Samizdat is co-publishing Freeing Teresa with Franke and Bill James. There is a complementary Freeing Teresa: Human Rights Should not be Disabled post on davidhealy.org. There has also been a prior RxISK post about Teresa – Human Rights Should be for Everyone. Today we will also add a Human Rights Category to RxISK posts.
Freeing Teresa is a true story about Franke’s battle to protect her younger sister, Teresa, who has Down syndrome. Ten years ago, based on incorrect health information, Teresa lost her right to decide where to live. Then, she was put involuntarily into long-term care. This was a terrible mistake.
I first met Teresa when she was a free agent, and then later when she lost her freedom and I have chatted to her regularly on Zoom since her liberation.
I got to read an early version of Freeing Teresa over 3 years ago and it set my pulse racing. This is a dramatic story that will have you turning pages and hoping it doesn’t end. It had me hoping from the beginning that Samizdat could play a part in publishing it.
The book tells the story of how Teresa lost her freedom,and how Teresa and Franke stood together to defend Teresa’s right to be free.
Fortunately the story doesn’t have to end soon. Teresa is still going strong, indeed going from strength to strength. In 2019 she won a Human Rights Award. This hopefully is just a first installment on the story.
The book comes with some great quotes. The photo here gives you a sample of these. In this case the quotes really do reflect the emotional impact of the book.
If I had to add a quote it would go like this:
This is one of the most moving and impressive books you will ever read. It centres on perhaps the most important thing in our world – Care, which is twice blessed, blessing her who gives and her who takes.
If the print is too small, the linked Overview gives you them all in easier to read format.
More About Freeing Teresa
and a link to Samizdat
In 2019, Teresa won a Human Rights Award – she has her own site here Teresa Heartchild. with its message Human Rights Should be for Everyone.
Patrick D Hahn says
To her credit, the author never tries to demonize her now-estranged siblings, who come across as decent human beings trying to do he right thing in a situation where there does not seem to be any good alternative.
The elephant in the room here is a care system that has very little to do with actual caring for actual human beings. What if we took ninety-five percent of the money we spend on polydrugging nursing home patients and used it to hire more attendants and pay them more? Would placing a loved one in a nursing home still seem like such a dire course of action?
annie says
I doubt there are many unaware of the ‘Chemical Cosh’ at Nursing Homes.
My mother was relatively content, at 89, in her very expensive new home. All was well until at 94 she was given Gabapentin for pain “she might have”, followed by Fentanyl patches and morphine for which I had no explanation. She became bed-bound and skeletal, with no adjustments for her weight and I was told they weren’t going to bother weighing her. On questioning a GP who was hurriedly doing his rounds, he told me they were considering an antidepressant, but then they thought they wouldn’t know what was wrong with her.
She died in front of me, having just taken tomato soup for lunch. Half an hour previously a nurse had given her a small medical cup with morphine.
My mother could easily have gone on to 100, she was gone at 95.
Her last weeks were terrible, hallucinating, very distressed, delirious but the little windows of mum I saw remained stable, until it was ‘meds time’.
She got Pneumonia on her death certificate.
I had conversations with the Chief Coroner who was very concerned and agreed with me that a post-mortem would be a good thing to do.
Had I received conclusive evidence of drug-misuse, I would have done the right thing and filed a wrongful death case.
I had become part of the Nursing Home family, spending months in the home.
I couldn’t get my head around, how history had repeated itself, and how much I wished they had laid-off what they thought was being helpful.