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I've had more than a bit of experience with calling paramedics (mostly from having a
sick mother growing up, but I've had my own calls as well). I realize it isn't scientific
to extrapolate based on one's own experiences, so from the outset, let's establish that
this is not an exhaustive study on the operating procedures of paramedics in every
municipality (pause for a great big "however").
It has been my experience that when paramedics are called to your house, they will do
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everything in their power to transport you to the hospital -- whether or not it is necessary.
Having the paramedics leave your home without transporting you to a hospital is sort of
like trying to leave the hospital (once you're there) without doctor's permission, without being viewed like you're
trying to break out of Guantanamo. It rarely happens, and when it does, it isn't a smooth,
quick, "sign here" procedure.
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Thank goodness we have a convenient group of people to blame for every problem -- that'll be helpful when the
economy bottoms out and we're tempted to blame our elected officials.
We can blame brown
people instead.
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There's a reason for this, it's called "liability." Yes,
paramedics carry forms for you to sign declining care, but not before giving you an
extensive lecture, and trying to persuade you to have yourself checked out by a
professional.
If you think paramedics are pushy with grown-ups, they're particularly sensitive to
meeting the needs of kids. Speaking as someone who, as a child, routinely fell up the
stairs, off the top of slides, ran face-first
into the side of our brick house (playing
ball), broke fingers (ball again), and had heaven knows how many asthma attacks, let me tell
you, if you're under 18, you're going to the hospital. Our housekeeper would roll her eyes
(this was not how minor injuries were handled in Mississippi in the 1920's when she was
young) but we all knew the routine. The night my sister woke-up screaming, "I'm blind!"
because the brain trust (and I'll have you know, she was considered "the smart one") was
using one of those table-top sun lamps everyone had in the 60's without goggles earlier in
the day? You guessed it -- off to the hospital. The time (also, true story) my mother was
binge-eating sauerkraut (insert German joke HERE), and began retaining so much water that
she was having
difficulty breathing? Right, off to the hospital.
The point I'm making in sharing all of this is that the job of paramedics is to
stabilize people, and get them to a hospital as quickly as possible. So as I read THIS story 
about a baby in Carpentersville, Illinois (it's northwest of Chicago, I think it is out
near Algonquin-what we used to consider "the country") being denied treatment I thought
there had to be something wrong. Even a racist would recognize the extreme liability in
not treating an infant that was vomiting and in distress, right?
Reading on, it turns out that the community had recently been considering restrictive
measures against undocumented workers, and that anti-Latino sentiment is pretty high in
the area.
Now, I know what you're thinking, and consciously I doubt anyone would admit to
denying a suffering human being care based on ethnicity or race. I cannot claim to know
what was going through the paramedics' minds, but it does seem that (particularly with an infant
involved) it is extremely unlikely that they would hand the non-English speaking caregiver
a form to decline treatment, and leave. I do not believe that would be a typical response,
and I suspect other factors might have weighed on the bad decision.
I'm not saying it was
deliberate, because racism is a tricky thing to recognize, particularly in ourselves -- but
if I had to take a guess what might have contributed to not one, but two trained
professionals whose work is saving lives, to make such an utterly stupid decision-I'd
conclude there is
some underlying racism that while contained socially (most people have enough sense not
to spew their racism in public-at least they used to) impaired their ability to make the
correct assessment of the situation. I concede that I'm probably being too generous.
Towns like Carpentersville were, until pretty recently, rather insular places. There
would be community discomfort there, if you suddenly had an influx of WASPS from Kenilworth
(Kenilworth is one of those communities that always ranks in the five richest suburbs in
America because there's only a few hundred people and they're all rich). I realize that is
an unlikely scenario. All the same, I don't think your run of the mill white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants, even in Carpentersville, would have difficulty getting paramedics to
transport them to the emergency room.
Again, I might be too generous here. This episode
seems to reflect more than a fear of outsiders -- this is fear of an 'Other'. I find it amazing
that the people who have been so effective at scapegoating Latinos were able to select a
group for singling out that live pretty much the way we romanticize the past in the US.
Family, Church, hard-working -- I mean really, isn't that the image most people in the US
have of themselves?
Latinos are not ideological 'Others', so
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Lawsuit: Village bias hurt her son
by Vanessa Bauzá and Ray Quintanilla,
Chicago Tribune Sept. 20, 2007
A former Carpentersville woman filed a $30 million federal lawsuit Thursday, alleging that anti-immigrant sentiment in the village contributed to paramedics' failure to take her son to the hospital, causing him permanent brain damage.
Ted Karavidas, a lawyer for Gloria Lopez, said "virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic rhetoric" in the northwestern suburb led to an atmosphere where paramedics denied care for the boy, violating his civil rights.
"They failed to take the baby [to the hospital] in an environment where there was an effort to limit services to undocumented immigrants of Hispanic descent," he said.
Immigration has been a hot issue in Carpentersville for more than a year. It has divided the Village Board, with one side pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigrants and the other suggesting that the issue is best handled by the federal government.
Lopez, a Mexican immigrant, said she dropped off her son Osbiel, who was then 4 months old, at the home of a trusted baby-sitter on her way to a factory job on the morning of Sept. 18, 2006.
"From one day to the next his life totally changed," Lopez, 28, said of her son, who was born in the United States. "He was healthy one day, and the next day he was totally different."
Karavidas declined to say whether Lopez was in the U.S. legally.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, states the baby-sitter, Esther Carrera, called 911 at 10:21 a.m. when Osbiel had trouble breathing.
Paramedics Diane Graham and Martin Gruber, village employees, arrived at Carrera's home seven minutes later and saw that Osbiel had vomited and was in distress, according to the suit. Graham and Gruber are named as defendants, as is Carpentersville.
Karavidas said the paramedics told Carrera that the boy was having stomach problems and gave her a form to sign declining care. Carrera, who does not speak English, did not understand what she was signing, he said.
About three hours later, Carrera "checked on the baby ... and found that the baby was blue and called 911 frantically," Karavidas said.
A different set of Fire Department emergency medical technicians responded and took Osbiel to the hospital, where a breathing tube was inserted into his throat and he was diagnosed with an infection, Karavidas said.
Osbiel spent the following four months in hospitals under the supervision of specialists. The 16-month-old boy now requires continuous care and is fed primarily through a tube in his stomach, Lopez said.
Three months ago, she moved to a larger home in Elgin to accommodate the nurses who arrive in shifts to care for Osbiel 18 hours a day. The nurses are paid for through a state program, Lopez said.
"I thought he would be a normal boy, that he would study, grow," Lopez said, her eyes welling with tears at a news conference. "He doesn't do many things he should do. ... My baby can't sit up, he can't hold up his head. He doesn't reach for toys."
Mayor Bill Sarto said he had not seen Thursday's lawsuit, but added, "The financial award they are seeking would bankrupt the village."
Sarto said the incident allegedly occurred around the time trustees began debating what to do with $250,000 in unpaid municipal ambulance bills and whether these calls involved illegal immigrants.
"I remember seeing Hispanic names on that list and Anglo names," Sarto said. "We wrote off the bills."
Carpentersville has 37,000 residents, about 40 percent of them Latino. The community drew national attention in 2006, when two trustees began talking about introducing a measure modeled after a Hazelton, Pa., ordinance that called for suspending the licenses of businesses employing illegal immigrants and cracking down on landlords who rent to them.
In the weeks after the measure was tabled in Carpentersville, a U.S. federal court struck down the Hazelton ordinance as unconstitutional.
"I can't believe our Fire Department would do something like that," said trustee Judy Sigwalt, who favors a crackdown on illegal immigrants. "They give the best of care in response to every call."
Sarto said he will ask the Village Board in the next few days to consider hiring outside legal defense.
Archived from original publication
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really, is it incorrect to surmise that the
anti-Latino rubbish of late is really a socially polite way to express racism without
being called racist?
Thank goodness we have a convenient group of people to blame for every problem -- that'll be helpful when the
economy bottoms out and we're tempted to blame our elected officials. We can blame brown
people instead. Amazing how this stuff just keeps working ... generation after generation.
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