it's a secret

Yesterday the hospital released my sister. They did not contact us, they just put her on a bus. I don't know if she had a coat or any money. I don't know who picked her up from the bus station. Duluth has a foot of snow courtesy of the April snow showers. How can health care professionals in good conscience release a sick person from the hospital, who is hours away from home without some kind of plan and without communicating with her family? They didn't cure her. They didn't help her. If she had cancer or was in car accident I know her family would be involved. Instead we are ignored and treated like pariahs. But who does she call as soon as she gets home? Us!

If she had a crisis on the bus she would have called us and we would have helped her out yet the health care providers do their best to keep her treatment (or non-treatment) a secret! They can't talk to us even though we are valuable resources who can provide them with her medical history. On one hand, we're not allowed access to her care while on the other hand we are responsible for her.

I don't understand why they let her out. It's tragic and unfair that she is denied care. If my sister ever receives the health care she deserves and recovers she will view all these months as wasted time, lost time. She will not thank the health care professionals who "protected her rights" and let her remain untreated. This is not the way my sister wants to live. She wants to return to college and become a productive member of society again. She does not want to be the angry, raving, vulgar, obscene creature untreated schizophrenia transforms her into. The doctors, while they may be enforcing the current law, are not acting in my sister's best interests. Their decision to release her while she is still extremely sick does not benefit my sister. All my parents and I want is my sister to recover and return to her life.