What a shame!

I'm not sure how many of you have read this, but this made me cry. I can't believe something like this happened in the U.S. This is utterly repulsive and horrific. I think zoo animals receive better treatment than this.

I pray that this NEVER happens again!

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A 49-year-old woman collapsed and died on the floor of a waiting room at a Brooklyn psychiatric hospital and lay there for more than an hour as employees ignored her, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which on Tuesday released surveillance camera video of the incident.

Surveillance video shows a woman lying on the hospital floor for almost an hour before anyone helped her.

Esmin Green was involuntarily admitted to the psychiatric emergency department of Kings County Hospital Center on June 18 for what the hospital describes as "agitation and psychosis."

Upon her admission, Green waited nearly 24 hours for treatment, said the civil liberties union, which was among the groups filing suit against the facility last year seeking improved conditions for patients.

The surveillance camera video shows the woman rolling off a waiting room chair, landing face-down on the floor and convulsing. Her collapse came at 5:32 a.m. June 19, the NYCLU said, and she stopped moving at 6:07 a.m. During that time, the organization said, workers at the hospital ignored her.

At 6:35 a.m., the tape shows a hospital employee approaching and nudging Green with her foot, the group said. Help was summoned three minutes later. Watch the surveillance video »

In addition, the organization said, hospital staff falsified Green's records to cover up the time she had lain there without assistance.

"Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital's video cameras, the patient's medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was 'sitting quietly in waiting room' -- more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor."

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees the hospital, released a statement Tuesday saying it was "shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care."

Don't Miss

• WABC: Woman dies in hospital waiting room

After a preliminary investigation, the corporation said it suspended or terminated six employees, "including staff involved with the direct care of the patient as well as managers of security and clinical services," the statement said.

A Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman said it was aware of the discrepancies in Green's record when it began the preliminary investigation on June 20. That information is now in the hands of various investigatory agencies, she said.

The corporation pledged to put "additional and significant" reforms in place in the wake of the incident.

The civil liberties group and the Mental Hygiene Legal Service filed suit against Kings County in May 2007 in federal court, alleging that conditions at the facility are filthy. Patients are often forced to sleep in plastic chairs or floors covered in urine, feces and blood while waiting for beds, the groups allege, and often go without basic hygiene such as showers, clean linens and clean clothes. The lawsuit claims that patients who complain face physical abuse and are injected with drugs to keep them docile.

The hospital, the suit alleges, lacks "the minimal requirements of basic cleanliness, space, privacy, and personal hygiene that are constitutionally guaranteed even to convicted felons."

The video sent the organizations back into court Tuesday, demanding immediate reform.

"What's happening in Kings County Hospital is an affront to human dignity," New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a written statement. "In 2008 in New York City, nobody should be subjected to this kind of treatment. It should not take the death of a patient to get the city to make changes that everyone knows are long overdue."

The Department of Justice recently initiated an investigation into conditions at the hospital, the organization said, prompting the facility to improve some of its problems. "But the culture of abuse and neglect remains and, as evidenced by the June death, the situation is too dire to wait for the Justice Department to act," the group said.

Among the reforms agreed to in court Tuesday by the hospital are additional staffing; checking of patients every 15 minutes; and limiting to 25 the number of patients in the psychiatric emergency ward, officials said. In addition, the hospital said it is expanding crisis-prevention training for staff; expanding space to prevent overcrowding; and reducing patients' wait time for release, treatment or placement in an inpatient bed.

On Monday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was appalled by the surveillance video.

"Look, I saw the film like everybody else did and I was -- horrified is much too nice a word. Disgusted I think is a better word. I can't explain what happened there."

Green, a native of the island of Jamaica, lived alone in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood. She had no close family in the United States, and her neighbor Beatrice Wallace described her as a quiet woman who had few visitors and spent most of her free time at church.

The medical examiner is withholding autopsy results pending further study and investigation into the precise cause of death.

Politics Explained

I saw this recently and thought it was funny.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Dance Dance Anyway!

As far as this PCOS thing goes, it can sometimes put me in a rather foul mood. Well, if that wasn't enough I received a letter from Kaiser Permanente, a Maryland based insurance company, informing me that I am not eligible for membership because of the PCOS. I tried like 99 times to attach the letter but was unable to.

Well, I happened to stumble upon this video and it brighten my day just a bit. It brought a much needed smile to my face, especially the scenes with the children. I do hope you take a minute to view it. I just happened to read about this video here.


Here is the video! By the way, I had to watch 2 Youtube tutorials to find out how to upload a video to Blogger. yea me!! :)

GOT MILK? HOPE NOT!

Great Article** I had to repost!

White Poison ColorLines, by Shanti Rangwani, Mar 7, 2002

Got milk? If not, then thank your lucky stars. Because if
you do, medical research shows that you are likely to be
plagued by anemia, migraine, bloating, gas, indigestion,
asthma, prostate cancer, and a host of potentially fatal
allergies--especially if you are a person of color.

Ignoring this, the government declares that milk is
essential to good health, subsidizes the milk industry to
the tune of billions of dollars, and requires milk in its
public school lunch programs. And celebrity shills sporting
milk mustaches tell us that milk is rich in proteins,
calcium, and vitamins--and very cool to boot.

They forget to tell you about the dangers lurking in that
innocuous-looking glass of white. Once criticized only by
naturopaths and vegans, now the health effects of milk are
being decried by many mainstream doctors.

The supposedly hip milk mustache is actually a creamy layer
of mucus, live bacteria, and pus.

Former Chairman of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University,
Frank Oski, M.D. even has a book called Don't Drink Your
Milk which blames every second health problem kids suffer on
hormone-ridden commercial milk. Sixty percent of ear
infections in kids under six years of age are milk-induced,
and milk consumption is the number one cause of iron-
deficiency anemia in infants today according to the American
Association of Pediatrics.

But milk is also a racial issue. Almost 90 percent of
African Americans and most Latinos, Asians, and Southern
Europeans lack the genes necessary to digest lactose, the
primary sugar in milk. The milk industry's response is
classic: they have launched new campaigns arguing that non-
whites can digest milk if they take in small sips during the
day. There is a burgeoning industry worth $450 million a
year churning out products designed to minimize lactose
intolerance.

Lactose intolerance is the most common "food allergy," but
to call it an allergy is to take a white-centric view that
trivializes the fact that most of the world's people are not
biologically designed to digest milk.

Milk does no body good, but for the vast majority of the
world's people--people of color--it is a public health
disaster. No other animal drinks cow's milk, not even calves
once they are weaned. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, the
U.S.'s leading authority on child care, spoke out against
feeding "cow's glue" to children, saying it can cause
anemia, allergies, and diabetes and in the long term, will
set kids up for obesity and heart disease, the number one
cause of death in this country.

Most of milk's much-vaunted protein is contained in casein--
which is also a raw material for commercial glue.
Undigested, it simply sticks to the intestinal walls and
blocks nutrient absorption.

The mainstream media and the government ignore the medical
studies showing that milk is a serious health threat, in
part because people of color are the main victims. The
institutionalization of racism is highlighted by U.S.
Department of Agriculture spokesperson Eilene Kennedy's
statement on milk, that the government's recommended food
pyramid is intended for "the majority of Americans. It
doesn't communicate to all Americans."

The USDA continues to require that school lunch programs
include milk with every meal, and recommend that we glug
milk for calcium, even though Harvard studies show an
increase in osteoporosis and bone-breakage in people who
consume milk. It says we should drink milk to prevent heart
disease (and is echoed by Larry King) even though saturated
fat constitutes 55 percent of milk solids.

To call lactose intolerance an "allergy" is to take a white-
centric view that trivializes the fact that most of the
world's people are not biologically designed to digest milk.
The dairy lobby perpetrates lies to ensure its profits. It
benefits directly from the exaggerated support prices the
government shells out for this "health food." The government
pays over a billion dollars a year for surplus butter. A
General Accounting Office (GAO) study concluded that a
reduction in the government price support system would have
netted consumers savings of $10.4 billion from 1986 to 2001.
And the USDA pays inflated prices to purchase dairy products
for both the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and federal
school lunch programs--milking the taxpayers and actually
getting them to pay for poisoning 26 million school kids.

The milk lobby has whipsawed its way into the highest
echelons of power. Staffers under Richard Nixon were
indicted for accepting $300,000 from the dairy lobby for
making milk part of the school lunch program.

Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to exposing the milk lobby, contends
that the dramatic 52 percent rise in asthma deaths among
minority kids in New York coincided with the surplus milk,
cheese, and butter pumped into them under the USDA's free
school lunch and breakfast giveaway programs. The incidence
of asthma deaths may be even higher since asthma is not a
reportable disease, and asthma deaths are sometimes
certified as cardiovascular disease.

There is also a direct link between milk consumption and
prostate cancer among African Americans, who have the
highest incidence of this disease in the world. A study in
Cancer has shown that men who reported drinking three or
more glasses of whole milk daily had a higher risk for
prostate cancer than men who reported never drinking whole
milk.

The controversial Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH)--banned in
most countries--is pumped into U.S. milch cows to increase
annual yield (50,000 pounds of milk per cow today compared
to 2,000 pounds in 1959). Milk from cows treated with BGH is
likely to contain pus from their udders since the hormone
leads to mastitis, or udder infection. BGH use results in a
tumor-promoting chemical (IGF-I) that has been implicated in
an explosive increase of cancer of the colon, smooth muscle,
and breast.

The antibiotics dairy farmers use to treat BGH-caused
infections in cows appear in their milk and greatly hasten
human tolerance to most antibiotics, a potentially life-
threatening state of affairs. The Center for Science in the
Public Interest reports that 38 percent of milk samples in
10 cities were contaminated with sulfa drugs and other
antibiotics.

A fightback is beginning. Protesters picketed New York City
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's planned milk promotion campaign
with a photo of the mayor wearing a milk mustache over the
caption, "Got Prostate Cancer?" Giuliani (who, like his
father, has prostate cancer) dropped the campaign. And
doctors from the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine (PCRM) persuaded Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony
Williams not to declare May 11 as "Drink Chocolate Milk Day"
by presenting evidence that milk is harmful, especially to
people of color.

The PCRM--composed of some of the leading doctors in the
U.S.--has campaigned extensively in the health and consumer
press and led a successful legal effort in 1999 to make
dairy products optional in the federal food guidelines. The
campaign was supported by a number of prominent civil rights
organizations and leaders, including the Congressional Black
Caucus, the NAACP, Martin Luther King, III, Jesse Jackson,
Jr., the National Hispanic Medical Association, and former
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

The dairy lobby remains cozy with most medical practitioners
to perpetrate its "drink milk" propaganda. However, not one
of the 1,500 papers listed in Medicine that deal with milk
points to its goodness--only to the pus, blood, antibiotics,
and carcinogens in milk, and the chronic fatigue, anemia,
asthma, and autoimmune disorders milk consumption causes.

The time has come for the milk industry to face the kind of
scrutiny that the tobacco companies face today. Meanwhile,
discard the moo juice.

YOGA

Today I am going to sign up for Beginner Yoga I classes in my local area. The classes last for 4 weeks at $10.00 each!! What a great deal.

My husband informally practices yoga but says he's merely "stretching". I know the Upward Facing Dog when I see it and he's definitely practicing Yoga. What is it about Yoga that he doesn't want to admit I have no clue.

Is Yoga not looked at as macho enough? He seems to feel that practicing Yoga would be a detriment to his Christian faith. I totally disagree and I know that Christians can practice Yoga without adapting the spiritual aspects of it. I believe while practicing Yoga this could be perfect quiet time to tune out the world and tune into God. What a wonderful opportunity for spiritual advancement.

I see this as a way for me to grow in my spiritual life and also to become healthier.

Don't tell my husband but, I am looking forward to being able to bend myself into a pretzel at the end of this series!! LOL

SAMSUNG'S TOCCO IS CALLING ME

Tocco is an Italian word meaning touch, and I can't wait to touch this phone!

Okay, I must admit I am a gadget junkie. I love gadgets! I absolutely have to have the latest and newest shiny objects. I don't usually acquire them when the first surface, I'll wait a while and after reading hundreds of reviews I'll go in for the kill. While browsing fashion blogs I stumbled upon this beauty. Isn't he gorgeous? I can not wait to get my hands on this baby. I can see me using this cool phone right now.

Only problem is, I don't see it be available in the US just yet!!

I am currently using the Palm Treo 755 in Burgundy and it has lost some of it's luster.

Read some of it's features: *swoon*

1. 5 megapixel camera! That's much better than my Treo!
2. It's sleek and stylish, not at all bulky.
3. You can drag and drop to customize the interface.
4. It vibrates to alert you when you've clicked something.

Oh heck, any excuse will do when you want something!

POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME (PCOS)

I have PCOS and this is my first time ever speaking about it. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is an endocrine disorder that affects 10% of all women. The most common factor is that is causes infertility in women of childbearing age. There are several symptoms:
* lack of ovulation
* Weight problems- mainly weight gain
* Irregular periods
* Hirsutism: increased hair on the body and face
* Hair Loss
* Acne
* Depression

Treatments include: diet (low glycemic diet, medications, fertility treatment, and alternative therapies. Women with PCOS can get pregnant and the symptoms can be managed with proper treatment with a doctor experienced with PCOS.

Anyone with this disorder should consult with a physician as I am NOT a doctor nor a licensed professional. I am just speaking about my own personal experience.

I was diagnosed with PCOS a few years after the birth of my son. I have struggled with weight gain, mood swings, facial hair and unpredictable periods. Sometimes my periods can last for 6-9 months then I can go 9 months without one. I can say that having an ongoing menstrual cycle for months on end can be one of the most miserable feelings EVER! I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I constantly pluck the hairs from my chin and battle with my ever changing moods daily. My hair is thinned out and I notice that I am losing lots of hair everyday.

I was rejected medical coverage from Blue Cross Blue Shield because my BMI was too high. So, I am now trying the natural route with low glycemic diet, vitamins and herbs. My weight has ballooned up and it's out of control. I feel like a walking PMS Monster sometimes. There are times when I have to let my husband and son know that I desperately need a time out. God bless them for putting up with me. So many times family members will ask when I am planning to have my next child and I just can't bring myself to explain. I believe my speaking out about it will free me and hopefully help others.

My gynecologist couldn't put me on birth control pills because of my high blood pressure. Well, I am at the point where I am ready to have another child and it pains me that I can't. My husband wants another child and I do too. He longs to have a brother or sister and I so desperately want this for him as well.
There were times when my story reminded me of Matthew 9:20-22.

²⁰And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment:

²¹For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.

²²But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from. that hour

She exercised her faith by doing. She felt that by touching the Lord's garment she could be healed. Awesome story!

Oh yea, here is a GREAT support, information and friendship!

Keep me in your prayers as I continue on my journey at stomping PCOS!

Click here for more information at the Soulcysters Site!