Posted on 02/17/2014 3:11:38 PM PST by Lucky9teen
The last time Lou Pelletier spoke with his 15-year-old daughter was Feb. 14 — Valentine’s Day. For this father of four, though, the day held a different meaning for his youngest valentine: It marked one year since she was taken and placed in a psychiatric ward against her parents’ will.
“We need help,” Lou Pelletier told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview, explaining why he made the decision to break a judge’s gag order and talk about the situation.
“I’m trying to save my daughter’s life,” he said.
“While still being able to live,” Jessica, one of Justina’s older sisters, added.
For more than a year, Justina Pelletier has been the center of a battle between her parents, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and Boston Children’s Hospital, and two controversial medical diagnoses. After her family began speaking out last November about their fight against these major institutions in court, they were placed under a gag order.
Beyond little snippets given outside of court on the many hearings they’ve had, little has been heard from the parents who believe their daughter has mitochondrial disease and the medical facility that says she doesn’t, saying it’s a psychosomatic disorder instead.
But now the Pelletiers are speaking out. ‘My daughter is about to be kidnapped’
When the Pelletiers brought Justina to a Connecticut hospital in February 2013, she was suffering from the flu. As her sister Jessica explained it, people with mitochondrial disease are affected by illnesses, like the flu, in a more pronounced way.
Jessica, 25, is the second-oldest of the Pelletiers’ daughters and has mitochondrial disease herself. The disease can manifest itself in various ways, but at its root, results from a defect in the mitochondria, an organelle inside cells that produces energy. Jessica’s diagnosis was established medically through analysis of the cells of her muscle tissue.
In Justina’s case, a doctor evaluated her symptoms, considered her family history — mitochondrial disease can be inherited — and gave her a clinical diagnosis of the disorder. Under the care of physicians at Tufts Medical Center, Justina was treated for mitochondrial disease.
But when she got the flu and her parents were told she should be transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, things changed.
As Lou Pelletier explained it, Justina was supposed to be transferred in an ambulance, for insurance purposes, to the Boston hospital, and brought through the emergency room but seen by a gastrointestinal doctor. Instead, upon arriving, he said she was stopped and evaluated by a neurologist, who, Pelletier said, didn’t look at her medical history or contact her other doctors. This doctor, according to Justina’s father, said he thought the illness was all in Justina’s head — that it was somatoform disorder.
The physicians at Boston Children’s Hospital disagreed with her diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder and wanted to take a different approach to her treatment. At first, Lou Pelletier said, “we were game to try a new approach.” But when the hospital laid out their plan to take Justina off all of her mitochondrial and pain medication, her parents balked.
That was Feb. 13, 2013. The next day — Valentine’s Day 2013 — Justina’s parents went to Boston Children’s Hospital with a couple of advocates intending to have her discharged and brought to Tufts. Instead, they were met with security guards and served a 51A, a report of alleged physical or emotional abuse.
Lou said when he saw security showing up, he called 911, thinking that things were not about to go in their favor.
The Pelletiers were accused of overmedicalizing their daughter. Lou Pelletier pointed out that he doesn’t see how having a congenital band removed, her tonsils taken out, procedures to help her have bowel movements — a reoccurring issue for Justina — and following doctor’s orders for prescriptions for mitochondrial disease can be considered overmedicalizing.
Justina was transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital’s Bader 5 psychiatric unit on April 9, 2013. There she was treated for somatoform disorder. According to a document from Boston Children’s given to the Pelletiers, Justina’s treatment included a “behavioral plan […] formulated with input from all relevant disciplines which will day schedule, feeding and functioning plans with a therapeutic approach.” Physical therapy was included as well.
Another measure on the “Guidelines for Care of Justina Pelletier” included that “no diagnostic tests and no new consultations are to be requested unless Justina develops a new or acute process as observed and assessed by the medical team.”
The Pelletier family isn’t necessarily alone in their experience with the hospital. After their case made national headlines, other families began speaking out about the hospital threatening to get DCF involved. Complaints that have been filed since against Bader 5 prompted the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to launch an investigation.
‘I want to have all my guns blazing’
Lou Pelletier told TheBlaze he used to play “20 questions” on the phone to learn from Justina what was going on in the psych ward on the days they were scheduled to call. Justina also used to sneak little notes to her family in cards she wrote them.
Jessica Pelletier demonstrated how she would fold a flap in cards and write messages in small handwriting underneath. Lou Pelletier said if Justina got caught doing this “she would get tortured,” which he said the hospital called “behavioral modification.”
“That’s what Kim Jong Il’s doing in North Korea, behavior modification. … No, no, no, no. It’s torture,” he said.
The Pelletiers don’t get cards anymore. All they get from Justina now are 20 minutes on the phone every Tuesday, one-hour visits each Friday, and her bracelets, which show her preferences for the colors blue and green. Both Lou and Jessica Pelletier sported several of Justina’s beaded or artistically twisted rubber band bracelets on their wrists.
After several court dates, Justina was moved from Boston Children’s Hospital to another facility in Massachusetts. At the time, Lou Pelletier said “justice maybe prevailed.” But in the hearing following this decision two weeks later, things seemed more grim from the Pelletiers’ perspective. Lou Pelletier said it is not a medical facility. He said it’s a temporary place where she is being held until her treatment going forward can be agreed upon in court.
“Now we go back the 24th, a week from today, and I want to have all my guns blazing. We’re not going to make it much more,” Lou Pelletier said.
“Our family,” Jessica Pelletier said, “I don’t know how we survived this long.”
And they’re not just talking about the “heartbreak” of Justina. The yearlong fight to bring the decisions regarding her medical care back to her parents has taken a toll on the Pelletier family.
Financially, they’re trying to make ends meet with expensive legal fees. The Pelletiers have a PayPal account for those wishing to donate to her family’s cause.
If the decisions regarding Justina’s care are returned to her parents, Lou thinks she needs total rehabilitation, saying that he worries her current state could be “irreversible.”
“She needs physical therapy. She needs to be back on the vitamin cocktail. She needs to be treated for the goddamn diagnosis she had from the beginning,” Lou said. ”I need to save my daughter. If we don’t do something, she is going to die.”
Lou Pelletier will appear on The Glenn Beck Program on TheBlaze TV at 5 p.m. ET for an extended interview. This story may be updated with relevant clips from the show.
He needs a lawyer to file a habeus writ for him fast
Thankfully I’ve never had a situation as extreme as what you experienced, and I’m sorry you and your family had to endure that.
I’m constantly amazed at the naivté so many people have about hospitals. They seem to think Florence Nightengale will be holding the hand of their loved one 24/7. I have had to change bedsheets and sanitary garments for relatives because the nurses (or nurse techs or healthcare assistants, or whomever happened to be hired by that particular facility) couldn’t be bothered. One time a resident lashed into my mother, with much profanity, that she should be on her knees thanking him because he “got a speeding ticket” on the way to the hospital to take care of my father (post-stroke). THAT particular smug SOB heard an earful from me — still makes my blood boil remembering it.
People really need to be more aware of how “warehouse” so many hospitals are — if a patient doesn’t have a strong-willed advocate, they will fall to the end of the line.
He doesn’t just need a lawyer, he needs a “pitbull in a brooks brothers suit” to take the law, publicity and anything else he can get his hands on and shove it straight up the hospitals ass.
CC
Was there any explanation given for the Gag order?
Massachusetts went medical nanny state under Romney. This story is a small screenshot of what is coming to the entire country. Unfortunately the majority (apparently) of the voters in this country are Social Utopians. They should have had to live in a Socialist country before they voted to destroy this one.
It is also highly enjoyable. Spent six hours once in an emergency room with five fractures in my pelvis. They kept trying to get me to walk. No meds.
When they finally figured out I had fractures, they lit me up with Fetanyl.
They can do that again anytime they want.
Yeah a couple years ago I had my very first stay at the hospital.
Had me on Delodid until I started hallucinating that the nurse was trying to kill me. In between not being able to stop exhaling every time I breathed.
Then morphine once the pain subsided. The rush you see in the war movies is real.
That is just insane!!!
Yeah but the nurse was an Angel!
There are many good hospitals. I really don’t understand how this makes sense from a care perspective or financial perspective for the hospital.
The other girl, Wray, went through the same thing including a gag order being placed on the family. Besides the state taking away the rights of the parents, it seems something else might be going on. I’d be calling a big shot lawyer and suing for millions. I’m not one to sue, but these people need the fear of losing everything, along with anyone else who would consider doing anything like this. This sounds like it comes out of one of obama’s czars.
I’ve been hospitalized three times for heart problems. All three times some Korean gastro doctor stopped by my room. I have no idea why he was there. He billed the insurance company and was paid. He billed me for the co-pays. I wrote him a letter basically telling him to go to hell. I never heard from him again.
IMHO egos
One thing I didn't see was the basis of the gag order. Why did a judge violate the First Amendment by trying to silence this man?
I just told them I work with hipaa compliance and they were great.
How much did dad donate to a teaparty candidate?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.