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.
But it was his adult family, his current family, his MDC family, who got him through the ordeal. During that long morning, many hospital nurses, administrators and the three doctors treating my son were in and out of our room, and at the time of Shawn’s greatest distress, most were nearby, witnessing the episode. Though distressing to everyone, they saw the benefits of using a restraint chair to help a patient receive necessary medical treatment. And during that long morning, they individually, and sometimes repeatedly, thanked MDC staff for their invaluable help with their surgery patient.
They saw first-hand the competent and caring work done by MDC staff – work that no one else is able to accomplish. And work that is, by all but a few, unseen, unappreciated, and even maligned. The necessary surgery proceeded successfully and Shawn is happily back at his home at our state’s only-remaining-and-soon-to-be-closed institution for the developmentally disabled in Boulder. He is very glad to be home.
As I sat with him in a celebratory pizza party, staff stopped by his home and he showed them his post-surgical gifts. Laughing and yelling happily, he proudly showed them his surgical bandages. A needed medical condition which, if left untreated, might have jeopardized Shawn’s life, was accomplished that day thanks to St Peter’s Hospital, thanks to MDC, and thanks to the dreaded ‘restraint chair.’
I guess we all know, even as freedom-loving Americans, that freedom is not always better than restriction. That’s why we don’t offer up a collective gasp of dismay when we encounter a stop sign. Things aren’t always what they seem to be.
Carol Dailey, the mother of an MDC resident, has served for the past two years on the governor’s MDC Transition Planning and Advisory Council.
