AKA William

Share

This is awful.

After marching over 14 miles from Selma to Fresno for the big Meet In The Middle 4 Equality march last weekend, one of the marchers, Kristin Orbin (29), who is epileptic, had three grand mal seizures. Her partner of 3 1/2 years, Teresa Rowe (30) was with her, and when the parademics arrived, things went from bad to worse:

[Orbin said], “The paramedics wanted nothing to do with Teresa and she had to practically fight them to be allowed to ride in the ambulance.”

. . . Orbin said the paramedic told the nurse on duty that she had collapsed after marching 14 miles for civil rights, and the nurse gave her a dirty look and said “ooooh.” She continued, “I asked if Teresa could come back with me, but the nurse told me I was in a no visitor zone. When I asked her why everyone else had visitors, she said ‘those people are different’.”

Orbin said she went to sleep at that point, but she was awakened by a nurse giving her the benzodiazapine Ativan, a drug that causes her to have severe migraine headaches.

“Teresa was finally able to make her way up to the front desk and convince them to get a cell phone to me. When I talked to her, she said she had told the nursing staff not to give me Ativan, but they refused to listen to her. They refused to take my medical cards from her. They refused Teresa’s offer to have my advance directive and power of attorney faxed over from UCSF.”

Orbin said she asked the nurses several times if Rowe could join her, but each time they refused.

“They just kept looking at my Marriage Equality shirt and giving me dirty looks,” she said.

Orbin and Rowe were not reunited until a doctor intervened a few hours later.

. . . As I was laying there all alone, I wondered how many people from the LGBTQ community die by themselves because they are denied a basic right. The thought frightens me. [Examiner]

The couple, who live in Northern California, said they have never experienced such blatant discrimination and have contacted the ACLU for legal advice.