(no subject)
This is going to be long. I hope you've all peed. Before I begin, I will say this: I have saved almost every post made to her LJ on this. The reason for me doing this is because I had a strong feeling they would be deleted - and they were. I'm not going to actually post the html I saved, but if there is anyone who really wants it that badly, I can supply it. You'll have to forgive me if this seems jumbled at times, there's a lot to get through.
We start this off... well, actually, this starts off a lot earlier, but for now, we will focus on the most recent event. I woke up on Sunday morning to find this post in fireandsmoke, AKA titsy_mcclure further AKA RadiantAeryn's (for those in Farscape fandom) LJ:
10:52 AM
This is Cindy. There was a very bad car accident. Desi and my husband. Very bad roads. More information later. Pray, for God is the God of miracles. His specialty is desperate situations.
What immediately comes to my mind is that she's faking it. There are several reasons for this:
1. The faked oopherectomy.
Several months ago, Titsy claims that she got drunk, passed out, and a friend from her firefighting station just happened to come by and find her passed out gushing blood. This all occurs a day or two after her 'breakup' with her so-called boyfriend (who was pretty much only in it for the sex). She says - or rather, someone who is supposedly 'Cindy', one of her real life friends - that she was rushed to the hospital, loosing blood badly. Several hours later, there is another post - claiming now that the doctors
have determined it is an ovarian cyst and is being removed. The next day, a new post appears - surgery went well, they are letting her out of the hospital to go home! Less than 2 weeks later, she posts in her journal about attending a fire call.
Now. Many of you know that in august 02 I had an ovarian cyst that was 12 cm in diameter removed, along with the ovary it killed. It was a procedure that took several hours, had caused me pain for days in advance (as well as 2 months prior, when I must've upset it while in the process of moving). In it, I had a 6 inch incision across my lower abdomen. It took 10 staples to close up. I was laid up in the hospital for - while my memory is fuzzy on this - the better part of a week. I could not do anything for weeks after without pain. Not walking. Not laying down, not sitting, not even laughing (yes yes I'm sure you all remember 'hahaOWFUCK'). I wasn't allowed to drive for a grand total of 3 weeks. I had pain for at least 2 months following the surgery. Today, 3 1/2 years later, there are parts of the tissue surrounding the incision that are still numb.
I never had massive gushing blood to the point of threatening my life. Titsy says she was on her period - I was, as well, when this happened. My cyst was bigger, and it was leaking (I was told by the doctor who did my surgery that when she cut me open, it was 'ready to pop'). I did not have gushing blood in the least. I was in the hospital for at least 2 full days before they operated me. I was groggy to hell on anaesthesia and morphine for the 2-3 days following the surgery. There is no way that this sort of surgery is something that they would release you the next day.
Titsy is claiming now that her cyst was 'about the size of a kiwi' over the phone. That they did this surgery lapriscopically. I sincerely doubt this, if for no other reason that if she were losing blood as rapidly as she claimed, that they would go in and take care of this lapriscopically. Not to mention - I was told when I had mine that they were unable to determine the size - it could have been anywhere from 7-15 cm - until they cut me open(and that it would be very difficult to do it lapriscopically if it was over 7 cm). I'd say an average sized kiwi fruit falls into the lower end of that range, wouldn't you?
But what really, really is the kicker is how she casually mentioned going on a fire call less than 2 weeks later. I assume that firefighting is a strenuous activity. The sort that any doctor worth his salt would tell you you can't do for several weeks after this sort of surgery.
THAT is when I first doubted the veracity of her story, and several weeks later I voiced it to some mutual friends, who agreed with me. On the chance that I was wrong, and her story was true, I didn't say anything. I let it slide, for the sake of friendship.
2. Titsy has complained about this Cindy character before in her LJ. As recently as within the last month, even. If I had written entries about someone that were not very flattering and gone through the effort to hide it from them, I would not be allowing them my password to get in and look at these entries. And from what Titsy has said in the past about this Cindy, she is a nosy sort.
3. If it were me, and my husband and one of my friends were both in the hospital, both with severe injuries, I would be far more worried about their welfare. Worried enough that while I may make a phone post to let people online know what was going on, I would not hunt down a computer (or oh-so-conveniently be carrying a laptop) so that I could log onto someone else's livejournal to make updates every 2-4 hours. In fact, to be quite downright selfish, I think I would be more worried about the husband with the crushed leg than the friend with the cracked ribs.
But, I don't say anything. This could be legit, so I'll wait to see what happens next and give her the benefit of the doubt.
At 1:28PM, this is posted:
In lounge at hospital updating families via e-mail. Both are in intensive care or what they call it when people are first brought in? I forget. The truck hit an icy spot and slammed into another car before the truck spinned and the passenger side smashed into a telephone poll that broke and fell down on the truck. The fire department had to cut them out of the car. Jeff was barely awake and she was not... I do not know the extent of injuries at this time, they are still determining and will not let me in to see them. It is hard to be scared for two people at once. PLEASE PRAY.
Okay, fine, whatever. Interestingly, 2 of the 3 comments to this post are requests for information on what hospital she's in. Neither one is responded to with information.
Next post, this at 4:16:
This is going to be very long. They are both awake right now. Jeff has a shattered leg and broken hip and he has a very severe concussion. Desi has major facial swelling because of the shattered windshield. There are still pieces of glass in there. Three of her ribs are broken. Her shoulder was dislocated by the impact. Some of her fingers were crushed. She has a concussion too. They both have very bad head aches but they will pull through and are on a lot of drugs. I priase God in Heaven above and thank everyone for their prayers. They are not out of the woods all the way yet so please continue with prayers.
I think it is time to introduce myself. I first met Desi at a fire department cook out. I have played guitar and sung blue grass music for almost 25 years both with church and because music is a true love of mine. When the department needed some entertainment I brought my gear and was happy to play. It is a very small town and my husband and I know most of the fire fighters. Blue grass and folk music are my calling but I know a lot of other songs that are good for all kinds of occasions. There was a girl there that was shy but looked like she could use a friend. I asked her if she could sing and played the only song that I knew to play that she also knew the words to. It was You Were Meant For Me by Jewel. The music that came out of her mouth was blessed by God. I have never heard someone with a quality of voice like hers. It is good but there is something else to it that is hard to explain. Truly, truly blessed by God. The Lord put it on my heart that I should reach out to her as a friend and I did. I feel I was led to her through music as a way to be her friend. The way God set up our meeting and showed me to this little girl that needed love so badly. She has become like a little sister to me and I am blessed to have her in my life. The thought of almost losing her today was very hard on me.
I know that it is very odd to hear this because no one knows me. But my husband really had me scared. I remember the first day the Lord laid it on my heart to love him. We had been friends through high school, but never dated until I came back from a long stay in Italy. We were in a bar one day and I looked at him and saw everyone he was friends with and how much they all liked this guy. Just really loved him, all of his friends. And I decided that yes, I was going to love him, too. We have been married for 17 years and it as not been all easy. We put a lot of work into our marriage and I am so glad. There were even times early on I thought I had married the wrong man. I put my faith in the Lord and here we are today. He is not an easy man to live with but he is worth the effort to me. I came very close to losing my best friend today. I have never taken him for granted but I am so relieved that it is not our time to part ways.
Praise God! You do not always know what you have until you almost lose it!
Oh yes and we are in New York. I had Desi call Adam so that someone knows she is okay.
New York. New York has a lot of hospitals, I bet. It's interesting that Titsy also never made any mention of a trip to New York, either. Notice there's no mention of a town, or of a hospital name, either. It also seems to me that for such an incident as the accident described above, they got of rather light in terms of injuries. I am also fairly sure that when you have a concussion, they don't put you on any drugs (like morphine) because those drugs will make you sleepy, and when you have a concussion, one of the worst things you can do is sleep.
Next, at 7:48 PM:
Her left lung has collapsed. She has decided she does not want to be put on respirators and won't allow a chest tube to be put in. I do not know what to do.
How do I reply to the comments being made? I do not know how this works. I just figured out how to edit.
Oh, the melodrama. I guess things weren't life-threatening enough before. Please also take notice at how these posts seem to be coming at regular, 3 hour intervals. I also find it difficult to believe someone who has managed to log onto LJ and make updates is not able to find and click on the 'reply to this' hotlink... but I think I find it harder to believe that someone who had a collapsed lung and could not breathe would make the decision to not have it treated.
11:45PM:
Last update for tonight. I logged into instant messanger from the lounge and ended up having half conversations with some of you because the laptop I brought in was logged in and being used at the same time. I apologize to a few of you for that I was not ignoring you. I thought people stopped responding to me when the window was coming up on the wrong computer. But it was pleasant speaking with you all. I do not know what else to say but she is sleeping fitfully now and is on a high dosage of morphine. I will update again tomorrow. I think I should make my own journal to update instead of filling space here. Good night and god bless.
Once again - putting someone with a concussion on morphine?!
Next we get to the 'I really can't believe this shit anymore' post. This is when I actively begin my researching:
10:05 AM, Monday:
Dear LiveJournal,
My name is Dr. Kendrick and I am the attending physician seeing to your friend.
When Desiree first requested I sit down and give everyone an update on the situation here, I was immediately surprised and interested. As a medical doctor, the advances of the computer age in regard to humanity have long been known as valuable ones to myself and my colleagues. The idea that people interact as friends from different parts of the country as though they were in each other’s living rooms is amazing and has wonderful healing properties for the soul. I have heard of internet journaling but never had the opportunity to interact with it. For a person that has quickly become one of my favorite patients, I was willing to set aside a few minutes to say a few words.
It is not hard upon meeting her to see that her effervescent personality is one of her greatest assets. I had never met this person before she came into the emergency room, but it was clear from the onset that her strength of character is a force to be reckoned with. Pneumothorax (or a simple collapsed lung, in layman’s terms) has simple procedures associated with its correction; refusal of those is not something one often sees. Both myself and Cindy tried much convincing and cajoling, nothing was working. I, myself, was becoming frustrated. It is painful to watch, when you know exactly what the body is doing to itself. It is quiet like pneumonia; one rarely dies from the condition itself, but from complications connected to. Suffocating to death is not a pleasant experience.
We were out of hope late last night when she asked to make a phone call. I often tell patients in the same condition that their Darth Vader breathing makes it hard to understand them, but gave permission and the requested privacy. When we were called back into the room there was a ghost of a smile on her face and she was submitting to the necessary steps to save her breathing, which had already begun to rattle in her chest. I inquired as to who had caused the change of heart, but the answer I received was a smiled ‘just some guy’ and to get on with it. Well, Just Some Guy, my thanks go out to you. You saved her life.
She was placed on a machine to aid her breathing immediately and a simple chest tube was inserted this morning at around 6am. The actual procedure is very interesting but assuredly not something you're interested in; I will say instead that fluids were drained and pressure was relieved from her lung. The swelling in her face has gone down. There are minimal scratrches. I anticipate no farther complications. I am optimistic she should be discharged from here by Thursday at the latest.
I will turn the keyboard over to Cindy and thank everyone. This experience has aroused my interest. I may just have to invest in a LiveJournal of my own. You are all very good friends to care about Desiree in such a way.
Yours,
Julie M. Kendrick
The missing doctor: While whitepages.com is not always the best resource, thanks to unlisted numbers, it is useful. So I went and tried to look up her doctor's name in the entire state of New York. I tried the following permutations with the following results, not only in Whitepages, but in Google:
1. Julie Kendrick - none
2. Julie M Kendrick - none
3. J M Kendrick - none female
4. J Kendrick - none female
Now, I can go search google for my name and get at least one hit. One would think a doctor, especially one who is an attending at a hospital and possibly even has a practice, would have their name come up when you search for them. Nothing.
Certainly, I am not the only person who must find it fishy that an attending doctor in an emergency room would agree to take time out from their rounds and other patients to write an LJ entry for someone while claiming to not know what LJ even was - let alone someone who could not properly describe the symptoms and treatment of a collapsed lung - both of which I got info on from someone who has experienced it first hand, multiple times.
Now, the medical stuff regarding the lung:
This following comes from someone who has had a collapsed lung more than once before: (Quas if you don't want me quoting this let me know)
Quasadu> the line that really gets me is "actual procedure is very interesting but assuredly not something you're interested in"
Lyme> translation being 'I don't know anything about the actual procedure'
Quasadu> yeah
Quasadu> and being someone who does, i can assure you, there is nothing interesting about it
Quasadu> they cut a hole in your chest and slip a tube in there to suck all the crap out
Quasadu> that's as interesting as it gets
Fraggle> hegugh. Ow.
Quasadu> also. no, it's nothing at all even remotely like pneumonia
Lyme> yeah, somehow I doubt that.
Fraggle> Somehow I would think a lung collapsing wouldn't really be comparable to other ailments.
Quasadu> pneumonia is an infection. pneumothorax is a collapsed lung
Quasadu> biiiiiiig difference
Quasadu> to say people die from complications of pnuemothorax like suffocation is like saying that people who get shot die of complications like bleeding to death
Quasadu> a direct result is not a complication
Quasadu> more pickiness... but i doubt she'd be 'put on a machine to aid her breathing'... she's be 'put on oxygen' which is different and is what a doctor would have said
Lyme> well, a machine to aid breathing would manually pump air out of your lungs
Lyme> oxygen would just be one off those tube things they put in your nose.
Lyme> right?
Quasadu> yeah. and that's what they would give her
Quasadu> just oxygen
Quasadu> the chest tube drains the fluid and air from between the chest wall and lung, the lung will handle the breathing on its own. the oxygen is just to help it get enough O2 since it's not getting as much volume
Quasadu> ok, i promise to shut up about it after this, but this post is really bothering me
Quasadu> "which had already begun to rattle in her chest"
Quasadu> your breathing does not rattle when you have a collapsed lung
Quasadu> your breath deosn't anything
Quasadu> you don't have any
Quasadu> when you listen to someone's breathing and hear rattling, they have fluid in the lung
Quasadu> when they have a collapsed lung, you hear nothing
10:29PM:
So tired. I have a 'too much sleep' headache. Drugs aren't touching the groggy.
They are transporting Jeff and I to Charlotte Hungerford hospital in Torrington tomorrow. It's closer to Cindy and home. Jeff will have to stay for a bit. I visited him today, but he's feeling guilty and is drugged-up cranky.
It's taken me a half hour to write this much. Ugh.
Cindy took the first I.D I was given when I was just an ER patient and scanned it in for me and emailed it. Lookit, mom, I'm cool. I never appreciated LJ Scrapbook before.
After this sentence, there is an image, which I have linked below.
But first, This hospital: Charlotte Hungerford. In addition to the link to their main site, there is also this handy link: http://www.charlottesweb.hungerford.org/CHH123NUMBERS.htm. The area code, which isn't listed, is 860.
I called them twice today. Actually, I called them more than twice, because I called patient relations, the ICU, as well as the emergency department number. I was told each time that there was no patient admitted with her name.
Titsy says that because I did not call the right number, I could not determine that she was there. Funny - patient relations told me when I asked that if there was someone admitted to the hospital by that name, it would have shown up in their computer. But I guess the hospital just forgot she was there, huh?
She also says that the exchange (first 3 numbers after the area code) were the same as her home phone number. That in of itself is suspicious - something I find even moreso when none of the phone numbers I could find for the hospital started with the same 3 digits.
Nevermind that I do not think a hospital would allow a patient with a collapsed lung who had only had a chest tube inserted the morning prior to be transferred to another hospital a state away - let alone, into the ER - because normally, they only transfer patients who are stable, unless the hospital they are being transferred to has some sort of necessary equipment that the other doesn't. Not only that, but she claimed on the phone, when I remarked on how she must be in 'the quietest hospital ever' (no background noise, whatsoever) that she was in a private room. In the ER? But, what do I know - I've only ever been into an emergency room 5 or 6 times in the past 6 years (at least 3 times because of my dad, 2 times because of me).
Then, there's the ID bracelet. Fishy to begin with - the extremely pixelised text, the lack of a hospital name on the bracelet. I don't think I've ever seen a hospital bracelet without the hospital name on it. So I took to google image search, and typed in 'hospital bracelet'. You can do this search yourself. If you go to the fifth page, you will find an image on a tripod website. You will find that certain features on this image are exactly the same as the one on Titsy's:
Titsy's ID Which was stored originally at http://pics.livejournal.com/fireandsmoke/pic/00012wea/s640x480
The ID I found on google. The googlesearch page: http://images.google.com/images?q=hospital+bracelet&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&start=80&sa=N four images down, one over. The direct URL to this ID is http://e-allen0.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/id.jpg
1. The barcode at the top.
2. The positioning of the bracelet.
3. If you look at the bottom edge, you can see what appears to be the tips of 2 fingers holding the bracelet in the scanner. These appear on Titsy's as well
4. Look at the numbers along the bottom of the bracelet. You will find that they are the same digits as those on Titsy's, and the numbers are even smudged/obscured in the same fashion.
She took this image, enlarged it, cropped the right side, covered over the original data, and inserted her own. I put the bar over her real name, but I have the original she posted intact, still, if anyone wants to see it.
I have been using PSP and photoshop since I was 15. I am pretty good at spotting photomanipulated images and tricks used to hide that they have been manipulated.
There is also this question: if she is still in the hospital, let alone a hospital in another state, how did Cindy remove this bracelet, find a scanner, and email it to her if she'd only been in the hospital for 24 hours? They generally do not let patients remove their ID tags until they have been discharged.
Backtracking to the 'drugs': She is saying that she was on a morphine drip yesterday, but she isn't anymore. Now, those of you who know about morphine, opiates, and their effects, raise your hand. Oh, wait, I do. Morphine? Makes you sleepy. Makes you forgetful, and is very addictive. Getting off it has a myriad of nasty effects. Even the small amounts you get in the hospital makes you have withdrawals. But most importantly, if someone had cut open your chest to insert a tube just yesterday morning, you'd still be on morphine tonight, or you would be very angry that you weren't.
And when I spoke to her on the phone between 5:15 and 6:30 tonight, she sounded awful damn good for someone who had multiple facial wounds, a tube in their chest, a reinflating lung (Which, by the way, takes days of treatment, usually), and an oxygen hose tacked on their face.
I am however getting slightly ahead of myself.
This afternoon, she posted a phone number that was supposedly to her hospital room (that has a different exchangefrom all the other hospital numbers). This is a post I didn't save - I was at work at the time and I have since been removed from her FL (and I believe the entry has probably been deleted, too). I was doing a search for this and I, on a whim, put in her name to google and the first page it pulled up was for her place of work.
Well, logically, if she was in a car accident, she wouldn't be at work, right?
I called her place of work, around 3:30 this afternoon. I know her job is answering the phones, so I figured this - I would call up, give a fake name, and ask for an extension that was similar to hers, when I got that person on the phone, I would say 'Oh, I'm sorry, I needed to talk to Titsy, I must have asked for the wrong extension. Is she in today?'
The woman on the line then said 'Titsy? Yes, she's the one who transferred you to me!' so I apologised and said that I would hang up and call again.
When I told her this over the phone, Titsy said that no, I had spoken to her coworker Anne, and that the woman whose extension I had asked for didn't know she was out of the office that day because she worked on a different floor and came in by a different door.
Now. My department at work, here, it's about 30 people strong. I'm sure her office is either comparable in size or smaller - after all, an insurance agency is probably going to be smaller than the main office for all of Florida Department of Law Enforcement. If a coworker got into a car accident, we would all know about it.
When I tell her this, she says that her coworkers did not give out this information because of privacy issues. I believe if this was the case, said coworker would have said 'No, I'm sorry, she's not in today', not 'Oh, yeah, you were talking to her just a second ago'.
Back to me calling her. I tried both numbers I had, got her on the one that was her 'hospital room'. And I basically confronted her about this and, of course, she denied it. I also confronted her about all of the other myriad stupid shit she's been doing over the past 2 years.
She continued to tell me 'you keep interrupting me, you won't let me explain' when I demanded that she come clean to everyone on the internet about these lies, or that I would. This happened for probably an hour, over the course of 2 phone calls. At the end of the second one, she was telling me things like 'Friends don't tell other friends how to live their life' and 'It's my life, I can do what I want' (Me, I say MY friends don't lie to me about things like serious medical emergencies - and then continue to lie even after you catch them).
I tell her that congratulations, she has joined the other 2 people who have managed to Cross The Line and hang up. And I turn off my phone, because I still have work I need to get done before going home and I don't want to talk to her anymore if she's going to continue to deny it, and my phone doesn't get calls inside the FDLE building 90% of the time, anyway.
As I am leaving work, I turn my phone back on and find there is a voicemail for 6:44, saying that I should call her and 'tell her what I want'. Well, the last request is rather vague, so I call. Ask her what she meant by that, at which point she says in an airy voice, that she's been talking to her friends (interesting, since in the post I didn't save she had said that they were taking her laptop away from her) and she knows who is going to 'stick by her and who is going to believe what they want'. At this point I tell her "Well, we'll see about that after I post what I have" and hang up.
Then drive home, walk the dog, change out of my work clothes, and spend the next hour and a half writing this up.
I would also like to point out, Titsy's AIM name was online all throughout this period, and never once away. In fact, I checked it several times to see its idle time, and it was never over 2 hours.
So, that's everything, I think. I may be missing stuff. I don't know. As I said, there is a lot. When you put all of this together, I find it impossible to believe anything that she's saying.
Edit: I had these links passed onto me, and I am linking them here with trelana's permission, regarding her experiences with this:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/trelana/236282.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/trelana/236736.html
The second also contains the images of the ID bracelets.
Edit the second, Wednesday morning: I have gotten permission from trelana to post the following info sent in an email:
There's significant IP address evidence that shows all actions taken by
her account (both fireandsmoke, and her newly back-in-use account
greentealeaf) were made solely from her home and work IPs.
http://home.earthlink.net/~trelana/fireandsmoke/tqc.html is a post made to
thequestionclub today by dishpan_nipples (another person on her friends
list), to which she commented with her greentealeaf account. I
confirmed with one of the maintainers of the community that the IP she
was posting from was her work IP (63.109.170.138) which confirms she was
at work at Roberts Insurance Co at the times of those comments (08:15PM
and 08:25PM UTC, or 3:15PM and 3:25PM Eastern Standard Time). For
reference, her home IP is 68.9.23.178.
[Note: I have decided to post the IP addies after all. If doing that violates LJTOS or something, let me know and I'll remove them, K?}
The following is the email I sent to those who did request it in
screened comments. It was written up yesterday evening after about 36
hours straight of being awake, so it's not entirely coherent. The most
glaring bit of incoherency is probably 'I was a volunteer EMT in
Rochester, NY working out of Strong Memorial Hospital's trauma center
until late 2001,' which if you're familiar with EMS in NY makes sense,
but otherwise is somewhat confusing. I was a volunteer with Perinton
Volunteer Ambulance Corps ( http://www.pvac.org/ ), whose medical
direction was based out of Strong Memorial Hospital, as the regional
trauma center for the greater Rochester area.
-----
After the doctor post in Desiree's journal this morning, I made a number
of calls to the trauma centers across the eastern half of NY. At each,
I spoke to the admissions department, and had them double-check both by
patient name and doctor name. None of these hospitals have any record
of a patient by Desiree's name, a twin casualty MVA with extraction
being brought in around the time in question, nor of a doctor by the
name Julie M. Kendrick either on staff or with facility privileges.
These hospitals constitute the entirety of trauma centers in the eastern
half of the state of NY, including the New York City and Long Island
region, both regional and area centers (regionals handle the more
difficult, complex cases, while area trauma centers serve as triage to
patients that need to be transferred to a more advanced regional trauma
center). All MVAs with significant injury (significant injury is defined
by the medical director in charge of emergency services in the area at
the time in question, but all thoracic injuries of note are as a rule
classed as significant, and both simple and tension pneumos are
definitely high-grade significant injuries) in the state of NY are
transported to either an area or regional trauma center, not a
non-trauma center local hospital, per both my training (out of date at
this point, I was a volunteer EMT in Rochester, NY working out of Strong
Memorial Hospital's trauma center until late 2001, and before that in
Texas) and confirmation by hospital staff.
Roughly the order I called the trauma centers in, and numbers I've called:
Hudson Valley Region
Regional Trauma Center
Westchester County Medical Center -- 914-493-7000
Area Trauma Centers
Good Samaritan Hospital -- 845-368-5000
Nyack Hospital -- 845-348-2000
Sound Shore Medical Center -- 914-632-5000
St. Francis Hospital -- 845-483-5000
Northeast New York Region
Regional Trauma Center
Lifestar Regional Trauma System, Albany Medical Center Hospital --
518-262-3125
Area Trauma Centers
Champlain Valley Physicians' Hospital and Medical Center --
518-561-2000
Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital -- 607-547-3456
Suffolk Region
Regional Trauma Center
University Hospital SUNY Stony Brook -- 631-444-4000
Area Trauma Centers
Brookhaven Memorial Hospital -- 631-654-7100
Good Samaritan Hospital -- 631-376-3000
Huntington Hospital -- 631-351-2000
Southside Hospital -- 631-968-3316
Nassau Region
Regional Trauma Centers
Nassau County Medical Center -- 516-572-0123
North Shore University Hospital -- 516-562-0100
Winthrop University Hospital -- 516-663-0333
Area Trauma Centers
Mercy Medical Center of Long Island -- 516-705-2525
South Nassau Communities Hospital -- 516-632-3990
New York City Area
Regional Trauma Centers
Bellevue Hospital Center -- 212-562-1000
Brookdale Hospital Medical Center -- 718-240-5000
Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens -- 718-558-2510
City Hospital Center at Elmhurst -- 718-334-4000
Harlem Hospital Center -- 212-939-1000
Jacobi Medical Center -- 718-918-5000
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center -- 718-206-6075
Kings County Hospital Center -- 718-245-3131
Lincoln Medical Health Center -- 718-579-5000
Lutheran Medical Center -- 718-630-7000
New York Hospital Queens -- 718-670-1231
New York Presbyterian Hospital -- 212-305-2500
St. Barnabas Hospital -- 718-960-9000
St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center -- 212-523-7780
St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center -- 212-604-8090
St. Vincent's Richmond -- 718-818-2350
Staten Island University Hospital -- 718-226-9000
When over two hours on the phone with these hospitals produced no
results, either in patient or physician names, I turned to the Office of
the Professions of the New York Department of Education, which oversees
physician licensure, of both MD and DOs, in New York (the Department of
Health in NY does not oversee licensure, only administrative and
disciplinary actions with regards to physicians). They have an online
verification service located at
http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm -- no doctor by the name of Julie
M. Kendrick is licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York,
nor has there been one at any time at least the last ten years. This
can be verified either through the web site or by calling the department
directly at 1-518-474-3817. The closest record found is for a Juliette
S. Kendrick, license number 144456, who does not currently reside in New
York state and has tendered her notice to the Department of Education
that she does not intend to practice medicine in the state of NY for the
forseeable future.
When checking the licensure of doctor Julie M. Kendrick failed, I turned
to the American Medical Association. The AMA is not a regulating body,
but rather is a member-driven organisation. Not all physicians are
members of the AMA, nor are they required to be. The AMA does, however,
maintain an up-to-date database, searchable by state, of all physicians
(both MD and DO) licensed to practice in the United States, at
http://www.ama-assn.org/apps/captcha/verify.cgi?reason=nocookie&method=GET&url=http://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/disclaimer.jsp
.
This database includes both AMA members and non-AMA members, and covers
the entirety of licensed physicians in the United States. There is no
record of a Dr. Julie Kendrick in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Vermont, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania (the entirety of states bordering
New York).
The other information I have is more circumstantial -- things such as
such a posting by a doctor very likely being a gross violation of the
HIPAA laws which would mean she was risking censure by disciplinary
board or revocation of her license to make such a post, as it's
essentially disseminating private medical information to a public
audience. The details of the medical treatment, as well, were
questionable -- you're not placed on a ventilator as treatment of a
pneumothorax, either simple or tension -- doing so can significantly
worsen the condition. An intercostal chest drain needs to be inserted,
*especially* in the case of positive-pressure ventilation being applied,
to prevent further buildup of pressure in the pleural space. Further,
pneumothorax doesn't present with rattling breathing -- it presents with
decreased breath sounds in the affected lobe, and dependant on the
severity, reduced O2 blood saturation.
There were many other things that rang questionable to me in the posts
over the last 36 hours -- the spelling of LiveJournal, complete with the
capital J, being counterintuitive at best to people unfamiliar with
LiveJournal, the ease of internet availability in a hospital, which is
generally very difficult to obtain (especially in patients' rooms)
because of potential interference of the laptop with monitoring
equipment (anyone who has ever been told to turn their cell phone off in
a hospital is familiar with this concept), the posting of confidential
information by the attending in all likelihood in violation of HIPAA
(such information is only releaseable under HIPAA with a signed release,
and then only to named individuals. Such a signed release must be
signed in full cognizance of the ramifications of such a release, which
is impossible while on morphine -- any paperwork signed while on
narcotics is automatically under question. Cindy could not have signed
it, unless she's Desiree's health care proxy, which has never been
mentioned, and such a proxy is something I very seriously doubt was in
place given the requirement to have paperwork prepared and on hand to
verify such a legal standing).
I don't like calling people out on things like this, and I don't do it
without significant research to back up what I say. I dislike doubting
people I consider friends, especially, but I've learned over the last 15
years around the internet and other online services (FIDONet, etc) to
take everything I read with a grain of salt, and to always, always think
critically and think twice before taking things at face value when an
emotionally straining situation is involved.
-
In regards to the 'hospital room' phone numbeR:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 413
Location: SIMSBURY
Other Info: CLEC
The information for the two on-site prefixes listed on the hospital's
number list are:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 496
Location: Torrington
Other Info:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 489
Location: Torrington
Other Info:
The 482 prefix is for the credit union, and does not occur elsewhere on
hospital grounds, and the 738 prefixes are hosted off-site (738 is a
Winsted prefix). CLEC ('Competitive Local Exchange Carrier') numbers
are numbers which are owned by the non-primary carriers in the area (the
ones that came about after deregulation allowed for more than one phone
company to offer local phone service in a given area. The primary owner
of the phone line equipment in that area is, I *believe*, Verizon -- I
can call and check that during business hours tomorrow. They charge the
CLECs to use their equipment, and the CLEC then resells this service to
end users. Basically, you have a local primary carrier who owns the
phone equipment and provides the majority of phone service to the area,
but you have the option of going to an alternate provider who leases use
of the primary carrier's lines.)
Even disregarding the reverse lookup of the 860-413-xxxx number since at
times reversing a phone number doesn't bring you the most up-to-date
information so far as the subscriber and address are concerned (it does,
however, remain that the exchange belongs to a CLEC and is physically
located in the Simsbury service area -- while technically that
particular phone number could have been transferred from the CLEC to an
alternate CLEC or the primary provider because of the new portable local
number provisions, it would still be required to be attached to an
address within the Simsbury service area), it's explicitly impossible
for that number to be located in the hospital itself. The prefix
boundaries are set by the FCC, and 860-413 is not in the same physical
location as 860-496 or 860-489. Further, it would make *zero* sense for
a large company to have their phone service through the primary
equipment owner (as is standard with enterprise-level phone service),
but have just a couple numbers that they, for some inexplicable reason,
pay a CLEC an inflated price for rather than have it bundled with a 50
line or 75 line monthly package from the provider.
(Emphasis is mine, BTW)
And I know this post is getting even longer, and I apologise for that, but I'm not going to cut it. This is not something I want people to be able to just scroll on by. I am also trying to keep all of the information on one post, and YES, I am saving comment notifications, incase certain parties decide to delete them after they make them.
EDIT 4 Munchausen by Internet: Facetious internet claims. You may also want to check out this link: http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/articles/chronic/faking.html
We start this off... well, actually, this starts off a lot earlier, but for now, we will focus on the most recent event. I woke up on Sunday morning to find this post in fireandsmoke, AKA titsy_mcclure further AKA RadiantAeryn's (for those in Farscape fandom) LJ:
10:52 AM
This is Cindy. There was a very bad car accident. Desi and my husband. Very bad roads. More information later. Pray, for God is the God of miracles. His specialty is desperate situations.
What immediately comes to my mind is that she's faking it. There are several reasons for this:
1. The faked oopherectomy.
Several months ago, Titsy claims that she got drunk, passed out, and a friend from her firefighting station just happened to come by and find her passed out gushing blood. This all occurs a day or two after her 'breakup' with her so-called boyfriend (who was pretty much only in it for the sex). She says - or rather, someone who is supposedly 'Cindy', one of her real life friends - that she was rushed to the hospital, loosing blood badly. Several hours later, there is another post - claiming now that the doctors
have determined it is an ovarian cyst and is being removed. The next day, a new post appears - surgery went well, they are letting her out of the hospital to go home! Less than 2 weeks later, she posts in her journal about attending a fire call.
Now. Many of you know that in august 02 I had an ovarian cyst that was 12 cm in diameter removed, along with the ovary it killed. It was a procedure that took several hours, had caused me pain for days in advance (as well as 2 months prior, when I must've upset it while in the process of moving). In it, I had a 6 inch incision across my lower abdomen. It took 10 staples to close up. I was laid up in the hospital for - while my memory is fuzzy on this - the better part of a week. I could not do anything for weeks after without pain. Not walking. Not laying down, not sitting, not even laughing (yes yes I'm sure you all remember 'hahaOWFUCK'). I wasn't allowed to drive for a grand total of 3 weeks. I had pain for at least 2 months following the surgery. Today, 3 1/2 years later, there are parts of the tissue surrounding the incision that are still numb.
I never had massive gushing blood to the point of threatening my life. Titsy says she was on her period - I was, as well, when this happened. My cyst was bigger, and it was leaking (I was told by the doctor who did my surgery that when she cut me open, it was 'ready to pop'). I did not have gushing blood in the least. I was in the hospital for at least 2 full days before they operated me. I was groggy to hell on anaesthesia and morphine for the 2-3 days following the surgery. There is no way that this sort of surgery is something that they would release you the next day.
Titsy is claiming now that her cyst was 'about the size of a kiwi' over the phone. That they did this surgery lapriscopically. I sincerely doubt this, if for no other reason that if she were losing blood as rapidly as she claimed, that they would go in and take care of this lapriscopically. Not to mention - I was told when I had mine that they were unable to determine the size - it could have been anywhere from 7-15 cm - until they cut me open(and that it would be very difficult to do it lapriscopically if it was over 7 cm). I'd say an average sized kiwi fruit falls into the lower end of that range, wouldn't you?
But what really, really is the kicker is how she casually mentioned going on a fire call less than 2 weeks later. I assume that firefighting is a strenuous activity. The sort that any doctor worth his salt would tell you you can't do for several weeks after this sort of surgery.
THAT is when I first doubted the veracity of her story, and several weeks later I voiced it to some mutual friends, who agreed with me. On the chance that I was wrong, and her story was true, I didn't say anything. I let it slide, for the sake of friendship.
2. Titsy has complained about this Cindy character before in her LJ. As recently as within the last month, even. If I had written entries about someone that were not very flattering and gone through the effort to hide it from them, I would not be allowing them my password to get in and look at these entries. And from what Titsy has said in the past about this Cindy, she is a nosy sort.
3. If it were me, and my husband and one of my friends were both in the hospital, both with severe injuries, I would be far more worried about their welfare. Worried enough that while I may make a phone post to let people online know what was going on, I would not hunt down a computer (or oh-so-conveniently be carrying a laptop) so that I could log onto someone else's livejournal to make updates every 2-4 hours. In fact, to be quite downright selfish, I think I would be more worried about the husband with the crushed leg than the friend with the cracked ribs.
But, I don't say anything. This could be legit, so I'll wait to see what happens next and give her the benefit of the doubt.
At 1:28PM, this is posted:
In lounge at hospital updating families via e-mail. Both are in intensive care or what they call it when people are first brought in? I forget. The truck hit an icy spot and slammed into another car before the truck spinned and the passenger side smashed into a telephone poll that broke and fell down on the truck. The fire department had to cut them out of the car. Jeff was barely awake and she was not... I do not know the extent of injuries at this time, they are still determining and will not let me in to see them. It is hard to be scared for two people at once. PLEASE PRAY.
Okay, fine, whatever. Interestingly, 2 of the 3 comments to this post are requests for information on what hospital she's in. Neither one is responded to with information.
Next post, this at 4:16:
This is going to be very long. They are both awake right now. Jeff has a shattered leg and broken hip and he has a very severe concussion. Desi has major facial swelling because of the shattered windshield. There are still pieces of glass in there. Three of her ribs are broken. Her shoulder was dislocated by the impact. Some of her fingers were crushed. She has a concussion too. They both have very bad head aches but they will pull through and are on a lot of drugs. I priase God in Heaven above and thank everyone for their prayers. They are not out of the woods all the way yet so please continue with prayers.
I think it is time to introduce myself. I first met Desi at a fire department cook out. I have played guitar and sung blue grass music for almost 25 years both with church and because music is a true love of mine. When the department needed some entertainment I brought my gear and was happy to play. It is a very small town and my husband and I know most of the fire fighters. Blue grass and folk music are my calling but I know a lot of other songs that are good for all kinds of occasions. There was a girl there that was shy but looked like she could use a friend. I asked her if she could sing and played the only song that I knew to play that she also knew the words to. It was You Were Meant For Me by Jewel. The music that came out of her mouth was blessed by God. I have never heard someone with a quality of voice like hers. It is good but there is something else to it that is hard to explain. Truly, truly blessed by God. The Lord put it on my heart that I should reach out to her as a friend and I did. I feel I was led to her through music as a way to be her friend. The way God set up our meeting and showed me to this little girl that needed love so badly. She has become like a little sister to me and I am blessed to have her in my life. The thought of almost losing her today was very hard on me.
I know that it is very odd to hear this because no one knows me. But my husband really had me scared. I remember the first day the Lord laid it on my heart to love him. We had been friends through high school, but never dated until I came back from a long stay in Italy. We were in a bar one day and I looked at him and saw everyone he was friends with and how much they all liked this guy. Just really loved him, all of his friends. And I decided that yes, I was going to love him, too. We have been married for 17 years and it as not been all easy. We put a lot of work into our marriage and I am so glad. There were even times early on I thought I had married the wrong man. I put my faith in the Lord and here we are today. He is not an easy man to live with but he is worth the effort to me. I came very close to losing my best friend today. I have never taken him for granted but I am so relieved that it is not our time to part ways.
Praise God! You do not always know what you have until you almost lose it!
Oh yes and we are in New York. I had Desi call Adam so that someone knows she is okay.
New York. New York has a lot of hospitals, I bet. It's interesting that Titsy also never made any mention of a trip to New York, either. Notice there's no mention of a town, or of a hospital name, either. It also seems to me that for such an incident as the accident described above, they got of rather light in terms of injuries. I am also fairly sure that when you have a concussion, they don't put you on any drugs (like morphine) because those drugs will make you sleepy, and when you have a concussion, one of the worst things you can do is sleep.
Next, at 7:48 PM:
Her left lung has collapsed. She has decided she does not want to be put on respirators and won't allow a chest tube to be put in. I do not know what to do.
How do I reply to the comments being made? I do not know how this works. I just figured out how to edit.
Oh, the melodrama. I guess things weren't life-threatening enough before. Please also take notice at how these posts seem to be coming at regular, 3 hour intervals. I also find it difficult to believe someone who has managed to log onto LJ and make updates is not able to find and click on the 'reply to this' hotlink... but I think I find it harder to believe that someone who had a collapsed lung and could not breathe would make the decision to not have it treated.
11:45PM:
Last update for tonight. I logged into instant messanger from the lounge and ended up having half conversations with some of you because the laptop I brought in was logged in and being used at the same time. I apologize to a few of you for that I was not ignoring you. I thought people stopped responding to me when the window was coming up on the wrong computer. But it was pleasant speaking with you all. I do not know what else to say but she is sleeping fitfully now and is on a high dosage of morphine. I will update again tomorrow. I think I should make my own journal to update instead of filling space here. Good night and god bless.
Once again - putting someone with a concussion on morphine?!
Next we get to the 'I really can't believe this shit anymore' post. This is when I actively begin my researching:
10:05 AM, Monday:
Dear LiveJournal,
My name is Dr. Kendrick and I am the attending physician seeing to your friend.
When Desiree first requested I sit down and give everyone an update on the situation here, I was immediately surprised and interested. As a medical doctor, the advances of the computer age in regard to humanity have long been known as valuable ones to myself and my colleagues. The idea that people interact as friends from different parts of the country as though they were in each other’s living rooms is amazing and has wonderful healing properties for the soul. I have heard of internet journaling but never had the opportunity to interact with it. For a person that has quickly become one of my favorite patients, I was willing to set aside a few minutes to say a few words.
It is not hard upon meeting her to see that her effervescent personality is one of her greatest assets. I had never met this person before she came into the emergency room, but it was clear from the onset that her strength of character is a force to be reckoned with. Pneumothorax (or a simple collapsed lung, in layman’s terms) has simple procedures associated with its correction; refusal of those is not something one often sees. Both myself and Cindy tried much convincing and cajoling, nothing was working. I, myself, was becoming frustrated. It is painful to watch, when you know exactly what the body is doing to itself. It is quiet like pneumonia; one rarely dies from the condition itself, but from complications connected to. Suffocating to death is not a pleasant experience.
We were out of hope late last night when she asked to make a phone call. I often tell patients in the same condition that their Darth Vader breathing makes it hard to understand them, but gave permission and the requested privacy. When we were called back into the room there was a ghost of a smile on her face and she was submitting to the necessary steps to save her breathing, which had already begun to rattle in her chest. I inquired as to who had caused the change of heart, but the answer I received was a smiled ‘just some guy’ and to get on with it. Well, Just Some Guy, my thanks go out to you. You saved her life.
She was placed on a machine to aid her breathing immediately and a simple chest tube was inserted this morning at around 6am. The actual procedure is very interesting but assuredly not something you're interested in; I will say instead that fluids were drained and pressure was relieved from her lung. The swelling in her face has gone down. There are minimal scratrches. I anticipate no farther complications. I am optimistic she should be discharged from here by Thursday at the latest.
I will turn the keyboard over to Cindy and thank everyone. This experience has aroused my interest. I may just have to invest in a LiveJournal of my own. You are all very good friends to care about Desiree in such a way.
Yours,
Julie M. Kendrick
The missing doctor: While whitepages.com is not always the best resource, thanks to unlisted numbers, it is useful. So I went and tried to look up her doctor's name in the entire state of New York. I tried the following permutations with the following results, not only in Whitepages, but in Google:
1. Julie Kendrick - none
2. Julie M Kendrick - none
3. J M Kendrick - none female
4. J Kendrick - none female
Now, I can go search google for my name and get at least one hit. One would think a doctor, especially one who is an attending at a hospital and possibly even has a practice, would have their name come up when you search for them. Nothing.
Certainly, I am not the only person who must find it fishy that an attending doctor in an emergency room would agree to take time out from their rounds and other patients to write an LJ entry for someone while claiming to not know what LJ even was - let alone someone who could not properly describe the symptoms and treatment of a collapsed lung - both of which I got info on from someone who has experienced it first hand, multiple times.
Now, the medical stuff regarding the lung:
This following comes from someone who has had a collapsed lung more than once before: (Quas if you don't want me quoting this let me know)
Quasadu> the line that really gets me is "actual procedure is very interesting but assuredly not something you're interested in"
Lyme> translation being 'I don't know anything about the actual procedure'
Quasadu> yeah
Quasadu> and being someone who does, i can assure you, there is nothing interesting about it
Quasadu> they cut a hole in your chest and slip a tube in there to suck all the crap out
Quasadu> that's as interesting as it gets
Fraggle> hegugh. Ow.
Quasadu> also. no, it's nothing at all even remotely like pneumonia
Lyme> yeah, somehow I doubt that.
Fraggle> Somehow I would think a lung collapsing wouldn't really be comparable to other ailments.
Quasadu> pneumonia is an infection. pneumothorax is a collapsed lung
Quasadu> biiiiiiig difference
Quasadu> to say people die from complications of pnuemothorax like suffocation is like saying that people who get shot die of complications like bleeding to death
Quasadu> a direct result is not a complication
Quasadu> more pickiness... but i doubt she'd be 'put on a machine to aid her breathing'... she's be 'put on oxygen' which is different and is what a doctor would have said
Lyme> well, a machine to aid breathing would manually pump air out of your lungs
Lyme> oxygen would just be one off those tube things they put in your nose.
Lyme> right?
Quasadu> yeah. and that's what they would give her
Quasadu> just oxygen
Quasadu> the chest tube drains the fluid and air from between the chest wall and lung, the lung will handle the breathing on its own. the oxygen is just to help it get enough O2 since it's not getting as much volume
Quasadu> ok, i promise to shut up about it after this, but this post is really bothering me
Quasadu> "which had already begun to rattle in her chest"
Quasadu> your breathing does not rattle when you have a collapsed lung
Quasadu> your breath deosn't anything
Quasadu> you don't have any
Quasadu> when you listen to someone's breathing and hear rattling, they have fluid in the lung
Quasadu> when they have a collapsed lung, you hear nothing
10:29PM:
So tired. I have a 'too much sleep' headache. Drugs aren't touching the groggy.
They are transporting Jeff and I to Charlotte Hungerford hospital in Torrington tomorrow. It's closer to Cindy and home. Jeff will have to stay for a bit. I visited him today, but he's feeling guilty and is drugged-up cranky.
It's taken me a half hour to write this much. Ugh.
Cindy took the first I.D I was given when I was just an ER patient and scanned it in for me and emailed it. Lookit, mom, I'm cool. I never appreciated LJ Scrapbook before.
After this sentence, there is an image, which I have linked below.
But first, This hospital: Charlotte Hungerford. In addition to the link to their main site, there is also this handy link: http://www.charlottesweb.hungerford.org/CHH123NUMBERS.htm. The area code, which isn't listed, is 860.
I called them twice today. Actually, I called them more than twice, because I called patient relations, the ICU, as well as the emergency department number. I was told each time that there was no patient admitted with her name.
Titsy says that because I did not call the right number, I could not determine that she was there. Funny - patient relations told me when I asked that if there was someone admitted to the hospital by that name, it would have shown up in their computer. But I guess the hospital just forgot she was there, huh?
She also says that the exchange (first 3 numbers after the area code) were the same as her home phone number. That in of itself is suspicious - something I find even moreso when none of the phone numbers I could find for the hospital started with the same 3 digits.
Nevermind that I do not think a hospital would allow a patient with a collapsed lung who had only had a chest tube inserted the morning prior to be transferred to another hospital a state away - let alone, into the ER - because normally, they only transfer patients who are stable, unless the hospital they are being transferred to has some sort of necessary equipment that the other doesn't. Not only that, but she claimed on the phone, when I remarked on how she must be in 'the quietest hospital ever' (no background noise, whatsoever) that she was in a private room. In the ER? But, what do I know - I've only ever been into an emergency room 5 or 6 times in the past 6 years (at least 3 times because of my dad, 2 times because of me).
Then, there's the ID bracelet. Fishy to begin with - the extremely pixelised text, the lack of a hospital name on the bracelet. I don't think I've ever seen a hospital bracelet without the hospital name on it. So I took to google image search, and typed in 'hospital bracelet'. You can do this search yourself. If you go to the fifth page, you will find an image on a tripod website. You will find that certain features on this image are exactly the same as the one on Titsy's:
Titsy's ID Which was stored originally at http://pics.livejournal.com/fireandsmoke/pic/00012wea/s640x480
The ID I found on google. The googlesearch page: http://images.google.com/images?q=hospital+bracelet&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&start=80&sa=N four images down, one over. The direct URL to this ID is http://e-allen0.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/id.jpg
1. The barcode at the top.
2. The positioning of the bracelet.
3. If you look at the bottom edge, you can see what appears to be the tips of 2 fingers holding the bracelet in the scanner. These appear on Titsy's as well
4. Look at the numbers along the bottom of the bracelet. You will find that they are the same digits as those on Titsy's, and the numbers are even smudged/obscured in the same fashion.
She took this image, enlarged it, cropped the right side, covered over the original data, and inserted her own. I put the bar over her real name, but I have the original she posted intact, still, if anyone wants to see it.
I have been using PSP and photoshop since I was 15. I am pretty good at spotting photomanipulated images and tricks used to hide that they have been manipulated.
There is also this question: if she is still in the hospital, let alone a hospital in another state, how did Cindy remove this bracelet, find a scanner, and email it to her if she'd only been in the hospital for 24 hours? They generally do not let patients remove their ID tags until they have been discharged.
Backtracking to the 'drugs': She is saying that she was on a morphine drip yesterday, but she isn't anymore. Now, those of you who know about morphine, opiates, and their effects, raise your hand. Oh, wait, I do. Morphine? Makes you sleepy. Makes you forgetful, and is very addictive. Getting off it has a myriad of nasty effects. Even the small amounts you get in the hospital makes you have withdrawals. But most importantly, if someone had cut open your chest to insert a tube just yesterday morning, you'd still be on morphine tonight, or you would be very angry that you weren't.
And when I spoke to her on the phone between 5:15 and 6:30 tonight, she sounded awful damn good for someone who had multiple facial wounds, a tube in their chest, a reinflating lung (Which, by the way, takes days of treatment, usually), and an oxygen hose tacked on their face.
I am however getting slightly ahead of myself.
This afternoon, she posted a phone number that was supposedly to her hospital room (that has a different exchangefrom all the other hospital numbers). This is a post I didn't save - I was at work at the time and I have since been removed from her FL (and I believe the entry has probably been deleted, too). I was doing a search for this and I, on a whim, put in her name to google and the first page it pulled up was for her place of work.
Well, logically, if she was in a car accident, she wouldn't be at work, right?
I called her place of work, around 3:30 this afternoon. I know her job is answering the phones, so I figured this - I would call up, give a fake name, and ask for an extension that was similar to hers, when I got that person on the phone, I would say 'Oh, I'm sorry, I needed to talk to Titsy, I must have asked for the wrong extension. Is she in today?'
The woman on the line then said 'Titsy? Yes, she's the one who transferred you to me!' so I apologised and said that I would hang up and call again.
When I told her this over the phone, Titsy said that no, I had spoken to her coworker Anne, and that the woman whose extension I had asked for didn't know she was out of the office that day because she worked on a different floor and came in by a different door.
Now. My department at work, here, it's about 30 people strong. I'm sure her office is either comparable in size or smaller - after all, an insurance agency is probably going to be smaller than the main office for all of Florida Department of Law Enforcement. If a coworker got into a car accident, we would all know about it.
When I tell her this, she says that her coworkers did not give out this information because of privacy issues. I believe if this was the case, said coworker would have said 'No, I'm sorry, she's not in today', not 'Oh, yeah, you were talking to her just a second ago'.
Back to me calling her. I tried both numbers I had, got her on the one that was her 'hospital room'. And I basically confronted her about this and, of course, she denied it. I also confronted her about all of the other myriad stupid shit she's been doing over the past 2 years.
She continued to tell me 'you keep interrupting me, you won't let me explain' when I demanded that she come clean to everyone on the internet about these lies, or that I would. This happened for probably an hour, over the course of 2 phone calls. At the end of the second one, she was telling me things like 'Friends don't tell other friends how to live their life' and 'It's my life, I can do what I want' (Me, I say MY friends don't lie to me about things like serious medical emergencies - and then continue to lie even after you catch them).
I tell her that congratulations, she has joined the other 2 people who have managed to Cross The Line and hang up. And I turn off my phone, because I still have work I need to get done before going home and I don't want to talk to her anymore if she's going to continue to deny it, and my phone doesn't get calls inside the FDLE building 90% of the time, anyway.
As I am leaving work, I turn my phone back on and find there is a voicemail for 6:44, saying that I should call her and 'tell her what I want'. Well, the last request is rather vague, so I call. Ask her what she meant by that, at which point she says in an airy voice, that she's been talking to her friends (interesting, since in the post I didn't save she had said that they were taking her laptop away from her) and she knows who is going to 'stick by her and who is going to believe what they want'. At this point I tell her "Well, we'll see about that after I post what I have" and hang up.
Then drive home, walk the dog, change out of my work clothes, and spend the next hour and a half writing this up.
I would also like to point out, Titsy's AIM name was online all throughout this period, and never once away. In fact, I checked it several times to see its idle time, and it was never over 2 hours.
So, that's everything, I think. I may be missing stuff. I don't know. As I said, there is a lot. When you put all of this together, I find it impossible to believe anything that she's saying.
Edit: I had these links passed onto me, and I am linking them here with trelana's permission, regarding her experiences with this:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/trelana/236282.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/trelana/236736.html
The second also contains the images of the ID bracelets.
Edit the second, Wednesday morning: I have gotten permission from trelana to post the following info sent in an email:
There's significant IP address evidence that shows all actions taken by
her account (both fireandsmoke, and her newly back-in-use account
greentealeaf) were made solely from her home and work IPs.
http://home.earthlink.net/~trelana/fireandsmoke/tqc.html is a post made to
thequestionclub today by dishpan_nipples (another person on her friends
list), to which she commented with her greentealeaf account. I
confirmed with one of the maintainers of the community that the IP she
was posting from was her work IP (63.109.170.138) which confirms she was
at work at Roberts Insurance Co at the times of those comments (08:15PM
and 08:25PM UTC, or 3:15PM and 3:25PM Eastern Standard Time). For
reference, her home IP is 68.9.23.178.
[Note: I have decided to post the IP addies after all. If doing that violates LJTOS or something, let me know and I'll remove them, K?}
The following is the email I sent to those who did request it in
screened comments. It was written up yesterday evening after about 36
hours straight of being awake, so it's not entirely coherent. The most
glaring bit of incoherency is probably 'I was a volunteer EMT in
Rochester, NY working out of Strong Memorial Hospital's trauma center
until late 2001,' which if you're familiar with EMS in NY makes sense,
but otherwise is somewhat confusing. I was a volunteer with Perinton
Volunteer Ambulance Corps ( http://www.pvac.org/ ), whose medical
direction was based out of Strong Memorial Hospital, as the regional
trauma center for the greater Rochester area.
-----
After the doctor post in Desiree's journal this morning, I made a number
of calls to the trauma centers across the eastern half of NY. At each,
I spoke to the admissions department, and had them double-check both by
patient name and doctor name. None of these hospitals have any record
of a patient by Desiree's name, a twin casualty MVA with extraction
being brought in around the time in question, nor of a doctor by the
name Julie M. Kendrick either on staff or with facility privileges.
These hospitals constitute the entirety of trauma centers in the eastern
half of the state of NY, including the New York City and Long Island
region, both regional and area centers (regionals handle the more
difficult, complex cases, while area trauma centers serve as triage to
patients that need to be transferred to a more advanced regional trauma
center). All MVAs with significant injury (significant injury is defined
by the medical director in charge of emergency services in the area at
the time in question, but all thoracic injuries of note are as a rule
classed as significant, and both simple and tension pneumos are
definitely high-grade significant injuries) in the state of NY are
transported to either an area or regional trauma center, not a
non-trauma center local hospital, per both my training (out of date at
this point, I was a volunteer EMT in Rochester, NY working out of Strong
Memorial Hospital's trauma center until late 2001, and before that in
Texas) and confirmation by hospital staff.
Roughly the order I called the trauma centers in, and numbers I've called:
Hudson Valley Region
Regional Trauma Center
Westchester County Medical Center -- 914-493-7000
Area Trauma Centers
Good Samaritan Hospital -- 845-368-5000
Nyack Hospital -- 845-348-2000
Sound Shore Medical Center -- 914-632-5000
St. Francis Hospital -- 845-483-5000
Northeast New York Region
Regional Trauma Center
Lifestar Regional Trauma System, Albany Medical Center Hospital --
518-262-3125
Area Trauma Centers
Champlain Valley Physicians' Hospital and Medical Center --
518-561-2000
Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital -- 607-547-3456
Suffolk Region
Regional Trauma Center
University Hospital SUNY Stony Brook -- 631-444-4000
Area Trauma Centers
Brookhaven Memorial Hospital -- 631-654-7100
Good Samaritan Hospital -- 631-376-3000
Huntington Hospital -- 631-351-2000
Southside Hospital -- 631-968-3316
Nassau Region
Regional Trauma Centers
Nassau County Medical Center -- 516-572-0123
North Shore University Hospital -- 516-562-0100
Winthrop University Hospital -- 516-663-0333
Area Trauma Centers
Mercy Medical Center of Long Island -- 516-705-2525
South Nassau Communities Hospital -- 516-632-3990
New York City Area
Regional Trauma Centers
Bellevue Hospital Center -- 212-562-1000
Brookdale Hospital Medical Center -- 718-240-5000
Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens -- 718-558-2510
City Hospital Center at Elmhurst -- 718-334-4000
Harlem Hospital Center -- 212-939-1000
Jacobi Medical Center -- 718-918-5000
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center -- 718-206-6075
Kings County Hospital Center -- 718-245-3131
Lincoln Medical Health Center -- 718-579-5000
Lutheran Medical Center -- 718-630-7000
New York Hospital Queens -- 718-670-1231
New York Presbyterian Hospital -- 212-305-2500
St. Barnabas Hospital -- 718-960-9000
St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center -- 212-523-7780
St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center -- 212-604-8090
St. Vincent's Richmond -- 718-818-2350
Staten Island University Hospital -- 718-226-9000
When over two hours on the phone with these hospitals produced no
results, either in patient or physician names, I turned to the Office of
the Professions of the New York Department of Education, which oversees
physician licensure, of both MD and DOs, in New York (the Department of
Health in NY does not oversee licensure, only administrative and
disciplinary actions with regards to physicians). They have an online
verification service located at
http://www.op.nysed.gov/opsearches.htm -- no doctor by the name of Julie
M. Kendrick is licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York,
nor has there been one at any time at least the last ten years. This
can be verified either through the web site or by calling the department
directly at 1-518-474-3817. The closest record found is for a Juliette
S. Kendrick, license number 144456, who does not currently reside in New
York state and has tendered her notice to the Department of Education
that she does not intend to practice medicine in the state of NY for the
forseeable future.
When checking the licensure of doctor Julie M. Kendrick failed, I turned
to the American Medical Association. The AMA is not a regulating body,
but rather is a member-driven organisation. Not all physicians are
members of the AMA, nor are they required to be. The AMA does, however,
maintain an up-to-date database, searchable by state, of all physicians
(both MD and DO) licensed to practice in the United States, at
http://www.ama-assn.org/apps/captcha/verify.cgi?reason=nocookie&method=GET&url=http://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/disclaimer.jsp
.
This database includes both AMA members and non-AMA members, and covers
the entirety of licensed physicians in the United States. There is no
record of a Dr. Julie Kendrick in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Vermont, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania (the entirety of states bordering
New York).
The other information I have is more circumstantial -- things such as
such a posting by a doctor very likely being a gross violation of the
HIPAA laws which would mean she was risking censure by disciplinary
board or revocation of her license to make such a post, as it's
essentially disseminating private medical information to a public
audience. The details of the medical treatment, as well, were
questionable -- you're not placed on a ventilator as treatment of a
pneumothorax, either simple or tension -- doing so can significantly
worsen the condition. An intercostal chest drain needs to be inserted,
*especially* in the case of positive-pressure ventilation being applied,
to prevent further buildup of pressure in the pleural space. Further,
pneumothorax doesn't present with rattling breathing -- it presents with
decreased breath sounds in the affected lobe, and dependant on the
severity, reduced O2 blood saturation.
There were many other things that rang questionable to me in the posts
over the last 36 hours -- the spelling of LiveJournal, complete with the
capital J, being counterintuitive at best to people unfamiliar with
LiveJournal, the ease of internet availability in a hospital, which is
generally very difficult to obtain (especially in patients' rooms)
because of potential interference of the laptop with monitoring
equipment (anyone who has ever been told to turn their cell phone off in
a hospital is familiar with this concept), the posting of confidential
information by the attending in all likelihood in violation of HIPAA
(such information is only releaseable under HIPAA with a signed release,
and then only to named individuals. Such a signed release must be
signed in full cognizance of the ramifications of such a release, which
is impossible while on morphine -- any paperwork signed while on
narcotics is automatically under question. Cindy could not have signed
it, unless she's Desiree's health care proxy, which has never been
mentioned, and such a proxy is something I very seriously doubt was in
place given the requirement to have paperwork prepared and on hand to
verify such a legal standing).
I don't like calling people out on things like this, and I don't do it
without significant research to back up what I say. I dislike doubting
people I consider friends, especially, but I've learned over the last 15
years around the internet and other online services (FIDONet, etc) to
take everything I read with a grain of salt, and to always, always think
critically and think twice before taking things at face value when an
emotionally straining situation is involved.
-
In regards to the 'hospital room' phone numbeR:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 413
Location: SIMSBURY
Other Info: CLEC
The information for the two on-site prefixes listed on the hospital's
number list are:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 496
Location: Torrington
Other Info:
Area Code: 860
Prefix: 489
Location: Torrington
Other Info:
The 482 prefix is for the credit union, and does not occur elsewhere on
hospital grounds, and the 738 prefixes are hosted off-site (738 is a
Winsted prefix). CLEC ('Competitive Local Exchange Carrier') numbers
are numbers which are owned by the non-primary carriers in the area (the
ones that came about after deregulation allowed for more than one phone
company to offer local phone service in a given area. The primary owner
of the phone line equipment in that area is, I *believe*, Verizon -- I
can call and check that during business hours tomorrow. They charge the
CLECs to use their equipment, and the CLEC then resells this service to
end users. Basically, you have a local primary carrier who owns the
phone equipment and provides the majority of phone service to the area,
but you have the option of going to an alternate provider who leases use
of the primary carrier's lines.)
Even disregarding the reverse lookup of the 860-413-xxxx number since at
times reversing a phone number doesn't bring you the most up-to-date
information so far as the subscriber and address are concerned (it does,
however, remain that the exchange belongs to a CLEC and is physically
located in the Simsbury service area -- while technically that
particular phone number could have been transferred from the CLEC to an
alternate CLEC or the primary provider because of the new portable local
number provisions, it would still be required to be attached to an
address within the Simsbury service area), it's explicitly impossible
for that number to be located in the hospital itself. The prefix
boundaries are set by the FCC, and 860-413 is not in the same physical
location as 860-496 or 860-489. Further, it would make *zero* sense for
a large company to have their phone service through the primary
equipment owner (as is standard with enterprise-level phone service),
but have just a couple numbers that they, for some inexplicable reason,
pay a CLEC an inflated price for rather than have it bundled with a 50
line or 75 line monthly package from the provider.
(Emphasis is mine, BTW)
And I know this post is getting even longer, and I apologise for that, but I'm not going to cut it. This is not something I want people to be able to just scroll on by. I am also trying to keep all of the information on one post, and YES, I am saving comment notifications, incase certain parties decide to delete them after they make them.
EDIT 4 Munchausen by Internet: Facetious internet claims. You may also want to check out this link: http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/articles/chronic/faking.html