Systemic Abuse

So, the woman on the acute unit is a person in her late 30’s….

‘Saved’ from the horror of a refugee camp in Africa and brought to the safe and sane interior of the USA….

following her extended incarceration in Ghana, where 2 of her children died from forced starvation, and after she fled her culture, her husband, and 2 of her children after making sure they were fed by allowing the guards to rape her.

This woman finally had a psychotic break shortly after she gave birth to her  child born of rape,  here in the  good old USA.

Being crazy, she was locked up again, and her ‘rape baby’, and the one child she was able to bring with her born of her marriage, were taken away from her because of her inability to care for them.

Interestingly, people with PTSD caused by war and torture will ‘break’ following their removal to a different culture. They have a better chance of maintaining their ‘cool’ if they stay in their home country following the period of atrocity. Context is all.

Anyway, this woman lost it following the birth of her 6th child.

Now she is our prisoner.

I know this, because the Naziis who run the kitchen at our facility have determined that she can only have 4 packets of sugar in the morning.

She is 5′ 6", and weighs about 125# after 3 years in the US, but, according to the Food Pyramid, she only needs a certain number of calories a day.

So 4 packets is the limit.

The sad part is is that she prefers to have 3 packets in her morning coffee, and 3 packets in her morning cereal. This amounts to a little less than a tablespoon in her coffee, and a little less than a tablespoon in her cereal…. perhaps 96 calories worth of sugar.

Anyway, because the dieticians have determined that a woman of her size is better maintained on a certain amount of calories per day, she is not able to get more sugar in the morning some days.

Because we are very interested in her health……..did I mention that?

Anyway, after refusing her requests for extra sugar for several days last week, and having the patient throw her entire breakfast in the garbage following the ‘show down’ over the sugar situation each morning, the patient finally cracked, and attacked the staff.

She bit a staff person who was particularly sarcastic in her refusal of this patient’s request for extra sugar.

I wonder how many calories were expended in that fight.?..

And what the caloric value of kindness might be?..

And how sick a system has to be before people start to change?…

And what  mental health  might really look like?