Shawn arrived at St. Peter’s hospital in Helena in the dreaded ‘restraint ‘chair – a wheeled chair complete with shoulder, hand and foot restraints. A shameful symbol of institutionalization. On its tour of the Montana Developmental Center (MDC), the Transition Planning Advisory Council, formed in 2015 to help plan a path for the facility’s closure, gazed into the room that held the restraint chair. I sensed a collective gasp of outrage. And so, on March 10th, 2017, a flurry of paperwork accompanied the restraint chair’s arrival at the hospital as documentation ensued to protect the hospital from allegations of abuse.
MDC staff, too, even as they lavished care on their patient, were carefully documenting the chair’s every move since the Department of Justice would investigate if any wrong was suspected. But I was glad the restraint chair was used that morning when my son arrived at St. Peter’s hospital for surgery. Months earlier, a previous attempt to accomplish this necessary surgery had failed because Shawn became belligerent and physically aggressive.
On this day, however, he was exceedingly brave and did his best to cooperate. Despite his being unable to speak as well as his suffering from profound hearing loss, MDC staff helped him to remain relatively calm as a whirl of unfamiliar procedures descended upon him. But the IV was too much, and, as his fear and incomprehension overwhelmed him, his cries of dismay echoed through the hospital halls. He struggled violently. Although those moments seemed like an eternity to me as my own eyes welled up with tears of helplessness, my son was, in fact, in a matter of minutes, soothed by MDC staff. It was they who looked into his eyes, they who coached him through the distress, they who knew best how to comfort him, they whom he trusted. I added my own comfort.
