Monthly Archives: January 2010

Managing Dishonesty: Notes from an Advocate

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A person’s ability to lie is certainly equaled by a company or government’s ability to lie. The question is, how do you manage the dishonesty. My answer? Expose it.

I recently had a series of email exchanges with someone who heads up a healthcare company that provides services to people who live with disabilities, brain injuries to be specific. Some of this person’s assertions were so blatantly dishonest they reminded me of the Richard Pryor line ,when his wife catches him in bed with another woman, You gonna believe me or your lying eyes.

One thing that is critically important is to not allow the dishonesty of a particular healthcare provider to blind you to the fact there are healthcare providers that are truly spectacular.

I am too far down the road of life to be astonished or surprised or thrown by the arrogance of people. Still, there are times I’ve seen some of the arrogant spin such lines of bullshit I want to tap them on the shoulder and ask, Do really think anyone believes your bullshit? Tragically, some do. Which brings me to something H.L. Mencken said: “"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."

All of us contribute to the bloodstream of our society. What we contribute either adds to or subtracts from the health and welfare of the world we live in. There is, I believe, no such thing, as a neutral contribution, you either tip the scales one way or the other.

As for underestimating the intelligence of people. While far too often Mencken’s quote applies, there are times it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, people get voted out of office, arrogant bureaucrats find themselves on the unemployment line, and healthcare providers who have their heads up the ass of arrogance find themselves out of business.

On the Wings of Angels

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Early morning hours allow the angels of peace.

Early hours have been my favorite time for as far back as my memory allows. I didn’t always allow myself to live them. There is nothing unique in someone denying themselves the healthier things in life. People do it all the time. I begin to allowing myself the early hours when  I began working on a horse farm around 1988. I had be at work by five in the morning. Since I’ve always found getting up and rushing out of the house unsettling, a little scary actually, I got up at three and, in doing so, allowed myself the delicious peace of mind, body and spirit present in the day’s first hours.

Now it dawns on me, many years later, the hours themselves are the angels of peace. Time is a gift, to all of us, not to be taken lightly.

And so, in these angel hours, I allow myself the often exquisite movements of classical music, or time with a good book, or the simple joy of watching birds on the feeder, the gutsy Black-capped Chickadees the always rush Titmouse, or the Nuthatches who appear convinced sunflower seeds taste better if you eat them while hanging upside down on the perch, or, just as wonderful, time with you. 

Like the unfettered movement of the birds and music, my thoughts and dreams know equal freedom too. It is up to me to pay attention. It is up to me to allow the early morning hours, born on the wings of angels.

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Kahrmann Coalition to Meet with NY DOH

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Members of the Kahrmann Consumer Advocacy Coalition are expected to meet with Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger and other New York Department of Health officials in early February in part to discuss concerns about a recent DOH directive to transfer injury brain injury survivors living in the community to agencies that may not be prepared take them and, in doing so, destroy relationships with agencies that have been providing effective care, in some cases, for years.

“We’re concerned that freedom of choice is being denied, that survivors may find themselves in places not equipped to support them and others may find themselves placed in nursing homes,” said coalition founder, Peter S. Kahrmann. 

Kahrmann, who lives with a brain injury as a result of being held up and shot in the head at point blank range in 1984, hopes the meeting will prove beneficial to all. “If they are talking with consumers and if this directive is being supported by consumers, that’s a healthy thing.  That’s not we’re hearing. Something simply being inflicted on consumers, not so healthy.”

Kissinger says agencies providing community support staff to 63 survivors of brain injuries will have to discharge their survivors to other agencies because they are not Licensed Home Care Agencies. Some of the agencies being asked to transfer people have been providing quality care for years with the Department of Health’s blessing.

Kahrmann said the Coalition has heard  the number of consumers being transferred exceeds the 63 reported  by DOH officials. “Right now the number we’re hearing is in the neighborhood of 150 people,” Kahrmann said.

The KCAC is a coalition of brain injury survivors, family members and other interested parties. “It is an extraordinary thing to see the coalition grow,” said Kahrmann.

Kahrmann said all coalition members are urged to become members of the Brain Injury Association of New York State. “They are the centerpiece for advocacy in the state,” he said.

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Note: People interested in joining the KCAC can write to Mr. Kahrmann at peterkahrmann@gmail.com or write to, Kahrmann, P.O. Box 19, Westerlo, NY 12193

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The Dream & The Oopsies

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On this Martin Luther King Day I find myself reflecting on the many who give lip service to his dream and the too few who live the dream.

Far too many of those who voice support for equal rights cut and run if supporting equal rights proves inconvenient, or, perish the thought, costs them money. The ranks of the profits-over-people crowd remain sickeningly large.

I know one man we will call Oopsie. Oopsie, a church goer at that, voices support for equal rights, fairness, and human decency with a voice so sniffily sweet he could kill a diabetic at 100 yards. But when push comes to shove, or his income might drop a notch, his hypocrisy is revealed. Like too many others, he will preach one view as long as that view stands a chance of opening doors that will make him some money or at least not lose him any, the hell with equal rights, the Oopsies of the world say.

King’s remarkable I Have a Dream speech and the reality of his life is a reminder to all of us that the fight for equal rights requires much more than lip service. Whether by intention or default, the profits-over-people crowd – packed with Oopsies – does nothing more than support the very forces that deny equal rights.

And so on this day we pray the Oopsies among us grow their humanity; to contribute to the denial of equal rights is to diminish your own humanity and the humanity of others. In the meantime, those of us who do our best to live the dream, rather than just talk the dream, will keep on keeping on.

We miss you Martin.

We shall overcome.

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Notes From an Advocate

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The last thing you encounter as an advocate is a shortage of dishonesty. It comes at you from every direction.

As readers of this blog know, the New York Department of Health has directed anywhere from eight to 18 agencies across the state to transfer brain injury survivors living in the community from their care even though many of the providers have adhered to all DOH requests, even though the lives of the survivors will be brutally disrupted and traumatized, and even though some survivors will likely find themselves back in nursing homes because there are no agencies in their area to pick up the slack, and even though the DOH has not talked to the survivors about this.

DOH Deputy Commissioner Mark Kissinger and his staff held  a telephone conference yesterday with the leadership of the TBISCC (Traumatic Brain Injury Service Coordinating Council). The TBISCC is headed by Michael Kaplen (former president of the Brain Injury Association of NY State and a man who has fought hard for the rights of brain injury survivors for years) and comprised of a group of people whose hearts and souls are committed to fact that all people living with brain injuries deserve a chance to reach their maximum level of independence. While I was not present at the meeting, I can tell you from firsthand experience that Kaplen and Council members advocate for survivors with all their might. So does the Brain Injury Association of NY State.

During this meeting Kissinger told the council that something along the lines of 63 brain injury survivors would have their lives disrupted by the DOH directive. He is misinformed or lying. Sources tell me more than 100 survivors in the New York City area alone will be effected by this and there is non-NYC provider faced with having to discharge 50 survivors. In other words, the number of brain injury survivors who will have their freedom of choice, meaning their independence ,meaning their rights as American citizens denied, is probably in the hundreds, if not more.

Yesterday morning I called Kissinger’s office and spoke to a person named Sheri. I told her that as head of the Kahrmann Advocacy Coalition I wanted to schedule a meeting with Kissinger and do so before we say, organize a sit-in in the lobby and bring the media. She said she would get back to me and she did, by email, later in the day, saying they were working on putting together the “phone conference” I requested with Kissinger. I wrote back reminding her – as if she needed reminding – that I did not ask for a phone conference, I asked for an in-person meeting.

As to why this is all happening? Here’s a thought. The DOH directive (see recent blog pieces for more complete explanation) will likely send quite a few people back into nursing homes. Given that some areas of the state will be left without agencies to provide community support staff, other survivors won’t be able to be discharged from nursing homes. Take these observations and connect them to this one; NY’s Nursing Home Transition Waiver is designed to allow people to leave nursing homes and return to life in the community. Is is possible this directive will short circuit that? If so, would it not be reasonable to ask if maybe the Nursing Home Lobby is behind all this?

Anyway, more notes to come. Keep the faith.

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