Yesterday’s cover story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution was an investigative report of Georgia’s state mental hospitals and that neglect seems to be leading to several suspicious deaths. The first installment of a series is about a 14-year-old girl named Sara Crider.

I couldn’t help but notice the similarities, the possibilities that this could be my child. The report starts by explaining that Sarah had been diagnosed as autistic when younger and been placed in a special education class in the same county in which we live. In November of 2004 her class was supposed to take a field trip to see Disney on Ice and for some reason, because Sarah went back inside the school to retrieve her coat, she was left behind. Missing the trip triggered a meltdown that eventually landed her in the same psychiatric hospital that we admitted LuLu to a couple of weeks later.

So, unbeknownst to us (until just realizing it now), LuLu and Sarah were there together. In that private hospital, Sarah received a new diagnosis, which the article implies was an accurate one, schizophrenia.

That doesn’t surprise me, because it was through our experience at that same hospital that we pursued LuLu’s Tourette’s diagnosis and established the medication regime she’s on today.

What happened next could have easily, or still could someday happen to us. Sarah’s insurance only covered a 30-day stay at this private psychiatric hospital. (In fact, this hospital, I just heard from another mom last week, no longer takes children under 11 years of age…so today LuLu wouldn’t have been admitted there.)

So her family had no choice but to place her in a state hospital. Although she had gotten better in the private facility, when she came home, she worsened by the fall of 2005 and was readmitted to the state facility. Over the next three months…fall of 2005 to February of 2006, her conditions worsened.

The cause of her death in a lack of attention to her medical conditions being brought on by her high doses of meds. What I mean was that the medications she was given caused her to be constipated, sluggish, heavier and swollen. No one noticed how much food she ate or when she had bowel movements. So, the night of February 12, 2006, Sarah began vomiting and eventually died of a bowel obstruction. The article contains more of the details about this painful death than I have the strength to report here.

As I began to blog about this tragedy this morning, I had already related in my mind that this could be us with LuLu...with perhaps (gasp) a similar fate. I was already angry beyond words for Sarah on so many levels prior to the severe, gross negligence that caused her death. I mean, how dare the school leave her behind on a field trip, for starters! And how utterly frustrating that insurance dictates placement into places where such conditions exist.

Then it dawned on me. Not only was LuLu at the same private hospital Sarah was at the same time, but in a way, we knew her. One day we arrived at visitation to find LuLu sitting on the lap of a woman we did not know. I was NOT pleased and probably looked at the woman as if she had two heads.

My first thought was that with LuLu’s attachment disorder allowing her to be indiscriminately friendly with strangers was such a BAD idea. But this woman was not stranger. She introduced herself to us and knew LuLu because she worked at LuLu’s school and recognized her. LuLu was thrilled to see a familiar face. This woman was there to visit her granddaughter…Sarah.

I’m stunned. There are not words to adequately express the depth of anger, disgust, and sorrow in my soul. On that Sunday night in February, the night before our Feb 13 IEP meeting that started our own slow descent into the hellish due process hearing of 2006, Sarah died at the hand of a broken state system.

When I started writing, I was going to wax on philosophically about the overcrowded hospitals, the lack of funding and staffing, and the lack of public concern. But I just can’t right now…

I’m too overwhelmed by the brokenness of the systems in our state, especially the ones dealing with children. And how close it’s hitting to home…

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