Opinion: No Dignity In Death By Dehydration

By June Maxam, The North Country Gazette, Nov. 11, 2005

Opinion

On Thursday, Nov. 10, the father of North Country Gazette publisher June Maxam suffered a massive stroke. He is a patient at Eden Park Nursing Home in Glens Falls. He has not been hospitalized. The nursing home claims he cannot swallow and that they are "maintaining his dignity". The current plan is to place him in a hospice, withhold all nutrition and hydration and wait for him to die.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/100105CivilRightsHHS.html

Below is a letter written Thursday night to the nursing home administrator who refused to admit the man to the nursing home until and unless the publisher had no role in his health care decisions. Persons wishing to tell the nursing home of their views on altering health care proxies and death by dehydration may call the Eden Park Health Care Center in Glens Falls at 518-793-5163 or send a fax to 518-793-5165.

Lloyd Cote
Administrator
Eden Park Nursing Home
170 Warren St.
Glens Falls, NY 12801

RE: Gerald Maxam

I learned today, albeit not from the nursing home because they refused to contact me, that my father suffered a massive stroke sometime this morning but was not hospitalized. In fact, you are doing absolutely nothing to treat this man. You have left him to die and plan to allow him to die by starvation and dehydration.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression, freedom of speech, right to dissent and a host of other constitutional guarantees----especially freedom of the press. The Constitution gives me the right to express my views concerning the care of my father--both in this format and in my newspapers and through the pages and websites of my many contacts and associates----and in the courts.

Both the U.S. Constitution and state Constitution guarantee equal protection, right to due process, freedom from discrimination.

You and Glens Falls Hospital have violated my rights and the rights of my father. I now understand that it is your intent to place this man in a hospice, withhold all nutrition and hydration and starve him to death, just like Terri Schiavo. Well, Mr. Cote, I was a major reporter of the Terri Schiavo case and I took it nationwide--the Medicaid and Medicare fraud, the manipulation of the courts. If it is your intent to cause my father to die in the same cruel, inhumane manner as Terri Schiavo, I can assure you it too will receive nationwide coverage with the nation's spotlight on Eden Park, Glens Falls Hospital and Warren County Court Judge John Hall with whom you acted in concert, Warren County's answer to Judge George Greer.. You have unconstitutionally and illegally changed my father's wishes and placed his life and care in the hands of my sister without his permission and against his wishes and for certain without legal and just cause, but there's one thing that you will NEVER be able to change and that is the fact that I am his daughter and therefore I have premiere legal standing. Forcing the change of a health care proxy by coercion is illegal and you forcibly changed the health care proxy of both my father and my mother, removing it from me and placing it in the hands of my sister who you can manipulate. Refusing to accept my father as a patient until I was removed from all aspects of decisions relating to his care was wholly illegal and I fully intend to take the matter to federal court. Meanwhile, Glens Falls Hospital raped the Medicare and Medicaid system as well as my father's own insurance.

However, at the moment, my father's care is the issue. Your staff claims you are maintaining his "dignity". Placing him in the middle of the dining room for all to stare at is not maintaining his dignity nor is parking him in the hallway at center stage at the nurses' desk. I do not support your decision of not hospitalizing him.

I was told point blank that I would not be informed about my father's condition or care. That is very, very wrong, the same as your position that you can't bother to make a phone call to me when my mother is taken to the ER or ill.

I will be taking this entire matter to the public----in fact I was already scheduled for a national radio show Saturday and I will be make sure that my topic is the Terri Schiavo situation in Glens Falls. A controversial person in the geographic area as you subjectively labeled me to remove me from decisions related to my father? This is a case where the individual made his wishes, signed his health care proxy, made his own choices and you then changed them because you didn't like me, held my father hostage in Glens Falls Hospital for 8 months--although you had never met me, never spoken with me but yet you denied my father admittance to the nursing home, causing my family undue financial expenses, mental duress and harm and a total rip-off of the Medicaid, Medicare system. That by itself is in need of investigation.

I certainly hope that my father's death certificate does not say---cause of death, dehyration.

June Maxam

PS: I was told, falsely, that my father couldn't swallow. I observed him for a period of time. He was routinely swallowing his own saliva so that's wholly untrue.

© 2005 North Country Gazette

Email this page to a friend Share on Facebook Share on StumbleUpon Print this page