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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 18:02:28
In my PL (pre-lithium) days, on 3 occasions I was carted off by police to the state psychiatric hospital in an acute manic state with psychotic features. After reading the following story, it is evident to me now that the police who tackled me and secured me in leathers made a choice that may have saved my life:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi-0608270351aug27,1,4299974.story
In case you can't open the link without membership I printed the story below:
TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE
She begged for help; guards said, `Shut up'
How police released bipolar woman to a night of horror
By David Heinzmann
Tribune staff reporterAugust 27, 2006
Hour after hour, Christina Eilman threw herself at the bars of her cell at a South Side police lockup, shrieking threats one moment and begging for help the next, pleading that she was ill.
Even the women in adjoining cells, many who were used to the chaos of lockup, were alarmed at Eilman's unremitting distress. Many of them joined in, calling out to guards on Eilman's behalf.
"I heard that girl screaming for her life, `Take me to the hospital. Call my parents,'" Tamalika Harris, 26, said in a recent interview with the Tribune. "The way she was screaming and kicking on the bars, I knew something was wrong."
A woman in a nearby cell recalled the response of police officers: "Shut up."
In California, Eilman's mother was begging for help too, calling Chicago police a dozen times through the night and the following day. How could she rescue her 21-year-old daughter, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was stranded in an unfamiliar city and had been arrested after a disturbance at the airport?
Time after time, she says, police told her to call back later.
The last time Kathy Paine called on May 8, police floored her with unexpected news: Eilman had been released, walking alone out the front door of the station at 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue, into one of Chicago's highest-crime neighborhoods.
Three hours later, Eilman plummeted from a seventh-floor window of a nearby public housing high-rise, wearing only underwear--a shock that has raised troubling questions within the Chicago Police Department about whether officers' actions led a vulnerable woman to disaster.
A gang member is awaiting trial on charges that he abducted and raped her, but whether Eilman fell, jumped or was pushed remains a mystery.
To the amazement of those who found her crushed body, she survived. But she will never fully recover from the damage to her body and brain, her doctor said.
Through interviews with three women who were locked up with Eilman, and with Eilman's parents, the Tribune has pieced together a more complete picture of the agonizing hours leading to Eilman's fall and the ordeal that continues for her family.
It is the first time eyewitnesses have spoken publicly about what went on during Eilman's time in police custody, and their stories are remarkably consistent--she continuously cried out for help, sometimes hysterically, and police repeatedly rebuffed her.
Attempting to settle lawsuit
More than four months after the fall, the Chicago Police Department is expected to soon conclude an internal investigation of officer conduct during the 29 hours Eilman was in custody. Meanwhile, city lawyers are quietly trying to settle the $100 million lawsuit Rick and Kathy Paine filed on their daughter's behalf, a potentially massive payout facing taxpayers.
But the suburban Sacramento couple's attention and energy is focused on the helpless woman, now withered to the size of a thin child, who lies flat on a bed in the brain-injury unit of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Eilman, once an athletic, vivacious student at the University of California-Los Angeles, now suffers through daily pain and confusion. She lives in a sort of twilight of consciousness, able to make only the most rudimentary responses, enduring frustrating therapies she can hardly comprehend.
She makes eye contact, but fleetingly. Some days she speaks a few words and appears dreamy, almost contented. Other days she writhes and moans as the pain from her injuries continues to ravage her body.
Her parents' expectations for improvement are modest.
"We hope that she'll be able to feed herself, and maybe go to the bathroom," Rick Paine said.
The Paines have not spoken publicly about their family's tragedy until now. They said they agreed to an interview with the Tribune because they hope the publicity will pressure the Police Department to make substantive changes in the way officers deal with people who might be mentally ill.
Police do have protocols for handling people who show certain symptoms of mental illness, but the Tribune reported in May that officers failed to follow those guidelines in Eilman's case.
"Our daughter was incredibly tortured because of their disregard," Kathy Paine said, anguish lying heavily on her face. "I mean, I don't sleep at night ... I can't get that vision out of my head of my daughter plummeting seven stories. How does one live with that?"
Police declined to comment on the specifics of the case while the investigation and lawsuit proceed.
"Litigious matters can be complicated," said Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the department. "We wish her continued progress in her recovery."
The harrowing days since the first weekend of May have an added layer of poignancy because the Paines had believed their daughter was emerging from a long, dark season, showing improvement after a struggle with mental illness.
The first sign of her bipolar disorder came in February 2005. Driving along the California coast south of Monterey, she lost control of her car and struck a utility pole, her mother said, though she was able to walk away from the wreck.
A friend called her parents the next day, saying Christina was behaving erratically. When they arrived to take her home, they were shocked.
"She was very different. Very irate. Aggressive. Loud. Out of control," Rick Paine said. "We were going to pick her up and take her home, but we realized this isn't going to work. She was just incredibly upset. Yelling, screaming, running around the street. So we called 911."
Christina spent 37 days in a psychiatric hospital, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, an illness that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy and ability to function. Upon her release, she was prescribed medication, but she said she didn't like the way the pills made her feel and stopped taking them after a few days, her mother said.
Her parents worried, but she seemed stable. Christina insisted the accident was the result of a host of passing problems--not enough sleep, a romantic breakup, not eating right--and that now she felt healthy.
As time went on, and Christina moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at UCLA, her parents grew more confident that their daughter was better.
But after one semester Eilman was faltering. She told her parents she was taking fewer classes so she could work more hours at her job in a health club, but in truth, she had dropped out altogether.
And while the Paines thought she sounded normal in their phone conversations, her friends in Los Angeles have told the Tribune that she began behaving strangely, becoming distant and erratic, spending time with people they did not know.
Situation becomes a crisis
The Paines said they never found out who brought their daughter to Chicago, or how she ended up alone. At first, those questions loomed large. But quickly, they were overshadowed by a situation that spiraled from surprise into crisis.
At about 11:30 p.m. Chicago time on Saturday, May 6, a distraught Eilman called her parents from a rental car counter at Midway Airport and said she was stranded.
Rick Paine asked his daughter to put a rental-car clerk on the phone, and the man gave him enough information to guide his daughter toward a hotel shuttle. Through a series of phone calls and faxes, he arranged a room for her at the Holiday Inn Express in Bedford Park, near the airport.
A hotel clerk helped Christina to her room, and when she was in for the night at about 2a.m., Rick Paine logged onto Southwest Airlines' Web site and bought her a ticket for a 5:15 p.m. Sunday flight from Chicago to Burbank, Calif.
In the morning, he talked to her on the phone several times.
She said, `I feel really good. I got a good night's sleep,' and she sounded really calm versus the way she was the night before," he said.
Paine, who manages computer networks for a health-care company, also moonlights Sundays at a motorcycle dealership. He left for work confident his daughter was headed back to Midway on a hotel shuttle in a better frame of mind and would soon be back home.
At about 4 p.m. Chicago time, a police officer in the Chicago Lawn District station, which covers Midway, left messages on both Paines' cell phones, asking them to call as soon as possible. Eilman had been arrested for creating a disturbance.
According to the Paines' attorney, Jeff Singer, the voice-mail messages, which have been preserved, said: "We have your daughter in custody. We're having difficulty understanding her. We don't know what we have here. We would like to get her on an airplane."
Rick Paine called back immediately.
He said he spoke to a female officer, who asked, "`Does your daughter have behavioral issues?' I told her that we think she's bipolar, and she was institutionalized for it last year," Rick Paine said. The officer "was very supportive. She seemed like she was getting what I was saying."
Rick Paine asked whether it was possible for the police to help Christina board her flight. The officer said she would have to check and call back, he said.
But Paine missed the call back and about 10 minutes passed before he noticed the voice mail and called Chicago.
That is when a vexing situation turned truly frightening for the Paines.
Rick Paine spoke to a different officer this time, who told him the first officer had left for the day and Eilman was on her way to the women's holding facility at the Wentworth District, several miles from the airport. It is not known what, if anything, the first officer told colleagues before leaving.
At this point, Kathy Paine took over calling the police. Redirected to the Wentworth District, the tone of her conversations with police changed dramatically, she said.
"I asked what do I need to do, and she said she was going to be fingerprinted, so call back in a couple of hours. That basically became the same line through the whole next day: `Check back in a couple of hours. We're waiting for her fingerprints to clear.'"
Confusing, frightening world
As the Paines hit a brick wall in getting information about their daughter, Eilman was entering a confusing and frightening world in the holding cells of the Wentworth District.
The Tribune has identified more than a dozen women who were being held in cells along the same corridor during Eilman's stay there and was able to speak with four of them. One said she remembered Eilman but declined to provide details.
Three more, unknown to one another, described a scene in which Eilman--surrounded by women in custody for drugs, prostitution, weapons and domestic violence--had lost control. All three say Eilman's erratic behavior was met with hostility from two female officers who ran the lockup.
Senora Baker was placed in a cell at about 9 p.m. Sunday. She said Eilman wailed through the night.
"She sounded like she was disturbed and upset and crying," said Baker, 43, who was in custody on a drug possession charge.
When Eilman cried that she would hurt herself and throw her own blood on the walls, the guards yelled a profanity back at her, Baker said. "The guards were talking crazy to her."
The next morning, two more prisoners entered and heard Eilman crying out.
Eilman "kept saying she was sick or something. [The guards] were real mean down there, anyway. She kept telling them she was sick, and they were just saying, `Shut up,'" said Kimberly Warren, 41, who had been arrested for domestic battery after arguing with her boyfriend.
"She was yelling all the time. I thought maybe she was joking, but I'd never been in jail before," Warren said. "But everyone else--people who had been to jail before--kept saying, `Why don't you check on her? There's something wrong with her.'"
Tamalika Harris, also in for domestic battery, recalled the scene vividly. Interviewed in her front yard, she pounded violently on the wrought iron fence to demonstrate the sound of Eilman's outbursts.
Harris recalled the police shouting back, "Ain't nothing wrong with you!"
Monday afternoon in California, Kathy Paine was growing increasingly frustrated. She was still focused on getting Christina on a flight to California, but a full day after the arrest, police still would not give her information about when Christina might be released.
Then came the news that put a knot in her gut.
"The very last time I called, it was like 6 o'clock [in California], and they said, `We released Christina about an hour ago,'" Kathy Paine said, breaking down in tears. "That whole evening I had some horrible visions. I pictured her getting kidnapped, raped, beaten to death. I don't know why. I knew it was nighttime. I knew her cell phone was dead. ... I was terrified, you know. I was up half the night, just scared to death.
"And what happened was way worse than anything I imagined."
The Paines' doorbell rang at 2:30 a.m.
"I told [Rick], the police are here. I just knew it," Kathy Paine said. She remembers exactly what the Rocklin, Calif., officer told her: "You need to call the Chicago Police Department. Your daughter's been severely injured."
As the Paines recalled their next phone conversation with Chicago, they both sobbed. Seven stories. Crime scene. Brain injury. Their daughter, they surmised, would die.
They got on the first plane they could.
"We didn't talk the whole flight," Rick Paine said. His wife added, "We just prayed the whole time. ... I thank God my faith was intact when this happened. I don't know where we'd be."
Eilman had suffered a crushed pelvis, fractured vertebrae, collapsed lungs, a shattered ankle and massive internal bleeding. Respiratory failure put her in a coma, but the most serious injury was the bleeding on both sides of her brain.
Kept alive against odds
Doctors and nurses at Stroger Hospital, against all odds, kept her alive.
"It is really amazing," said Patrick Barrett, one of Eilman's doctors at the Rehab Institute.
Kathy Paine has been by her daughter's side every exhausting day and has never taken the medical treatment for granted.
The doctors at the Rehab Institute have said Eilman can stay as long as their care helps her progress, but they have tentatively scheduled a mid-September date to discharge her, at which time the family would move home to California.
Standing over her daughter's bed one night, Kathy Paine cherished the resting form of Christina's withered body. Christina had ended the day in a particularly placid mood, smiled briefly, and even repeated the first name of a visitor.
Visiting hours were over and Kathy and Rick Paine were heading back to their temporary apartment with Christina's little sister.
As Christina drifted into sleep, her mother reached over one last time to caress her daughter's arm, saying, "We'll be here until we can go home as a family."
----------
dheinzmann@tribune.com
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 18:20:51
In reply to Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 18:02:28
Thanks Toph for the incredible but heartbreaking story. I know we are suppose to trust our law officials but I just have heard too many stories like this that seem abusive to me. I guess it doesn't surpise me, but it does make me sad for the girl.
I know that part in Chicago. One night me and my DH was heading out to go back home and we made a wrong turn and got lost. Well the neighboorhood was very scary, it was during summer dark and very late and there were gangs on almost every corner. I kept praying for green lights because I didn't want to stop the car anywhere around there. We finally found the police station, the one mentioned in the article to ask for directions. It was soooo scary.
Posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 18:23:58
In reply to Re: Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 18:20:51
Posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 19:00:32
In reply to Re: Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 18:20:51
The police in that area of Chicago see a lot of adverse drug reactions, but its hard to imagine why this woman wasn't screened at a hospital before she was locked up or at least sent to a psych facility when, after time, she didn't come down from a high. Sure 20-20 hindsight, but they sure dropped the ball on this one. During one of my manic episodes I went to O'Hare and actually borded a plane that was empty (this was 30 year ago). I got off before anyone found me. My point is, delusional manics can end up anywhere. I really don't know how I survived unharmed.
Posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 19:19:57
In reply to Re: Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger** » happyflower, posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 19:00:32
The thing that bothers me is I hear a lot of stories like this, where police are abusive even to people with out mental issues.
Locally we had an issure where a man suffering from a diabotic shock episode , and the police tazered him because he wouldn't follow the orders. I think he later died, he was very old too.
A workout instuctor at my club used to be a police officer and he told me about how to "get control" of people without it looking like to the general public as abuse.
It just worries me if I ever get pulled over for even speeding.
You were very lucky Toph that nothing really bad happened.
Posted by muffled on August 28, 2006, at 22:52:22
In reply to Re: Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger** » Toph, posted by happyflower on August 28, 2006, at 19:19:57
Cops are just people. There's good one, bad ones, evil ones, and everything in btwn.
I think its a hard job, and proply wrecks alot of good people.
I lived in a city where they had cop problems.
Yeah, you didn't mess with those guys.
I teach my kids that cops are just people, good and bad.
I've had intervention from very kind cops.
I've had some bad experiences too.
F*cked up world all right.
muffled
Posted by Dinah on August 29, 2006, at 8:48:23
In reply to Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 18:02:28
I saw articles in two different cities about police receiving training in how to identify people with mental health issues, and how to safely treat them.
There maay be a long way to go, but at least it's an issue they're trying to grapple with.
I think negative expectations are a proplem everywhere. My friend who died after going into a coma was sent home twice by the ER as being in a drug induced state that she needed to sleep off. Obviously without any tests to determine what she supposedly on. I got frantic calls because her family assumed that I would know if she was taking anything. I did know. She was taking nothing. But it was another day before they admitted her and discovered that she wasn't on anything.
Posted by curtm on August 29, 2006, at 9:14:47
In reply to Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 18:02:28
Posted by Toph on August 29, 2006, at 9:18:31
In reply to At least it's an issue now, posted by Dinah on August 29, 2006, at 8:48:23
In my bad manic episodes insomnia would eventually lead to psychosis. My delusions would manifest themselves mainly with ideas of reference and mood swings of grandiosity or paranoia. I was particularly dangerous in a car. I firmly believed that the radio was communicating to me or people were following me. I would speed and disobey the law recklessly. On one occasion in my VW Rabbit I tore up a golf course with infantile glee. Later when I ran out of gas the police put me in a lock up thinking I was high on PCP. I have amnesia about most manic episodes, but I do remember that in my cell I was screaming about police brutality a lot and almost induced it when a huge officer came in a threatened to make a casualty of me if I didn't shut up. My parents and wife were somehow located. They drove me to the hospital to be detained.
I have other stories of mania leading to detention. I thank God for lithium and that, for whatever reason, I was fortunate to survive these episodes of insanity unlike this poor woman.
Posted by Toph on September 2, 2006, at 18:05:27
In reply to Fallen Between the Cracks **Bipolar Trigger**, posted by Toph on August 28, 2006, at 18:02:28
No news on Christina's condition, but you may find one reader's perspective on this story interesting:
Parental Responsibility
Anne Bowen
Published September 2, 2006
Oak Park -- I feel sad about what happened to Christina Eilman, but I am a little confused about her parents. What are they thinking?To recap: Only a year and a half ago, their daughter was stricken with bipolar disorder, which caused her to be "Very irate. Aggressive. Loud. Out of control." She was hospitalized for only 37 days for this dangerous ailment, then released on the condition that she take prescribed medication, which she discontinued on her own because she didn't like the way the pills made her feel.
Instead of contacting their daughter's doctor or insisting that she take her medication, her parents then "hoped for the best" and foisted her off on a large campus.
They must not have visited her much because they didn't know she had dropped out of school and was behaving erratically again and spending time with people her friends didn't know. All her parents knew was that "she sounded normal in their phone conversations."
Next thing you know, Christina is in Chicago where she is now stranded. She phones her parents and what happens?
Do they drop everything and take the next flight to Chicago to bring her back? No, they do what they've been doing all along--keeping their distance, hoping for the best, and letting someone else take care of their child in accordance with their protracted phone instructions.
The Chicago police are responsible for a lot of things, but being a concerned mother or father substitute to an out-of-control refugee from California who has been foisted off on them is not one of those responsibilities.
Christina was indeed a victim, but her parents have no right even thinking about suing somebody else for $100 million.
Indeed, given the distressed, unstable and potentially violent state of their daughter's mind, they should count their lucky stars that she didn't unintentionally hurt either herself or someone else and that no one is now suing them.
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
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