Woman Shoots Self To Get Health Care

Jiro said:
I am not qualified to make assessment on her mental state.
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You don't need to be a psychologist to know that shooting oneself is not a mentally healthy resolution to a problem.

If you don't know that then I'm worried about you possessing a gun. :shock:
 
TXgolfer said:
Normally a hospital would give pain meds.....giving a shot instead is an indication that they believed she was drug seeking
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not really. If they believed she was a drug-seeking patient, then why did they give her a shot?

TXgolfer said:
Collar bones don't pop......lol. Unless they are broken of course. Obviously they ruled that out....Otherwise they broke the law.
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How did they rule that out? She got an x-ray?
 
Reba said:
You don't need to be a psychologist to know that shooting oneself is not a mentally healthy resolution to a problem.
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An error in judgment is not an indication of mental illness. What I see is plain dang stupidity.

Reba said:
If you don't know that then I'm worried about you possessing a gun. :shock:
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At least I won't use a gun on a 14-years old brat.
 
I am surprise the woman was not send to the psych unit! It does sound crazy to me to shoot yourself to see a DR! I hope she does not plan on shooting herself every time she is not feeling good!
 
Reba said:
The woman obviously has a screw loose in her logic board; do you think Obamacare will fix that for her?

She said that was her reason for shooting herself. How do we know that she was telling the truth?
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This is why I can't believe the woman was allowed to go home! If this had happen at the ER out here , she would be had been committed to the psych unit ! I had clients having to be seen by a psych nurse as they threaten to killed themselves! This woman shot herself!
 
rockin'robin said:
Woman Says She Couldn't Get Treatment For Collarbone Injury

N

ILES, Ind. -- An unemployed and uninsured Indiana woman recently went to desperate measures to get medical attention for an injury.

Authorities said Kathy Myers shot herself to make sure she would get help at the hospital for pain she's been suffering in her collarbone.

"This pain is unbearable," she said. "It's just maddening."

Myers said the pain was so bad, she thought putting a bullet in her shoulder would help.

"It went in there and come out there," she said.

The pain started last month, when Myers was playing with her dogs in the back yard.

"I grabbed him with my right hand and he pulled it backwards like that and I felt it pop in three places in my collarbone," she said.

The pain came on quickly and has only gotten worse. But Myers said it's been impossible to get more than a Band-Aid and a shot for the pain because she's out of work and can't afford health insurance.

"They'll see you and treat you, make sure you're stable, but beyond that they're not going to do anything," she said.

So, weeks later, Myers put ice packs on the front and back of her shoulder, tied them off, put pillows around her, put the gun to the top of her shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Minutes later, she was in an ambulance headed for the hospital. The wound wasn't serious and didn't hit anything major, so Myers was sent home in less than 24 hours.

"Nothing got accomplished," she said.

Police said the risk could have killed Myers.

"We would hope that most people would understand this is the extreme, and that they would not attempt something like this," Niles police Capt. James Millin said.

Woman Shoots Self To Get Health Care - Jacksonville News Story - WJXT Jacksonville
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Get a job! Times may be tough, but if you look hard enough you will find a full-time job with benefits if you want health insurance. You may not love the job, you don't even have to like the job, but at least you'll have money and insurance. The last thing I would do is shoot myself in the shoulder. But I am beginning to think a brain transplant may be more urgent. JMHO.
 
Jiro said:
not really. If they believed she was a drug-seeking patient, then why did they give her a shot?


How did they rule that out? She got an x-ray?
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It says she ways treated...

The pain came on quickly and has only gotten worse. But Myers said it's been impossible to get more than a Band-Aid and a shot for the pain because she's out of work and can't afford health insurance.

"They'll see you and treat you, make sure you're stable, but beyond that they're not going to do anything," she said.
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..Dunno if that includes an X-ray or not but my experience in ERs (without ins.) is that they are very quick to x-ray if they feel there is a possiblity of a broken bone....

Many times they will give a shot but will not write a prescription if DRs believe the patient is drug seeking.....
 
Reba said:
You don't need to be a psychologist to know that shooting oneself is not a mentally healthy resolution to a problem.

If you don't know that then I'm worried about you possessing a gun. :shock:
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Yeah.....I think even the three pops of the collarbone and unbearable pain probably point to coocoo too
 
I stand corrected....she looks mentally stable...... :lol:
 
Reba said:
You don't need to be a psychologist to know that shooting oneself is not a mentally healthy resolution to a problem.

If you don't know that then I'm worried about you possessing a gun. :shock:
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I know of a person here who would disagree :giggle:

j/k
 
Dixie said:
Get a job! Times may be tough, but if you look hard enough you will find a full-time job with benefits if you want health insurance. You may not love the job, you don't even have to like the job, but at least you'll have money and insurance.
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Or you won't...

Finding a full time, benefit providing job is a bit harder than you might think. With employers hiring fewer full time positions and then opting to work those 'full timers' at no more than 32 hours a week so they don't HAVE to pay insurance, if they choose to provide benefits at all, full time work isn't as promising as you think. Add to that many employers don't offer insurance to employees until they've been emplyed 'in good standing' for up to 120 days. Beyond that, some employers classify new hires as contractors or temps for 6-12 months and then don't start the big health insurance countdown until they decide if they want to make you a regular employee. You may end up working not-quite-full-time for a company unlikely to insure you at which point you can look for another full time job which may not insure you or find a second job to start saving money to pay for your medical care OOP. Of course, even with cash on hand, some hospitals won't serve you with out the golden ticket that is an insurance card, which may only pay for a quarter of the services you need, if that.

Of course, in this woman's case, you would have been doing all of this while in excruciating pain from a mystery injury, making you a less than productive employee, more likely to call in sick and more likely to be released before your probationary period is up, never even being given an opportunity for insurance.

Don't forget there are at least 100 people, up to 1000 in more urban areas, at any given time fighing to that job too...

Yeah... get a job, indeed.
 
I have heard of people injure themselves to distract themselves from another pain that was giving them problems. Like pinching themselves and so on. But since the doctor couldn't find anything wrong with her, she could be mentally unstable.

here is one example: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=5437
 
WeeBeastie said:
Or you won't...

Finding a full time, benefit providing job is a bit harder than you might think...
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Especially if you don't give good interviews.


Of course, in this woman's case, you would have been doing all of this while in excruciating pain from a mystery injury, making you a less than productive employee, more likely to call in sick and more likely to be released before your probationary period is up, never even being given an opportunity for insurance.
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Wasn't she unemployed before she hurt her collar bone?
 
Reba said:
Wasn't she unemployed before she hurt her collar bone?
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Probably, but her injury would have made finding coverage even more difficult. Even if she had found a job right away and somehow gotten coverage, the injury would probably have been classified as a preexisting condition.
 
There's more:

Woman wanting medical help shoots self
She has a pre-existing medical condition

Updated: Friday, 11 Jun 2010, 6:23 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 11 Jun 2010, 8:55 AM EDT

* By Ken Kolker

NILES, Mich. (WOOD) - The pain in her right shoulder was unbearable and, without health insurance, Kathy Myers was desperate.

So, she sought .25-caliber relief.

In her basement bedroom on Thursday, the 41-year-old woman shot herself in the same shoulder with a .25-caliber handgun, hoping it could get her the medical help she said she needs.

Instead, she's back home, still in pain, and could face criminal charges.

Myers showed 24 Hour News 8 how she did it. She was lying in her bed in the basement, put pillows in front of and behind her right shoulder, along with an ice pack. Then, she fired a single shot through the front pillow.

The bullet pierced the front of her shoulder and exited the rear, lodging in the ice pack. She said she didn't feel any pain, just burning.

"It just felt warm. That's all," she said.

Myers, 41, said she told her girlfriend's mother to call 911.

Myers said she hurt her shoulder about a month ago when her 80-pound golden Labrador went after one of her little dogs. She tried to stop the dog, which jerked her right shoulder.

"I felt it pop in three places in my collar bone," she said.

Doctors gave her some anti-inflammatories, but couldn't do much more than that, she said. "I didn't have insurance, so I couldn't get a CT-scan or MRI."

Myers is among the 1.2 million uninsured people living in Michigan -- a number that has remained steady for about three years, state health officials said.

The pain, she says, is so excruciating that she can't sleep. She said she couldn't afford to see a neurologist. Myers says she lost her job with a hazardous-waste removal company in southern Indiana months ago.

She said she hasn't qualified for disability or Medicaid.

It was Thursday, she said, when she came up with the idea of shooting herself. "I figured if I did something that would not necessarily make it life-threatening but make it imminent danger that something would be done," she said. "I wanted them to fix me. I just wanted to be fixed."

She hoped the bullet would force doctors to treat what she believes is a rotator cuff injury. Instead, emergency room doctors at Lakeland Hospital treated only the bullet wound and sent her home.

On Friday, Niles Police said they would talk to prosecutors to determine what, if any, charges to file against Myers.

Now, she's having second thoughts.

"It didn't take the pain away," she said. "I figured it would take the pain away from the rotator cuff, where at least I could focus on something else, and maybe they would fix me, you know. I guess I should have shot a little lower and got the bone and the artery."
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Woman wanting medical help shoots self | WOOD TV8

She was unemployed months before her injury.

She sounds even wackier than before.
 
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