patients between states. Apparently they do and that's what suggests that I was about 90% lucidity at the time. JM: How long did that last? AS: I guess about as long as it took to get me unloaded and to the ER - I remember the ambulance backing into the bay and being rolled on the gurney through those doors they just bang through and down a hall. Probably they sedated me again to put the tube back and by the time that wore off Dr. Lecter or whoever already pumped in some more dream juice. JM: Dr. Lecter? AS: Lecter, Mengele, Freeman, take your pick. JM: Who was Freeman? AS: Guy that lobotomized patients with an ice pick. Now they do it with drugs, the drugs he used on me. JM: Is that what they do? AS: Pretty much, and numerous other things. I've got a file.... it's pretty big. JM: I'd like to see it. You mentioned a third time when you seemed... self-aware. AS: Yeah, that was the snow so it had to be in January or February. I don't now why I saw the snow - I was on the second floor - but I suppose they got me up occasionally for something and I could see out the windows. Apparently my room was near the center of the building where the entrances are and it about that time I could hear people and machinery working outside. That was when they were installing the totem pole. JM: Totem pole? AS: Yeah, Idunno if's still there since they closed the place but there was a bit post about probably two to three feet thick and probably fifteen high. It had wolves carved into it, I guess like red wolves that stuff is named in Jonesboro. After the university ditched the Native American dude. JM: I haven't been inside, just drove past. It was closed. AS: Did you see the big eagle? JM: I don't remember one. AS: Bigger than the totem pole, on the left side of the entrance. Some chainsaw sculptor made them. |
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JM: No, if it was there I didn't notice. AS: Anyway they put that after I left. Probably a year or two. I guess somebody had a lot of money to spend but didn't spend it on good help. JM: I do find it strange that they didn't have more doctors. How was the rest of the staff? AS: As bad or worse. There was this one nurse that seemed all right, the others were... you see it a lot these days... now very professional or close to it. Lot of overweight ones, scrubs were... I only saw one or two that looked clean and and matching parts. The one I mentioned, maybe another one or two. Later I found out they were all contracted and there was a lawsuit or two by some that claimed they weren't paid for overtime and stuff like that. There was one that looked all right - a man in his thirties, big guy. He'd come in and usually when they wanted you to move they would help you - the tubes and all - and pull on the sheets and stuff to get you situated... this guy just picked me up and dropped me. Abusive, told me something about pulling out the feeding tube and having to go back and have it put in... pretty obnoxious. Sometimes I'd hear them talking out in the hall, he seemed one of those likes to talk and show how smart he is - I believe he was the only man so maybe showing off... anyway.... what do you do? JM: Were there any other times you were clear-headed before you finally came out of it completely? AS: Can't think of any just now. JM: I wanted to ask you - not to have a break in the flow here but you mentioned being in the Air Force and your work before. Can we talk about that? AS: Sure. Want me to start at the beginning? JM: Why not? AS: You read that bit in my letters to the Attorney General and governor so got the basics. I was born in Michigan in 1956. Dad had gone up there to work for General Motors - he was in War World II and some guys with tech experience went to work for that auto companies. At the same time a lot of folks down south were going up there and wherever factories had a lot of openings and it paid quite well. Several of his friends and relatives were there in Flint - where he went - and a year later his cousin died in a hunting accident in Arkansas and when he came home for the funeral he decided to stay permanently - that was the plan then - so Mom and my two sisters went back with him. My brother and I were born there. JM: Your younger brother? AS: Right. He died about a year ago - he had various problems most of his life and... JM: I see. Actually I don't because one can't see another life from that angle... AS: No, that's all right. I get it. JM: At some point your family returned to Arkansas. |
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AS: Yeah, there was some nastiness with the unions... strikes and what went with them... one night someone drove by and shot up a house a few blocks from where we lived and the young couple that lived there had a three year old boy... JM: Oh no...
AS: Oh yes. I was about three then. Dad and Mom both agreed that they needed to go. The money was good
but it wasn't worth it. Dad and his brother had a small farm - eighty acres and they had bought another eighty
when Dad went off to war. He sent a lot of money back - said being pretty good at playing cards and the other
soldiers paid for a lot of it - and they were going to start farming but the economy was such that he went to
Michigan to make good money while things recovered. I was four when we came back - a pickup truck and a trailer
and four kids - my brother not a year old.
JM: Sounds like a good time. AS: It was but for a kid - if you're in a good family - those times are good. I grew up on a farm and the school was fifteen miles away and it was a long bus ride. It was two different worlds. I started school in another year and the next few were... variable. JM: Variable? More than for most? AS: (laughs) Well, yeah I guess growing up... how variable it is depends I suppose. What I didn't know at six years old was that I was autistic. It had only been a thing for a few years when I was born. JM: I guess that would make it.... interesting and sometimes not in a good way. AS: I have what they call Aspergers and it was I believe added to the spectrum a while back, I was an adult then. I've got some of the other stuff, OCDs and... what they call it... inadequate social skills? JM: Something like that. AS: OK, yeah... school was... something I was so glad to be over with I never considered going to college. I was straight-A all the way, honor student, with no real effort. Teachers loved me - except for this one - but then the other kids - some of them anyway - didn't. JM: Yeah, been there. Some kids work so hard and see you.... |
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AS: Yeah, never took books home to cram for tests and what was probably worse I never let on I cared because I didn't. Starting in junior high - seventh grade - we were grouped by perceived learning ability. I guess we had been under observation for the previous six years and they figured on where we should be. Come to think of it.... JM: Memories? AS: Yeah, first grade. Picture an autistic kid in 1962 first day of school. JM: How did it go? AS: Surprisingly not bad an the first few years weren't. My older sisters had gone through ahead of me at about three year intervals, small town and the people don't change much, my teachers had been their teachers in many cases. The rough stuff came later, in junior high and on. JM: What happened in the first grade?
AS: Probably because they knew my family they had their eye on me. First grade you play with crayons and stuff for a few days before they get serious.
That's been sixty-plus years and I still remember it. Over the chalkboard was a row of pictures of horses' heads in various colors. About ten by ten
I'd say. So when it was time to start the teacher pointed at the first one and asked one of the kids what color it was. That kid was me and I
told her, red as I remember. And then we went on to other stuff... whatever... It was a bit before we used the big pencils to make letters on the tablets
with the dotted line in the middle of the row where the letters are supposed to go....
JM: At six years? AS: Yeah. I didn't think anything about it. I could read and write for a couple of years. Whole family is like that. So I was reading Shakespeare at ten and all. JM: Your memory seems good as well, especially after what you went through. AS: Yeah, the brain damage and all. I have a couple of theories about that. Anyway... probably if not for the neurological damage I could go back to work today. Not that I want to. JM: Even for the enjoyment of the work? AS: I enjoyed that. And having millions of dollars of stuff to work with and not having to pay for it. But at my age... maybe they did me a favor by not giving me a choice. For all the pain the past few years have been good and I enjoy getting up every day as much as I ever did. And no crisis to deal with. |
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JM: You said the rough stuff came later, in junior high. AS: We were teenagers then so that probably had a good bit to do with it. And in the H section - that's what they called it and there were one or two M sections and then a couple of special ed levels - some of the supposed best and brightest were the rich kids. Their parents were doctors and lawyers and bankers and some who were just rich however they got that way but they were the social elite. And a few country bumpkins like me cursed with an IQ unbefitting our social standing. JM: Being a teenager is difficult for most at the best of times but I can see how that would be more so. AS: Yeah, some of the elites were pretty cool - they weren't in my league intellectually and their parents knew it and just wanted them to get a good education and get into a good college. We had two kids whose parents were doctors - MD types - and one whose father was a dentist - he was pretty cool - and one whose father was an optometrist and he was so-so. Ended up selling computer supplies - this was the 1980s so it was stuff like those big boxes of paper and magnetic tapes and disks - and it was about ten to fifteen years later I ran into someone who knew him and he said I was one of the smartest people he ever knew so I guess he was all right. Lessee, that's about it for doctors and there were a couple of banker's kids. You really wanna hear this stuff? JM: I'll let you know if it gets dull.
AS: OK, the banker's kids were kinda interesting. They were cousins, a girl and a boy. Their fathers were directors and majority owners
at that time of one of the big banks and had some interest in the other two. Actually one of the others was a savings loans and that was
before the debacle of the eighties but.... anyway the boy was a good kid but a little slow for the H class. Not dumb at all but couldn't
maintain the grades so he had to go. Instead of allowing him to suffer the disgrace of going to the M section (I know some really smart
people that were in M section but that's another story) they put him in a private school. I believe he eventually became a director of
one of the banks they had an interest in but didn't keep up with him. Good kid though.
JM: And the other one? |
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AS: That one. She... I suppose it would be called narcissism but I'm not into psych stuff. She did manipulate some of the other girls and teachers and I suspect some of was aimed at me. JM: What did she do? AS: The thing with manipulative types it's hard to prove anything, catch them in the act. Subtle things here and there to get others to act. Her family was at the top wealth-wise so some of the other girls - the ones that were playing the same game - would do what she wanted. They only time they scored was in my senior year and then it was too late even if I cared about making honor student - and I couldn't have cared less. A new teacher, in her second or third year, chemistry. I probably knew close to as much chemistry as she did but that's another story. Twenty-four or twenty-five I guessed, bunch of 16-17 year old girls. She gave me some grief because I took a few Fridays off - get mom to write a note - and still made As. She had two classes with students from eleventh and twelfth grades and one day we had a test. A friend of mine was in the eleventh and we used to chat at lunch and after school about every day. She does what they call grading on the curve - highest score is an A and the next is a B even if it's only a couple of points lower and so on. I don't know if that's even legit but it happened occasionally. Anyhow it didn't affect me as I had the highest score and that probably made it worse. Some of the kids complained and she said it was because someone who had taken the test told someone in the other class about it. Three or four of the girls looking at me when she said it "someone" did it. JM: But you didn't? AS: No, we never talked about class stuff and she was pretty smart anyway. All it did was make some people mad at me but I was thisclose to graduating and didn't give a.... whatever. I just wanted out. JM: Did it make you... AS: Alienated? Idunno, could it have been more? Maybe. Most knew what was going on. She had school kids up at her place, drinking and smoking pot and there was some sex going on. It was only that six or seven really that made trouble - I just happened to be the one country kid - there some others - who didn't know his place. I wasn't trying to get out of my place - I didn't care to associate with them. JM: But you... unintentionally but made them look bad? AS: (laughs) Yeah, I guess so. What does it say about a person that they behave that way over something like that? Anyway we graduated - didn't have valedictorian speech because I was one of the two and couldn't have read a speech - that's what they do - you think it's an 18-year-old kid writing that stuff - to save my life. I would have been good with just having her do one and leave me out of it but they didn't ask me. JM: And that was it for high school? AS: Yeah. I had a slot in a computer programming school up in Nebraska or somewhere, run by NCR - the big computer company. Kind of a farm for developers - that's what they call them now - and it was kind of a boarding school where you learn COBOL and FORTRAN and assembler for that particular architecture - and when you graduate you got a job waiting for you if you're any good at all. |
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JM: But you didn't go.
AS: No, I didn't think I could handle it. I was working at the Kroger store and thinking
about that as a career - a lot of the kids I worked with there were as the union was
bleeding them pretty good. Get a department like produce or dairy or meat or whatever and
you're making fourteen dollars an hour - this was 1974 - and putting in your forty and then
scheduling yourself another eight at time-and-a-half and the part-time kids did the hard work.
The meat department had it even better and the boss there got a day of double-time for working
on Sunday. The produce manager was the only one that had to really work at it.
JM: How long did you work at Wal-Mart? AS: About three weeks. Dad had a friend who was the president of the other bank. They knew each other from way back. Dad did almost all of his business there - the farm and all he was in there a lot and they talked about family and stuff. He found out that I wasn't going to college and suggested I come to work at the bank. JM: How did that go? AS: Pretty well. It didn't pay much but I was never that concerned about money - it was adequate and I had some other things going on. They were apparently planning for me to be a loan officer or something but after about three years I thought about going into the Air Force. I knew a couple of guys that had and it sounded good. So I went over to the recruiter and signed up. JM: How did you like it? AS: That was one of those things I considered making a career of and it looked good. Do twenty years and retire with a pension of about half your pay and have all the benefits - VA and use the base commissaries and all - and still be young enough for a second career. So I signed up. I aced the ASVABs - that's the tests they give you to see how useful you may be with 90-something on all four and before long was on my way to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training. |
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After I arrived they had more tests and I aced those. Those were to see if you were qualified for some special duties. One of the ones was a linguistics test - to see how good you were at learning languages. I knew I was pretty good having had Spanish in high school and found Latin easy to learn on my own and when they told me I would have a tech school of up to a year in Monterrey, California it signed on the line. Don't remember if was dotted or not. Anyway there was a screwup somewhere - I suspect it was because it required a six-year enlistment and they didn't get me to sign up for the extra two. Anyway they did the six month investigation for my security clearance but after basic I found myself at Keesler AFB in Biloxi for 702 training. JM: What is a 702? AS: Staff support administration they called it then. Fancy word for a clerk. Type and file and do whatever needed being done in an office. There was one or two or a few in about every organization of any kind. I could type 70 WPM or better on an IBM Selectric and better than the 40 or so required on a manual and was real popular wherever I was. JM: Where did you go after your training? AS: England. RAF Bentwaters, one of numerous old WWII bases used by the U.S. Air Force as part of NATO. They had F-4s but were in the process of switching to A-10s - the first overseas deployment. I was assigned to the personnel office. The 702s were me and an E3 and a Staff Sergeant. JM: What's an E3? AS: Airman First Class. Two-striper. The E-grade is one more than the number of stripes since you start out with none. The Staff Sergeant was an E-5 with four stripes. He worked for a retread captain who worked for a major that was hoping to be a lieutenant colonel soon. That made for some interesting experiences. JM: What kind?
AS: Well, about three months after I arrived the personnel office got a letter stating that my
security clearance had been approved. That was the one they started when I volunteered for the
linguist job. So the 702 in personnel had a TS/SCI - that's Top Secret and the SCI is really
really secret. I didn't need it for that job but since the major was always looking for
enhancements to his promotion chances he would volunteer me for things.
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JM: Where did you go next? AS: I and a guy in my office that had a little less time left than me both asked for Vandenberg AFB as our next station. A 702 generally goes about anywhere requested so we both ended up there. He was from Porterville - up near Bakersfield - and we used to go up there regularly. And Santa Barbara was down at the lower end of the base - Vandenberg is big - and some other nice towns. I liked California but seeing how it is now I'm glad I didn't stay. JM: Did you go back to Arkansas after your enlistment was over? AS: Yeah, I took my time driving back and did some sightseeing and a couple of weeks later I was home. JM: What next?
AS: I fooled around, visiting people I hadn't seen in a while. I had a ton
of money - you have to work hard to blow all your money in military service
since they provide everything you need and you get paid on top of that.
They got a big raise after Reagan was elected and I made Staff Sergeant
on my first eligibility and cleaned up good and I didn't have the bad
habits some guys did.
JM: You went back to your old job? AS: Yeah, but I enjoyed it more. I found ways to automate so much stuff that I had a lot of free time to play with the computers. The pay still wasn't great and the software company had people in there a lot because they tested new stuff for them and one of the owners asked if I would be interested in a job. The money was too good not to take it so.... JM: What did you do at your new job? AS: They had programmers - guys that wrote and maintained code - and customer service people that helped customers with problems. And they sold the hardware so they needed someone to do that. The guy they had was so-so and needed help and I was familiar with Unix - something new to that market - and they were planning to port their product to Unix. JM: Was that important? |
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AS: Very. The proprietary systems - IBM, Burroughs, NCR - were about to be replaced by cheap microprocessor systems - basically very powerful PCs - running Unix. The deal with Unix was that you could port it to new hardware quickly and save tons of money by not having to port a proprietary system to new hardware. JM: How did that go? AS: Great for a while. I don't know if all good things must come to an end but that one did. The company was owned by three people and had succeeded partly through being in the right place at the right time and by actually producing a superior product to most of its competitors. Two of the partners didn't get along well and the situation wasn't improving and the third - a not very smart guy who was the sales department - wanted to buy out his partners and have the while thing. He convinced a bank to give him about three million dollars to buy them out and they took it real quick. JM: Was it worth three million? AS: Potentially. If he had been able to keep it going even without much growth it would have been quite profitable and he could have paid the loan off in a couple of years. But as I said he wasn't that bright and had a domineering wife who I believe was... I don't know but probably she would be diagnosed with some disorder but... anyway she ran the show and knew nothing about it. The day the contract was signed they took the staff - there were about twenty of us - to dinner at a high-end restaurant. We met at the office and there were two new cars - a Lincoln Town Car and a new tricked-out Ford Ranger - and before the week was out an Oldsmobile Silhouette and a Chevy cargo van were added to the fleet. JM: Wow. AS: Yeah. JM: How soon did the good thing end? AS: They hired about a half dozen office people - family and friends - and the wife was CEO at a pretty good salary. They hired a couple of salesmen and a guy to assist me - he was the only one needed and as there weren't any more sales he had little to do. JM: No more sales? AS: Not one. Sales were what kept it going - that and the annual maintenance fees But that was being spent fast and there was nothing coming in. JM: How long did it last? AS: It took about a year for it to be nearly hopeless. The three of us that headed the departments tried to get him to... to do something to save it but he always assured us that things would work out. He sold a copy of the software - the one valuable asset - to a company that was reselling it and was essentially now a competitor.
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JM: How was that supposed to work? AS: As I said... he wasn't very bright. Like some people (laughs) he was in a successful group... and when it broke up he couldn't make it alone. JM: Some people? Somehow I suspect that laugh means something... AS: Some of them are very rich... because they didn't break it... kill the goose... until they had a few millions, billions even and were at least smart enough to hire people to manage it. And were at least smart enough to follow the advice of those they hired. JM: Knowing enough to know how much you don't know. Yeah... but that could be long conversation. So he sold the golden goose, or what was left of it. AS: Right. He held on for another year I guess, we tried get him to give up control and offered to work without pay long enough to save it... we made good money and had no personal debt and might have pulled it off but... anyway eventually we were working without pay because our paychecks bounced. We called the other company and offered our services. JM: Sensible. AS: Seemed that way to us. JM: So you were working for the other company doing the same thing? But getting paid. AS: Yeah. They were in North Dakota and different kind of people and all about money so they ran a tight ship. A little too tight for me as the NIH rule... JM: NIH? AS: Not invented here. They had something that worked well and didn't want to rock the boat. None of them were super smart but they stuck to the working plan - their clientele was comfortable with what they had - and stayed in business and made money. A few years later the big banking software companies started buying up the small ones for serious money, way more than they could sold them for earlier, and the three owners got seriously rich. If we could have saved our business... JM: How long did you work for them? AS: Almost a year. I was going to stick around because they promised a pretty big profit sharing payment at the end of each year... I later learned from my former colleagues it wasn't that big, maybe 20K or so... but I found an opportunity that looked good and more suited to my skills. JM: And that was? AS: Lessee, that was '94. The move to Unix was well underway and the need for sysadmins and developers was way up... and at the same time there wasn't an abundance of people to fill those positions. |
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JM: I'm not a code monkey but know generally from my former work - not to go too far off track... Unix is the original product that... Linux, what I'm familiar with is a highly developed version of Unix. AS: Yeah, where it all started. Pretty much all the Internet server-side runs on Linux. As do most phones as Android is a form of Linux and Apple phones use the code base but that would be a real long story. JM: Right. So that was a good time to be experienced with Unix. What was the job? AS: A company near Jonesboro - Jonesboro is where the defunct company was - needed an experienced sysadmin as they called it but that covered a multitude of sins... anyway it was a big florist service business that had acquired a small company that had a management system for flower shops and it ran on SCO Unix and none had much experience. JM: Florist services? AS: Stuff that flower shops need - supplies for making flower arrangements, they published a big directory of flower shops in the U.S. and Canada and probably some other places... it was the size of the big dictionaries that have every known word... about eight inches thick if I remember right.... that was a big part of their revenue... and they were trying to start a wire service like FTD - that's how you can send flowers from Jonesboro to anywhere in the country... they take a cut of every order and it's big money. JM: The shop management system was for that? AS: Yeah, that and running the shop - point-of-sale terminals and an accounting module, some other stuff. It was an amateur job that got too big for the owner and he was smart enough to sell it instead of going broke... actually I believe he may have already had a bankruptcy action against him but managed to make the sale. Tech stuff in bankruptcies... JM: Yeah, I can see that. AS: Anyway the closest thing they had to a sysadmin interviewed me and one other guy who didn't know anything and I had been using it since 1982 or so... and we were the only two that showed up so... JM: As someone said showing up is kind of important. AS: (laughs) Yeah, I've been lucky or smart enough to show up at some good times. And to be the one that knew everything... or was expected to know everything. You get to be the rock star but you have to be fast on your feet. JM: That was sort of your last gig but it spanned three different employers. AS: Yeah, it was fun and paid real well. Being the guru everybody's nice to you - if they're smart - and I enjoyed it - all the latest hardware to play with and most of that crowd is pretty fun to work with. My boss was one of those who knew enough the get in the door but knew his limitations and I'm one of those that show up every day - I believe I missed a day or two of work once or twice in the first three years and I'm pretty easygoing to it was 98% good. JM: Then the company was sold?
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AS: Yeah, one of the bigger wire services - not FTD but the other - if you want to not name names... JM: Maybe later.... this part is more about your journey to this point. AS: OK, if some people want to figure it out... anyway it was real big... a few billions. The owner was pretty old and wanted to spend retire and they made an offer like you do and have money to burn and really want something. JM: The first time you worked for a company that big? AS: (laughs) Except for the Air Force I guess but the biggest private one. My department was nervous because acquisitions mean layoffs but apparently my department was one piece they really wanted. Apparently that was the case because we all got big raises - stupid big but they had big plans for us - and that was pretty good for a while. Had to deal with the suits now and they but they knew less about what we did that our old owner so pretty well had to take our word for how things needed to be. But that didn't last. JM: Layoffs? AS: Yeah, the CEO's contract was coming to an end he was moving on. To get the maximum bonus for that last year he needed the books to look as good as possible. They selected the ones making the most money - it was a big company with lots of department so theoretically you could shave off the top level of management in some of them and save some serious money. JM: Theoretically. AS: Yeah, I should have known when I read the morning Dilbert and it happened when I got to work that the end was near. It two days to get us all fired - about fifty or so - because they had to have you come in to the HR office and give you that package and get your door card and all that... there were one of two HR people from the old company and one was an older woman near retirement age. She made up all the packages except one. JM: Which one was that? AS: (laughs) Wanna guess? JM: I'm not sure I want to... hers? AS: Yep. JM: Wow. Yeah, I can see it. Been there and done that and got the cheap T-shirt. I was never one of the ones let go but it was pretty cold-blooded. AS: Yeah, the corporate mind is reptilian. I was expecting it because I was on one of my rare vacations and the boss called and told me to come in for an important meeting. Everyone was acting strange and the three guys that worked for me especially. JM: You'd never been fired before? |
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AS: No, but I only had a handful of jobs and was generally the only one who know to much to let go. It was pretty funny though - since I had the luxury of detachment. JM: You weren't much worried I suppose, with your skills and experience. So not being that upset you were observing the process and reactions? AS: Yeah. I was well set money-wise and even if I was out of work for a while.... I figured on resuming and extending my vacation... funny thing is I was four days into it and when they cut my severance check those four days hadn't come off... small victories. But not the best. JM: What was that? AS: Their view is that supervisors are expendable - get a new one and the worker bees can carry the load fairly easily. Small shops not so much - I had three guys who worked for me and one as there when I arrived - not much good but not bad enough to go through firing him... and he was pretty likable and didn't cause any problems. The other two were young - in their twenties and I had been training them for about a year. They were what you'd expect - spend as much time playing fantasy football or yakking on the phone as working. I was probably carrying half the load in terms of actual work getting done. JM: It probably would have been interesting to see... AS: Yeah, the ones that were let go still talked to the ones left, Alyssin - did I mention her? JM: Yeah, from the hospital. AS: Right. She got cut too and we ended up at the same place again. So we knew a lot about what went on.... my office was at the back of the building and as I walked out people - some didn't know I was gone yet... were asking me questions about how to do something or the status of a project... I told them I didn't work there any more... yeah, it got interesting. JM: I can see that. I witnessed a couple of downsizings and it took a while to settle down. Tech people. AS: Yeah. They had a lot of angry customers but don't know if they actually lost any. The ones left had some adjusting to do. I had a ton of stuff on my computer and I suppose if they needed bad enough and looked for it they could find it. But not the stuff in my head. JM: And your lucky next employer got it. AS: Yeah, and the next door was a lot better than the one behind me. JM: You say that was like part of the same gig. AS: Yeah, it was a smaller version, real small. They had sort of a mini wire service and were doing a good business. Their operating expenses were a lot less and they charged less than the big boys - a flat fee per order and no cut of the total. They were better at customer service and had a loyal and growing base. JM: Was your work pretty much the same? |
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AS: Even better. They were using rented servers and wanted to bring their operation in-house. It wasn't big at that point - just the software for the call center and email. They were beginning to do florist websites - I believe FTD already was but my former employer wasn't get. They needed to build a data center to handle that most of all. A guy I worked with at the other place was one of several - several key tech types - that quit after the layoffs. Alyssin and several other former employees were working there as well. When they told him what they wanted I was the first person he called. JM: You knew each other pretty well? AS: Yeah, he was a developer - straight code-monkey - and they and the sysadmin guys were pretty close. Super sharp, a few years younger than me. And this time I would be building it from the ground up. JM: That's a rare opportunity. AS: Yeah, clean slate. A chance to use my... near twenty years I guess of experience. The owners could be tight-fisted but were smart enough to know where money needed to be spent. JM: How did you proceed?
AS: There was nothing... no hardware. I ordered a couple of big Dell tower servers and used the DSL to connect to the outside.
This was... lessee, '03 and Idunno what speed was - I tried it at home and it sucked - but it was adequate. Once we were hosting
web sites it obviously wouldn't be. I suggested a T1 and we were on that by the time we rolled out the first web sites. I got
everything running and we terminated the old service.
JM: How did that go? AS: Pretty good, real good. He built two or three templates and the images and configuration stuff were stored in a database so when someone clicks on it it creates the site and spits it out. We had some customers right away so it was being tested constantly and the occasional bug was quickly identified and fixed. The sales reps - they were selling subscriptions to the wire service - now had another product to sell. JM: How did they sell them on websites back then... what was it 2003? AS: The two big sells was visibility - people looking to buy flowers... mostly those sending flowers somewhere since most people know about their local shops - and the E-commerce feature. They could order on the website instead of calling shop. Put in a credit card... PayPal and that stuff came later... and get it done quickly without talking to a person. Progress... JM: (laughs) Yeah. It was pretty successful? |
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AS: Very. They were expanding already and websites was a big boost. I believe the wire service was something like $200 a year and the websites were $300 or so. We added email service - save the customer's email and if they check the box they're on the mailing list. That got interesting though... JM: Why was that? AS: Bulk email service wasn't widely available then. You shoot a few thousand... even a few hundred or dozen emails in a short time and you get blocked so spamming. We were still fairly low-volume and had upgraded to a fiber circuit and had 128 IP addresses. We only used a few of them for our web servers so I took a half dozen old desktops and stacked them on a table - we had one rack and it was getting crowded and gave each a different IP. The spam detectors don't look at IP blocks so as long as the address doesn't show up too much too fast it's all good. I wrote a script to read the addresses from the database and round-robin them through the server pool and put in a suitable wait and it worked pretty well. Eventually things like Constant Contact and Mailchimp and stuff were available. Keep your lists clean - remove those that report you as spam - and you should be good. JM: That was a couple of years later? AS: Yeah, several probably. We got hit by an ice storm in February... maybe January more like it and Valentine's Day was coming up fast. JM: That would be bad for florists. AS: Yeah, very very bad. And for a company that depends on florists. I believe at that time we had four T-1s as fiber is less vulnerable to power outages. They terminated in a box a couple of hundred yards down the street and the batteries ran out after a few hours. It was days before the lights came back on. JM: Ouch. AS: Yeah, major ouch. The building had a generator and we stayed at the office and were warm but communications-wise cut off from the world. Power was restored a few days into February and while we took a hit reputation-wise survived. JM: I would guess that your employer decided some action was needed. AS: Yeah (laughs) nothing like a near disaster. I had a plan ready when they were. That was when we switched to fiber and added some other data centers. We had one - these are groups of servers in a data center somewhere - in California and Illinois. We still had the problem of having the main center down so I built a primitive DNS failover feature so that wouldn't be a problem. Those eventually became available, like bulk email, but while I only tested enough to verify it worked we never had to rely on it. JM: That was quite a bit to manage for one person, even on a small scale. AS: Yeah, I had an incentive to make it solid to avoid those phone calls in the night and on weekends. It worked pretty well for that - it would take a major disaster to break it. |
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JM: Did you have any? AS: No, no disasters. About the only scary thing was swapping out a firewall appliance at end-of-life. I convinced them to pay for company engineer to come for those. By then they knew to listen if they didn't already. JM: That was getting close to the end of you tenure? AS: Pretty close. I added some cloud servers for capacity and kept the physical centers. They had some new products... as it turned out I was happy to not be around for those. And they were acting like a mega-corporation even if they weren't one. JM: The new products didn't look good? AS: Yeah, they had the idea of doing websites like by then everybody and his brother had only at higher prices (for customer service) and on a monthly subscription and it wasn't very well made. They bought another building for that and made it a separate company but we still provided tech support. There was a way that might have worked but they weren't interested in even trying it. JM: How did they go mega-corporate? AS: They hired people to insulate them from the department heads. It was still a mom-and-pop thing and small - about forty employees - but they hired people like my boss at that other place only not smart enough to know how much they didn't know - and were... kinda like the big ones that had so much money to throw at problems they figured it could solve any problem. I exited on whichever side of the stage it is about the time the first ones arrived. As it happens one of them became my boss's boss and he was clueless when I knew him back then but could do the talking part. JM: What did your boss do? AS: What he did before. Went somewhere else... this funny... it was the place he left. Talking to him it seems he gave up on trying to get people to listen and went for the money. Good guy but I guess that can burn you out. If I hadn't left for other reasons I probably would have - I only had a couple year so sixty-six and something and maximum Social Security. I might have done it but could have done it for more years. JM: You were sixty-five? AS: Two weeks. 15 December and my birthday as 15 January. The full benefits age for me was sixty-six and four months. But I liked what I was doing and I liked the money so probably would have continued. I was working on a couple of projects - real estate - where I lived. But the lights went out unexpectedly. JM: You had the heart attack. Or the events preceding... AS: Yeah. It all started that day. |
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JM: Ok, that's a pretty good background for your later experiences. I guess we got a little off but it's important. When we digressed you had just left the hospital. Let's go back to when you first knew where you were - we may go over some of it twice but I'd like to have in in one piece from there until now.
AS: Yeah, OK. As I said I woke up in a dark room and knew right away what it was. I don't know how long it was but probably
not more than a few hours since they check on patients at least a couple of times a day. At some point a nurse came in and
maybe did something or not - she didn't give me any medication or check my temperature or anything. She may not have noticed
any change since I apparently was conscious - eyes open and talking and responding to them - but it was a big difference to
me.
JM: Your younger older sister. AS: Right. It may be than when I woke up she or Charly - they visited on alternate days - had already been there and it was the next day before I recognized.... JM: Always alternate days? AS: Yeah, because plandemic. They would only allow one visitor at a time so they had been coming on alternate days because it was a 45-minute drive and there was no point going through all... one visiting for a few minutes and then the other... so they began taking turns. JM: Plandemic? You didn't buy it? AS: It was just getting started when I began my adventure - they weren't even requiring masks except in medical facilities and I believe the first... (laughs) vaccine was finished about that time. I'm hoping they didn't decide to jab me while I was in the hospital. No, that was a test of intelligence or.. and or character that most of the population failed. JM: It was a good time to be self-employed. Here in Arkansas it wasn't too bad - the governor was in the tank but smart enough not to push it too far. AS: Yeah, or just not working. I had to go see a couple of doctors... one was the cardiologist at the St. Bernards... for a checkup. He was an older guy and once we were in the exam room and had the door closed he took off his mask and invited us... Sam and Charly were with me.... to remove ours. He seemed disgusted with the whole thing. A few months later I got a letter from his office advising that he was retiring. JM: I wouldn't want to be in that business even now. Between corruption and incompetence... AS: Incompetence, or tolerating it, is corruption. JM: Yeah. So your sisters were visiting you every day, one or the other... you said you didn't recognize them at first.
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AS: Yeah, that first day... I was still a little foggy... Sam told me that I had had a heart attack and that was about all I remember. They weren't
able to tell me much... a lot of the nasty stuff was in the records. But they had got the doctor to back off on the psych drugs enough for me to
mostly come out of it. But the first few days I would wake up and see one of them, or be awake when she walked in, and they weren't in hospital
scrubs so I knew they weren't, but it took a few seconds...
JM: Telemetry box? AS: Something like that, I believe that's what it's called. The patches on my chest and a couple of places were attached to it. Monitoring my heart or something. And the feeding tube. If I moved I had to be careful not to pull something loose. JM: Were they still using the feeding tube? AS: Yeah, they put stuff in it... meds, supplements probably. They released my hands so I could sit up and eat. The stuff was awful and not much or it, those little cartons of juice. I could drink the orange juice but one day all they had was apple juice and that doesn't agree with me... I didn't want to drink it but I did and barfed all over the the dirty hospital gown so they had to sponge me off and put on a new one. JM: They didn't let you take a shower? AS: The only shower I remember was about the time they started the physical therapy. I used a walker and this one nurse - she was the one decent person in the place - took me down the hall as the rooms didn't have bathrooms.... mine didn't anyway... and helped me get as clean as possible. I presume that there hadn't been any before. JM: Wow... that couldn't have been fun. AS: I think they were still messing with meds then... I was asking them to leave me untied and they wouldn't do it. Doctor's orders. One day I saw the form and the name Copeland. I later learned that was the name of the doctor. JM: Messing with the meds? AS: Yeah, probably. I had some more hallucinations around that time. Once or twice I was... I believe waking up and was half awake and half dreaming or hallucinating... and there was a dead man in the bed beside me. Somehow I knew he was dead, the guy that wasn't there but.... he was wearing a suit. After a while he went away and I was completely awake. And it was after I was asking them to leave me untied that I escaped a couple of times. JM: Escaped? AS: Got my hands free and undid the ones on my feet. Then I lay there until them came in and tied me up again. |
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JM: So you weren't trying to get away, just have your... AS: I don't know... you can't know... what it feels like to be tied up like that. It's scary... terrifying really and... JM: I don't want to find out. I suppose people who do that, S&M or whatever...
AS: Have strange ideas of fun. Anyway one of the times I got loose... this is how weird it can be... while I was
getting my hands free and then the others, it was like I was in the floor in the aisle of a church full or people
and the preacher was standing up there and he was looking at me but the people didn't seem to notice me.
JM: Maybe they gave you some more drugs when you escaped. AS: Probably. They would stand around out in the hall... the room was near the desk at the center of the corridor the way it is in some places and people congregate there... and talk about me. I heard one of them tell some one we call him Houdini and they laughed. They laughed about other stuff, stuff I said. Charly and Sam said I did say crazy stuff, like I had retired from the Air Force and about some gold buried.... think I told you about that. JM: Yeah, they knew it wasn't real because they knew you but to others it seemed you were normal. AS: Right. I was thinking about that nurse... JM: Which one? AS: This was about a year or two ago. This nurse in Massachusetts killed her three children and tried to kill herself. Some of reports said the prosecutor said it was a clear case of premeditated murder and she was googling things like how long it would take to go somewhere, how long her husband would be gone if he went, something like that. It made me think of being in that dream world of drugs and using a computer to look for lawyers. And they said she seemed normal... JM. Yeah, I remember that. AS: Her lawyer told what drugs she was on, twelve or so. They included the five they used on me. JM: How was she even alive, much less... AS: You look at the ones I had... all at once the chance of it being fatal is somewhere close to certain. I suspect the only reason I'm alive is because they got him to stop before it killed me. I got some stuff here, about that and what the aftereffects are. Why I'm so shaky and have trouble talking... |
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JM: I'm surprised she survived, even physically. Probably she will never have anything like a normal life. AS: Apparently she's paralyzed, a paraplegic or whatever in a wheelchair. And whatever her mind is like now, locked up somewhere probably. JM: In a sane world the doctors would be going to prison. AS: Yeah well... let me tell you what the physical leftovers.... you've been in data centers. Racks of computers and stuff, routers and firewalls and... looks all neat and clean from the front. Look in the back and there's wire and wires and more wires... JM: Right. AS: Let someone go in there with a pair of wire cutters and start pulling cables, cutting some and leaving others hanging, plugging others into the wrong places. There might be some functionality but there's a lot of stuff broken. Maybe some offices or buildings not working or entire segments of the network cut off. JM: I wouldn't want to be the one to fix it. AS: Yeah. Your brain has eighty billion or so circuits it uses to run your body. Psych meds may have the effect the doctor wants... make you behave or just stop doing anything. A chemical lobotomy which is about what they are. But while the chemicals fixing the circuits they want fixed they're breaking a lot others. JM: How many... I guess almost no one thinks about that they they go to a doctor or... sometimes people are involuntarily committed and don't have a choice... but if they understood the risk would it make any difference? AS: It's not a risk - it's going to do some damage. Maybe not so much in some cases but where it does the patient either doesn't live to tell the tale or if they do no one believes them. They're crazy after all. But the information is there but it's just side effects. You know how all those drugs they advertise and at the end they read the side effects real fast? JM: Yeah, they should be used-car salesmen. AS: I'd trust most used car salesmen more. Not kidding. Anyway that's my physical condition these days... but we left me still in the hospital, right? JM: Right, you were tied to the bed and they were apparently still medicating you. AS: Yeah, Sam and Charly were trying to find another place for me... closer to home but more importantly out of there. They were pretty sure something was bad wrong there. JM: I would hope so. AS: They're pretty sharp - all of kids are. But only being in there - I believe they only had an hour or half hour - and couldn't find the doctor half the time... but when they saw the drugs... there's a daily report and I used those but they figured something was pretty bad wrong. So they tried to get me out. |
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JM: What happened with that? AS: I remember a couple of times someone came in, from another place. Rehab facilities but they just came into the room and looked at me for a few minutes and left and talked to the hospital people some. Later I found out... and probably it was lucky for me... why neither of them would take me. JM: Why was that? AS: They were told I had behavioral problems, violent. Those types of places don't take mental cases and they were told that I was one. JM: But it worked out better that way. AS: Yeah, they were pretty worried and they told the doctor they were taking me out. I don't know how that went - apparently he didn't refuse or try to stop it by having me committed - he would have lost a revenue source either way... but they told him to get me out of bed and on my feet and to do it pretty quick. JM: How quickly did they get it done?
AS: Whether they were stalling of just incompetent about three weeks. A young guy
came in one day, apparently from outside. He had on tan scrubs, clean and matching
parts and a name tag. I don't believe I ever saw a name tag on anyone else. He had
a big guy with him, had a long strap around his waist he could put around a patient
hold him up.
JM: You hadn't had any physical therapy? AS: Sam said they tried a couple of times and the doctor feared for the safety of his staff so he just left me tied up and drugged. JM: Why am I not surprised? How about lunch? AS: Sounds good.
JM: How did your therapy go?
AS: The second day not much better. I stood up for a while a couple of
times and that was it. Sam came in later and I told her I didn't think
I would ever be able to walk again. He didn't come back the next day
and I believe it was a Friday - I was never sure what day it was in
there - and when he came back a couple of more times I was able to take
a few steps, sit down, get up, rinse and repeat. Finally I was able to
walk to the door of the room.
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JM: Eventually they decided you were ready to leave?
AS: Yeah, a few more days. I was on the second floor and was able to
get to the elevator and downstairs from there to the lobby and Sam had
a car waiting. She had a new Ford Explorer... those are bigger or
seem that way to one I had once... and I needed help getting in.
JM: Yeah, you don't usually expect that. How was being out?
AS: Being clean was probably... I don't want to think about how filthy that
place was and I was... anyway a long shower and clean clothes and bed. I
slept for fifteen, maybe twenty hours.
JM: Seroquel, you said something... how you suspected it made you sluggish. AS: Yeah, it's an antipsychotic like several of the others. It has a reputation - unofficial of course - for doing some pretty ugly stuff to you. Survivors tell some stuff... it's for schizophrenia and... I think bipolar and some other stuff. I still had the stuff for a while and threw it out with the others. Never did take any of it. JM: What were the others for? AS: Various stuff they figured I had - diabetes, blood pressure, maybe some antibiotics and stuff. Sam and Charly had a list of things to check every day and as each... everything but the blood pressure which I've had for a long time... was eliminated I stopped taking the med for that one. JM: How did you feel, say after ten days?
AS: Considering where I came from pretty good. Just not having the stress... I was once in the hospital
with flu and pneumonia.... I almost died that time too but that's another story... and I was all right in
about three days but they kept for six and it was a pretty decent hospital but the best ones can drive you
nuts... I'd been so miserable for three months... anyway at ten days I had gotten up and walked outside.
I guess it was about that time.
JM: Did you feel better about your future? |
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AS: Much better. I had my computer brought in and set it up in the bedroom
and was either in bed or in a recliner where the computer was, on one of
those tables you can roll over the chair. I asked Sam to bring me a pair
of weights, little two-pound ones. They had pink rubber covers. Occasionally
I would stop working and lift the weights.
JM: Something that happened to it in the hospital? AS: Yeah, how they had me tied up... OK, they got things they use for people that don't need to move around, like me pulling things, everybody does that. So they have a thing they can stretch across the bed, things to attach your legs and arms so you don't move them. Or these mittens, so you can't use your fingers to scratch, stuff like that. JM: Right. AS: They had me tied with wire. Grey twisted like old clothesline before they started putting plastic over it. Loops of that around my wrists and ankles, strips of sheets or something tied to the bed rails. JM: I thought they used regular restraints, padded cuffs and all. AS: Nope, I have one and if I could ever get anyone to pay attention I'd show it to them. JM: How did you manage that? AS: In one of my more lucid periods one day they took them off my hands. This was after I had gotten loose a couple of times and you'd think they would be more careful but I got the right one loose and put it under me. Nurse comes back and can't find it. Pokes around in the bed but doesn't try to move me, I got my eyes closed and mumble and moan... she goes away probably figuring get it later. Puts on a new one. Sam was coming that day and when she did I gave it to her and told her to hold on to it. JM: Quite the performance. I suspect you're mentally stronger than most people. Physically too. AS: I do have a resistance to drugs of all kinds. Over-the-counter cold meds and stuff don't work more than a few times before I have to take more than the recommended dose to get any results. I'd rather deal with the pain - especially now - that take risks. Probably I resisted the other drugs the same way. JM: What happened with your shoulder? AS: Oh yeah, Sam comes in one day and I'm tied to the be as usual and my left arm was twisted so I was making pain noises... she got a nurse and asked what was going on. Nurse says well, we can't keep a diaper on him (I was bareass naked by the way) and what that had to do with it... and she finally moved my arm. Probably that psycho guy did it. Anyway my left arm was fuck... sorry for a good while and still feels weak sometimes. |
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JM: They had you tied to the bed naked? And a diaper.... sorry, are you all right? AS: Yeah.... yeah, I'm good. The drugs cause bowel incontinence. I had it for months after I got out. That worried me as much as not knowing if I would be able to drive or other things. Having to wear those things for the rest of my life. JM: That would be awful. When did you begin to drive again? AS: I would guess probably two months before I tried it. We had to go up to Paragould and get my vehicles. I had two trucks and a car. A Ford Ranger that was my daily driver and a Dodge Dakota that I didn't drive as much but used for towing. And a sweet little '99 Pontiac Grand Am - 2-door V6 and super clean but the engine seemed flaky and I got a good deal. Had a new engine put in and a few little things fixed. That was about two or three months before... JM: That's pretty awful. AS: Yeah, you... screw up someone's life never thinking or caring about what they were in the middle of doing or planning to do. I bought a place there on the edge of town, a little over five acres. Had three old houses on it and I paid about 2K apiece to have two of them demolished and and dropped about 10K into working on the place. I had right at 50K in it and the having to dump it fast since it was eighty miles away got barely half that back. JM: Ouch. AS: Yeah. Anyway we went up and the Ranger was in the parking lot with a flat. One of the guys in the office inflated it and I went in and visited for a while and we went over to my place and got the Dakota and Grand Am and drove back. Later I sold the Grand Am for about what I paid before all the money I put in it. JM: You said you place there was rented? AS: Yeah, the owner is pretty cool and I'd lived there for quite a while and the rent not being paid for a month or so before they got in touch with him and took care of it didn't bother him. He had his property manager keep an eye on until I came back. JM: You had a lot of stuff in there? AS: Yeah, I lived there through the week, came down here on weekends. If anyone had known what was i there.... guns, money, some high-dollar stuff. It took a week or close to it to move - several of the youngsters, Sam's grandkids, brought a big trailer almost as big as a moving van but it took three days to load it all but we got it all done. JM: You weren't driving yet? AS: I was by that time. That took a while. JM: How was getting to drive again? Difficult?
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AS: Not as much as I feared. There are some roads on Sam's place... it's a quarter mile square - so I had a place to practice. It was probably a couple of weeks before I tried driving on the highway. JM: How is it now? AS: Not bad. I have trouble turning my head left very far... not sure what that's about... so changing lanes is something I avoid. It's a little inconvenient driving out of the way so I don't have to do that but otherwise not too bad. I don't drive in big cities now - Jonesboro is about as much as I want to deal with. JM: (laughs) Jonesboro can be a little crazy sometimes. AS: Yeah, people running red lights is the thing that scares me most. Those big intersections with two turn lanes it takes so long to get through even if the light was just yellow it'll be red while you're in it. JM: Yeah, that annoys and sometimes scares me. So you were back to something near normal. Was that when you started looking into what had happened to you? AS: Yeah, if I hadn't had the records it would have been harder, maybe not possible. I told you that Charly got my records but I hadn't looked at them. She had and had already found where it showed the drugs and I googled them for starters. I took a while to get a picture of it but I figured that with me being crippled probably for life and all the money I lost I should sue them. JM: I already know how that ended up but can you take me through it? AS: In Arkansas you have two years to sue for malpractice. As I learned along the way what they did was worse but generally malpractice is about the only way to go. The Medical Industry some year ago got it set to two years in Arkansas - don't think they wouldn't make it two days if they could get away with it - and I'd already used up a half or more. So I put together the complaint and presented it to a couple of lawyers - a couple of the big slip-and-fall outfits in Memphis. JM: The usual?
AS: Idunno, Morgan and Morgan wasn't one although I did send them the info and talked to them later. No point unless you
can tell them on the phone in ten minutes or less you got something close to a dead-bang case. Couple of the big
Memphis ones and the first one I copied the whole six or seven inches of records and FedExed them over. Couple of days
later and got a phone call, no dice. Not that you don't have a case, the guy says, but it's not something we feel like we
can handle.
JM: Makes sense. AS: Yeah, a lawyer finds himself in an ambulance going the hospital don't want to have sued that hospital. |
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JM: I guess that two years... year and a half... went by fast. AS: Yeah, a couple of months before it ran out I talked to a guy in Little Rock but it was so close he wasn't gonna do it even if I had it all ready. It probably didn't make any difference but having St. Bernards and NEA Baptist mentioned - I didn't care about them - but I guess it gave him a good excuse. And that was that. JM: It doesn't fit most ambulance-chasers business plan. AS: A family friend is a lawyer out in Oklahoma - my late Aunt Barbara... you don't know much of my family... her second husband's son. He looked at it and said I was 'singularly unlucky'. JM: An Oklahoma lawyer said 'singularly unlucky?' AS: (laughs) He's fancy educated and all, classical music and classic books and house full of antiques, cool guy. Anyway he said mostly is like with Morgan and Morgan and the other big ones - got somebody dead or seriously maimed and plenty of proof you got a chance. I don't have any missing limbs and not visibly crippled. He said you got a pretty high school cheerleader in a car that gets rear-ended and left a paraplegic and her quarterback boyfriend dead for extra points you got a chance if the guy has money or good insurance. You're not a pretty cheerleader. JM: And now the hospital is closed and good luck holding anyone accountable. One might think that was planned. AS: I don't doubt it. They actually had several lawsuits - some labor law violations and some kind of contract deal, and at least two wrongful death cases. Those go away and so does all the evidence. And the hospital is being occupied by a child mental health operation. JM: That's scary. AS: I know you said you wanted to talk about my experience trying to expose this... let me tell you something about the news media. When that outfit made their announcement they about all regurgitated the press release. How they're gonna make it a 70-bed adolescent psychiatric care thing. Right now it's a 44-bed hospital that was cramped already - it's at least fifty years old and held together with glue and duck tape. They would have to double the size and the construction of a decent facility would take over a year and ten million would be a low estimate. It's about to open in less than a year and zero construction. What that suggests to me that any parent that lets their kid be sent there... JM: Should reconsider? AS: What do they have to consider with? What they've been told by people they think they can trust, never mind how many times they've shown they shouldn't be trusted. Kid has problems at school and they say you should take Aiden or Jaden or Brayden to a child shrink and the child shrink says they should see a doctor at this nice hospital here. Kid goes in and gets chemicals added and maybe doesn't shoot a bunch of people one fine day.
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JM: I've read some of that, about the school shooters who were medicated, others as well... workplace killings, a lot of patients in hospitals by people under treatment for mental problems. Jonesboro had one once, hardly something you would expect, especially twenty years ago. AS: Yeah, strangely I don't know if either of those boys were medicated. I got the impression that one was mentally broken in some way and maybe the other as well but haven't been able to find anything about psychiatric treatment. They're among the few that aren't though - one of the guys in Colorado had just a bit but most in recent times have been heavily medicated. It may be a few years but it won't surprise me if it happens here. But I seem to have gotten off track. JM: I was... you said that at the time you contacted several news media organizations. What was the response?
AS: None. I believe one little newspaper somewhere replied and it didn't look much of a lead.
All the newspapers and television folks ignored me, including the ones in Memphis and Little Rock.
The few little ones around here that claim to do news, guys throw up a Wordpress site and get the police reports
and something off of a feed and put up maybe five or six pieces and probably remove one and add another every day.
Their ad revenue is fixed - it doesn't depend on clicks. If it was they'd be out of business in no time.
JM: And no one wants to take a chance, even if the payoff is big. AS: Like exposing a hospital that killed a few dozen patients in a short time? JM: One would think.... I'd like to get to that next. If even the television and newspapers won't touch it there seems to be no way... AS: I have a couple of ideas but if this gets exposed it won't that way. Time was a good-looking young woman could get a journalism degree and get a job with a TV station. Don't screw up really bad and you can move up, self-promotion, sticking a knife in potential competition... figuratively. If you do everything right and get a job in a bigger market - Kansas City or Memphis or even St.Louis. One day you might, just might get the call. JM: I had to laugh.... glad you clarified the knife bit. What's the call? AS: A minor league player gets called up to the majors, only in this case it's ABC, CBS, CNN or whatever. JM: I see. There are always only a few openings and someone at a Jonesboro station... AS: Or even Memphis or Little Rock. Forget it. |
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JM: What do you do then? AS: I guess most just ride it out to retirement... always and increasingly now with the risk of your employer being sold and you downsized or just going under. The one I'm thinking about was a hot blonde back in the day, not super hot but cleaned up good, not especially nice from what I heard even back then... not only never got the call but didn't even get another step up. So here we are forty years later and she's still there, probably a pretty good paycheck but in Jonesboro nothing to brag about, nothing like another step up might have given her, getting old and fat and fatter and no longer hot. Go on and read the news and do the ribbon-cutting things and and all, might even be happy for all I know but police reports are public so... JM: No.... AS: Bitterness? No, and I can see you might think that. While I'm am an exception my net worth is probably twice hers or likely much more, zero debt and everything I got I earned, a lot of it twice because of people doing it the easy way and I paid. And I'm happy as a clam even with what I know and what I have to try to do. No, they can have it and if they can live with what they are it's no skin off my whatever. JM: Doesn't getting the call often depend on being in the right place at the right time? Some big thing that gets national attention? AS: Most of the time I suspect. Westside was the biggest thing to happen here in a long time and might have been a chance for someone in that position. I don't know if she... JM: I know that smile. AS: Tell you later. You're not writing the next Peyton Place, are you? JM: No, anyway we need to get back to wherever we were. No way to expose them outside of handing out flyers on the street and what good would that do? AS: Get me arrested probably. Just a crazy guy with conspiracy theories. (laughs) I could pay the panhandlers a few bucks to do it. JM: If anyone would listen could you convince them that people died there because of.... whatever it was? Incompetence... greed... what more can you do. How do... what did you say.... a hundred and fifty people die in a hospital, a small hospital, in such a short time and no one notices? AS: Why would they notice? JM: Why wouldn't they? AS: Do you know how many people died at St. Bernards or NEA Baptist last year? JM: No idea. Is there a way to find out? AS: Try asking Google. No idea. Who else do you ask? There's no master list in Arkansas. JM: How did you find out? |
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AS: Obituaries. JM: That's it? AS: That's why my list is almost certainly incomplete, but most funeral notices indicate the place of death. Aunt Lucy died November 21, 20xx at Arkansas Continued Care Hospital. Usually the "in Jonesboro" is included. I googled a lot. JM: You have a hundred fifty five or people who died there and possibly, probably there were more. In seven years by the way, that's what... about twenty-something per year. AS: In a 44-bed hospital that wasn't a hospital at all - it was located in an old hospital plant but had none of the usual hospital functions - emergency room, surgery or ICU, nothing but beds with nurses checking temperature and blood pressure and administering medication. The statistical annual death rate should be one or less - most likely yes. JM: And you can't... what would happen if that information were in the right hands? AS: What are the right hands? If some news outfit with a big audience had it and was willing to do something it might but there's no way to be certain. The proper authority to investigate it would be the Attorney General, possibly the state police but that would be for some kind of homicide. The AG maybe for fraud as well. JM: Have you contacted them? AS: Just did, a few days ago. The governor too. Got polite letters telling me it wasn't in their bailiwick. The AG's letter-opener thought I wanted them to sue someone, I wrote back and explained it but haven't heard anything. Finally got to the governor's constituent service or whatever person and sent another letter but still nothing there. Wrote to the state police and Jonesboro locals and got an acknowledgement and that was it. JM: Is there anything else you can do? AS: I wrote to the state medical board about the doctor. The only thing they can do is punish him, maybe pull his license. Gave them the package... there... and they wrote me back and told me they didn't feel that his actions rose to the level of egregiousness or whatever and thank you for writing. It was what I expected and I wrote them another telling them that the doctor - he wrote a rebuttal letter and I stopped counting lies on the first page - was a liar and some other stuff and don't bother replying but they did anyway so now I got two letters that demonstrate they're either stupid or crooked or both but that's about it. JM: So if the Attorney General doesn't do anything he gets away with it. AS: Pretty much. I have one or two little tricks remaining but... JM: Anything I should know? AS: Not just now. You want to get on to the other stuff? |
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JM: Yeah, you had something here... you said it wasn't just about the doctor. AS: Yeah, Copeland. I looked into him and not having the access - I might have hired an investigator but dunno how much that would have helped - and he's fairly young. It looks like he finished medical school in 2015. It was 2021 when I had the bad luck to encounter him so six years a doctor. Residency three years for his type of doctor brings us to 2018. 2018 was about the time that the old hospital was reopened as Arkansas Continued Care Hospital. Copeland was at NEA Baptist from 2018 to 2021. Now NEA Baptist is about the best hospital around but he left in 2021. JM: Where did he go after that? AS: You'll find this interesting.... a hospice in Jonesboro. A hospice at the same location as guess what? JM: OK I know but the same as Arkansas Continued Care. AS: Right, you knew that. A lot of people who worked there have scrubbed their resumes but I have copies. He went to work for another part of the same company, same location. A home health company. I guess going from watching people to die to presumably helping keep them alive is something. He says he was the Medical Director there. JM: OK, got it. AS: You already know this but he went to work for Arkansas Continued Care in July of 2021 according to his resume but he was there when I was in January of 2021 so it doesn't add up. Maybe he made a mistake - that's from his LinkedIn profile - but whatever. He works for a hospice and a health care company in the same building as Arkansas Continued Care and then Chief Medical Officer at Arkansas Continued Care in... well now it says 2020. That would fit. JM: Chief Medical Officer? Sounds important. AS: So does LTACH. Long Term Acute Care Hospital. No such f... no such thing. If you're acute long term you're probably gonna be dead or a vegetable at best. The correct term is long term care hospital, as defined in the law. So I guess calling the only doctor in the place the Chief Medical Officer or whatever is accurate. JM: Sounds good to me. AS: When they were in business they put up one of those quickie websites and had a page with all the people. Important people anyway. High-dollar photo shoot - been in a couple of those - and nice pics and titles chief this and director of that. Unfortunately I started my archive after the nurse that signed off on me being crazy so no other place would take me but she's had so many jobs she probably wasn't there long. JM: So Dr. Copeland had about two years in a good hospital... why did he leave? AS: Beats me but you don't leave the best hospital in the area and go to work at a hospice for some noble cause. Not in his case anyway. JM: Yeah, usually you're going up unless... |
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AS: Yeah, but finding out why is another matter and it doesn't really matter in this case. I know what he did at that job. Almost killed me and I'm pretty sure he killed a few. At least a few. JM: But how do you prove it? AS: I guess you don't if no one will pay attention to you. Did I tell you... there was this woman who contacted me right after I put the site up. Her son had died - he was twenty-nine or thirty - we talked some. She worked for a doctor some distance away, office manager or something. Her kid was in there and she went to see about him and he acted they way I did - acting crazy and they had him tied up and she objected to the way they were treating him and they discharged him. The next day he had to go to the emergency room.... a different hospital as ACCH didn't have an emergency room or any ability to treat emergency patients. He had blood clots in his lungs and... too late to save him. JM: And no one did anything. AS: She tried to get a lawyer to sue them, had the same problem I did. Unless it's a dead bang case.... JM: Or a pretty high school girl. AS: Right. JM: So they get away with it. AS: Yeah, maybe if the AG investigated he could get enough information to make a case. The hospital was managed by a company in Texas - that would make an interstate matter and the feds could investigate but... anyway maybe round up the former employees and interrogate them. A grand jury might get something. But they covered their tracks pretty well. JM: The company in Texas? AS: Yeah, if the feds were on it they could get something done. They managed about a half dozen, maybe seven or eight in several states and they all had the same lousy reputation. One was the subject of an article in... lessee... it was The Nation magazine. It's a lefty rag so there's that but they did an article on one of them, out in New Mexico. It was pretty long and detailed but probably didn't get to the root of the problem. Apparently they had the good sense to end the arrangement as did some others and one went out of business. Anyway they might have some records or people to interrogate but that's not likely to happen. JM: OK, I know about the doctor. Who was the CEO you mentioned? AS: Guy named James Cox. JM: Just James Cox? That's a pretty common name. |
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AS: Tell me. I've never been able got find a middle name or initial. But if he's around he wouldn't be hard to find. One of his previous employers that's still in business. He scrubbed his resume too, Arkansas Continued Care and Ascent Children's were changed to something else. JM: Tell me about that. AS: Way back before this there was a company in Jonesboro called Ascent Children's Health Services. Apparently it was funded mostly by Medicaid. For children and adolescents with behavioral problems. Sound familiar? JM: The new Methodist thing. AS: Yep. They had several... five or six or so... places in mostly northeast Arkansas. They were based in Jonesboro. The CEO was a guy named Dan Sullivan and the COO was a guy named James Cox. JM: The same one. AS: Yep. Know who Sullivan is? JM: A politician from Jonesboro. AS: Right. JM: I read that, it was awful. AS: Yeah, awful and then some. Sullivan is a state senator now but back then was a representative in the Arkansas legislature. It was while he was to quote news reports "aggressively advocating for less regulation of the child care industry in Arkansas." It was about that time that some of his low-budget employees left a five year old boy strapped in a van at the facility in West Memphis. For eight hours. JM: Yeah, that was too awful to read more than once but I managed to. You have quite a file on it. AS: Yeah, that kid... I read some of a police report... was left in a van and couldn't unfasten the restraints. He had tried, got arm free and his shirt partly off. I believe the temperature of the seat was something 141 degrees when they opened the van. I learned about it after my experience - being tied to a bed and unable to move - and don't want to think about the.... terror and despair that kid felt... hoping someone would come but they never did. JM: There were three of four of the workers indicted for manslaughter. What happened to them? AS: I'm still trying to find out. This stuff vanishes once there's some new news, maybe something when there's a trial but I'll probably have to pay someone to research it. I'd like to know just to close the books... anyway these four were typical low-wage daycare workers... the company revenue was about all Medicaid and they cheaper they could operate the more profit. Hence Sullivan trying to get the standards even lower than they already were. He and Cox should have gone to prison for a long time and there's not even room for argument with any sane person. Anyway they closed the place right away since there was a big lawsuit. JM: Like the hospital. AS: Yep. You'll like this.... Sullivan offered to pay for the boy's funeral. |
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JM: You're.... serious? AS: Yep. After it was shut down Cox went to work for some place in Batesville and a couple of years later shows up as CEO at Arkansas Continued Care. That's where he was when I had my adventure. JM: Any idea where he is now? AS: No, just by name it's a needle in a haystack and I haven't been able to find anything. I checked to see if he was the CEO of the new Methodist place but apparently a nurse that worked at Arkansas Continued Care is in charge there. Definitely scary. JM: A nurse and now in charge of the place? AS: Yeah, maybe they don't need a CEO. By the way it's an 'acute' care place. Whatever, I'm done with that. JM: Acute. Got it. What's next? AS: I'm a little tired of the whole thing and people in general. There's a small group - mostly family - that I care about. Whatever happens there no matter how bad will never make a difference. Kids dying has about the same news cycle as the latest drug bust or Medicaid fraud (a favorite of the Arkansas AG) or some county judge or other official embezzles or whatever. The last thing I'm doing will probably sending that letter to some people - hospitals and some news outfits. JM: If the AG was smart enough to unravel this it would be bigger and a dozen drug or fraud busts. He probably wants to be governor next... AS: Yeah, but he's like most. Take the easy way, the sure thing. This would require time and work, like lawyers won't sue if the risk/reward doesn't math. He'll take the small stuff the way lawyers want cases so solid they have a good chance at getting a settlement without going to trial. JM: Or a journalist could make it big. Get the call. AS: Yeah but they take the safe way - got a job and don't have to work much, get to associate with people with real money and are important. Besides they aren't that smart or they would do it already. And the one that old and... no, I'll do this one last project and let it go. There's nothing on my conscience and it's taken four years of my life. A couple of places in the Bible is says of perennially bad people that God gave them over to the sinful desires in their hearts. I take that to mean that you get opportunities to clean up your act or you suffer the consequences. I'm giving over most of the world. JM: I hope it will... accomplish something. It's actually going to be harder to blow off than anything you've done - you have proof in black and white and if enough people see it maybe it will. How are you now compared to three years ago - mentally and physically? AS: I hope so too but those dozens who died - their family and friends - are unlikely to ever see justice. And if they know what happened and nothing can be done it seems somehow worse. I got better for a while - it was hard not to improve from where I was. Probably for about a year but I haven't improved much. I'm like... if someone went into a big data center and started pulling and cutting cables, plugging |
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some into the wrong places or leaving others disconnected, peeling
the insulation off wires or breaking connectors so they won't stay... just a few can totally f...
can make parts of it unusable and other parts marginally functional. Your brain-body interface has
eighty something billion circuits and... that's the reason for the side effects - and the fact that
all people are different - so while my brain works perfectly it can't talk to the body reliably.
So I'm shaky all the time, can't write or handle small tools very well, have to walk with a cane and
still fall. Random muscle spasms... cramps... here and there. Just have to wait for them to go
away.
JM: I read somewhere that the Russians - after the wholesale slaughter of the Stalin era - put troublesome people into mental institutions instead of killing them. If you kill a person or put him in prison it looks bad but if he's allegedly crazy he's less credible at least officially. I suppose that children who get sent to shrinks who's livelihood depends on finding mentally ill children who need treatment don't have much of a chance either. AS: Yeah, it's kind of hard to fight back when you're officially crazy - luckily I was never diagnosed with anything but I suppose if you want a person put away you can find a shrink to sign off on it. Feel sorry for the kids especially - their parents are conditioned to trust "medical professionals". All the trans stuff should have showed how far wrong that can go. JM: Yeah. I suppose we're at some kind of stopping point, unless you have something else... anything I missed. AS: No, probably a good time to take a break. JM: How about getting together next week? I'd like to talk to you about some of your other books. AS: That's good. Middle the week is probably best. JM: Cool, say hello to you your folks for me. You have a really wonderful family. AS: Yeah. I wouldn't have gotten through this without them. Catch you later. |
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I described the use of helpless patients to extract large sums of money from insurance companies (and Medicare as many patients are elderly) as a form of human trafficking. There is another insidious aspect, and more evil. That is the infliction of psychotropic drugs on people without regard for the damage they do even if - especially if - they are used on people who have some mental instability. My experience is that under the influence of these drugs a person may behave in a seemingly normal manner without being at all aware of their actions. I was told that during I was often awake and talking with visitors and hospital staff, eating and drinking and talking about a program on the television. I have no memory whatsoever of any of it. I used to wonder about the numerous 'mass shootings' that occur so often, particularly the ones by school-aged children. I long suspected a link to the drugs. In fact I have examined dozens of them and have found only a couple in which the perpetrators were not using prescribed psychotropic medications, in almost every case multiple drugs simultaneously. I also have observed that representatives of the Medical Industry vigorously deny a connection. Of course they do. Recently a young nurse killed her three young children and then jumped out a second-floor window of her house, nearly killing and permanently crippling herself. She had never before given any indication of aberrant behavior or mental illness, because there had not been any. She trusted the Medical Industry and took drugs prescribed by a doctor who was presumed to be competent to diagnose and treat her. Her lawyer described the drug cocktail she was using, it contained all of the ones used on me and several others. Given the well-documented circumstances I have no doubt at all that she was completely unaware of her actions. The Medical Industry has much to answer for as do those who cover up the crimes and profit from them. Whether they pay up in this life or the next may not matter in the end but for the victims it seems so. |