Working on finding an accessible version of this. Contents will not surprise any disabled person, especially any who has spent time in a hospital or care facility. It's incredibly painful & angering to read but not because it is shocking to me, but rather because it isn't. https://twitter.com/Travisdhanraj/status/1265334597342113795

I sometimes wonder why non-disabled people think I share my experiences on here. Do you think it is my form of therapy? Because that's not it.

What do I do with the memory of my hospital roommate that was left to sit in his own shit or my vertebrae breaking while being shoved aggressively into a commode using a lift? Do I just try to forget? Or do I try to change things bc I know it's still happening to others?

But disabled people are ignored. Our experiences doubted or attributed to some one off bad example.
One of the things that jumped out at me immediately in that letter was "staff aggressiveness while changing incontinence products"

Absolutely yes. So much. This. Repeatedly.

"Not stopping or slowing when resident complained of pain, pulling residents, aggressive transfers...degrading comments"

THIS. Do not think this is unusual or limited to LTC. This happens in hospital - it happened to me. Not making this about me. Point is this isn't 'new' info

Anyway you can be angry at the report - and you should be - but direct some of that anger at yourselves because you helped allow this stuff to happen by refusing to listen to those of us who have been trying to tell you this and you are still ignoring disabled people NOW.

You can't write a tweet about someone you don't like without resorting to an ableist slur and if you think that doesn't relate to this then you really aren't thinking about this at all.

Profit motive should be eliminated from care but profit alone is not what makes this happen.

All the things that happened to me happened in a public hospital in a major Canadian city. They didn't happen to some other patients. It was precisely because I am disabled, poor and alone. Disabled made me less human to them. Poor & alone = no consequences.

Elderly people are similarly dehumanized, devalued, particularly those who are disabled, poor, racialized.

This is why I call out the ageism in Vancouver Twitter.

I know what can happen when people are dehumanized.

I know that some take this as permission.

All I wanted to do when I got out was be part of making things different, to stop it from happening to others. I did not ask for anything for myself. Not even an apology or acknowledgement. I just didn't want to sit here reading a letter like this knowing I did nothing.

I tried working 'within' the system and that got no where. I tried sharing personal experiences here as a last resort. Years of bleeding on this TL. Nothing changed. No one listened. And they still aren't listening now.
And disabled and/or elderly people are living this hell rn.

They are living this hell in private for profit LTC, in private non-profit LTC, in public LTC and hospital wards.

And fwiw staff in hospitals can also be obsessed with the 'cost' of supplies/care. I was called a waste of taxpayer money multiple times & greedy for wanting physio

Oh and hey you know where I was not ever assaulted, injured or had a single denigrating remark made about me the way the way I did in hospital? Home care. The lowest paid end of the spectrum treated me with the most respect and care of all of them.

The home care staff helped me with 'personal hygiene,' they used the ceiling lift to move me from the hospital bed in my then living room to the commode. They turned me. Fed me. Bathed me. Emptied catheter. All the same things as hospital. Also rushed off their feet. But no abuse

If it were just about staff payment and being rushed then theoretically home care should be the worst offender of these things but it's the opposite. My home care aids didn't run room to room - they had to run/drive building to building on impossible timelines.

But they weren't doing it *inside* an institution that prizes conformity, safeguarding colleagues secrets, over-looking each other's wrongs and instills 'us' (staff) vs them (patients) thinking, that's one big difference. There are others.

The fact that they didn't go to nursing or medical school works in my favour in terms of ableist bias. The fact that they are in my home is another. I am a human being in an apt in the community.

Btw also not suggesting there aren't problems with home care or abusive workers.

It occurs to me that non-disabled people might not understand how 'aggressive' and impatient behaviour translates into injuries or worse when 'caring' for a disabled and/or elderly person, so I'm going to use this one as example. https://twitter.com/mssinenomine/status/1265358169867354113?s=20

The letter talks about 'transfers' of residents. There are a number of different ways you can transfer. In the past I used a ceiling lift. This video shows you how that is supposed to go and how staff are supposed to transfer you.

The video shows them transferring someone who doesn't actually need the lift and that's obvious. Because my body didn't roll the way theirs does. Add open wounds, tubes, inflammation, pain, etc. The staff that were rough - most - would make this much more painful.

The abusive ones would call me names while the tears rolled down my face.
Anywho, the video shows them positioning someone in a semi-reclined wheelchair and transfers to my wheelchair were usually like that. The problem came when transferring to commode. https://toilet-guru.com/hospital.php 

So the nurse on this day got impatient that my body wouldn't position right in the commode and while I was in the lift gave the swing a hard push and my spin hit the metal bar at the back of the commode full force. I let out a scream. Her colleague looked at her.

She looked worried so the colleague reassured her she'd done nothing wrong. No one reassured me. She left the room. I was still in the lift. A diff nurse came in. They told me I was fine. I was crying. No one asked if I was fine. They told me I was fine. That's how it happens.

It's a 'mistake' and then the empathy goes to their colleague and the cover up and denial and even blame of the victim begins.

'You're so hard to position.'
'We have other patients, you take up too much time.'
'Do you really want to go on living this way? Sign the DNR'