Jacqueline White-Ivey

Treatment in America Jacqueline White-Ivey

Angela, a successful business owner and French teacher in Uptown New Orleans, has a mental breakdown, after her newborn daughter, Lottie Mae, is diagnosed terminal with Zellweger Disorder. Zellweger is a genetic biogenesis cell disorder. Lottie is missing enzymes that are needed to absorb nutrition and remove toxins from her cells. During the agonizing year that Lottie Mae is dying, Angela is admitted multiple times for treatment, but discharged before the medications have time to fully work. In spite of Angela having audible hallucinations, total departure from reality and other symptoms and in spite of her mother, Jamie, pleading with the doctors and nurses, she would be sent home to the same environment that triggered the illness. New to bipolar disorder and the medical system, Jamie soon learns if Angela is not saying, "I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to kill someone," her request for help from EMS is denied. The only place willing to keep her until the medications are fully working is a religious organization called, "The Well." From lost in the French Quarter, found sleeping in a park, hit and run driving, climbing a fence of a farm and doing $30,000 of damage, her vulnerable adult state illuminates the gross flaws in our mental healthcare system. Jamie's efforts are rewarded, Angela is kept alive by nothing less than a miracle. Jamie vows to tell the story in an effort to improve help for vulnerable adults who are having a mental health crisis.