When I entered a ChristianaCare facility seven years ago today, I asked for help with severe Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the particularly persistent kind of PTSD that results from chronic abuse and neglect, particularly during development. I had no idea what I was walking into. I could not imagine a hospital could be so deeply pathological that every time I asked for serious help, it would result in more harm.

It started on my first visit. The Foulk Road Family Medicine intern prescribed a Black Box medication and neglected to follow the FDA-recommended protocol. Another intern at that facility dismissed my request for a pharmacogenomic test, saying, “We don’t do that here.” 

The prescribing intern referred me to the facility’s embedded psychologist, Dr. Alan Schwartz, who now “provides behavioral health training for Family Medicine and Emergency/Family Residents.” He quickly recognized my needs were beyond his scope and said he would help me find the right level of care. But instead of bothering, he kept me coming back for 30-minute sessions once a week. When I described having been heavily triggered from a negative encounter with one of my awful parents and resorted to ingrained survival adaptations, the psychologist responded by using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, as if positive thoughts could somehow override my nervous system’s entrained responses and survival adaptations. Dr. Schwartz seemed profoundly disconnected from the intensity of what I was living through, and had no clue how to help someone recover from trauma. It seemed like he was more interested in me as a curiosity and trying to fix me according to his ignorant personal agenda, than in helping me get the care I needed.

During two of the visits, I told him I was having suicidal ideations, and I thought it was the Lexapro. He brushed it off both times. Desperate to be heard, I finally reported the intensifying suicidal ideations through the patient portal. The prescribing intern called. She told me to go to the psych ER. That was the beginning of a protracted and hellacious encounter with psychiatric “care” in Delaware. 

ChristianaCare’s psychiatric emergency department turned out to be a hotbed of traumatization that funnels distressed people to a notoriously abusive for-profit psychiatric institution. 

After relieving me of my clothing and personal belongings, as well as my ability to contact anyone on the outside, they put me in a cold room with nothing but a chair, leaving me alone and labeling it “one-to-one monitoring” on the bill.

Sometime in the night, somebody came in to talk to me. I told them about the suicidal ideations and how I had complained but hadn’t been heard. They convinced me I had a plan, and I should go to the psychiatric hospital for a few days. It would be like a vacation and “a gateway to services.” All lies, as I soon discovered.

By the time I got out of Rockford Center for Behavioral Health–owned by Universal Health Services, notorious for patient abuse and neglect–I could hardly function due to the abuse and neglect passed off as standard treatment. My nervous system was nuked back to preschool. Artistic my whole life, I couldn’t even hold a paintbrush.

I complained about Dr. Schwartz to ChristianaCare’s Patient and Family Relations office, which seems like the softer side of the legal department. The ridiculous process dragged out for about 18 months, involving many vagaries and frequent servings of word salad. But I persisted, and someone finally did apologize to me, but it wasn’t him. I guess they were afraid it would hurt their psychologist’s feelings if words from my mouth hit his face. 

Instead, Kellie McQueen in the hospital’s Patient and Family Relations department arranged a meeting with others. She scheduled the meeting for the day I told her I wasn’t available. But it turned out that my commitment changed, so I accepted. Interestingly, Kellie reportedly had a family emergency the day of, so someone else from Patient and Family Relations handled the meeting.

The hospital protected Dr. Schwartz and threw two innocent physicians under the bus. It was clear from the doctors’ demeanor and words that they had not even been informed what the meeting was about until they were already in the room. It was like they were set up to be broadsided.

The physicians seemed impressed by how well I had identified multiple problems in their system. “We found some holes that need plugging,” they admitted. Right. Like not taking seriously a patient who says a psychiatric med known for causing intense suicidal ideations is giving her suicidal ideations.

Around the time of that manufactured and mishandled mental health crisis, I asked for help with a bladder prolapse. I thought I was finally getting appropriate support. But it was about to get worse. Way worse!

I unwittingly found myself at the mercy of Howard B. Goldstein, DO, a urogynecologist who perpetrated medicalized FGM. Without informing me or getting my consent, while I was out for the agreed-upon procedure, he performed two unauthorized procedures that removed healthy tissue and muscle from my genitals. 

This predatory act was the most heinous act of violation I have experienced. It was even worse than abduction, domestic and sex trafficking, and suffocation torture at age 15. To be treated like a piece of meat by a doctor I turned to for help was the ultimate rape, the ultimate betrayal.

That wasn’t the only catastrophic surgery I endured in the mega hospital.

Several months later, another ChristianaCare surgeon, Dr. Frederick Dentsman, told me I had a type of precancerous tumor in my intestines that needed to be removed right away. After what I had been through, I knew I wasn’t in good shape for surgery. I asked if I could wait a year, rebuild my strength. He said no; sooner was better. He showed almost no regard for my condition.

So, just one year and one month after the trauma caused by the medical FGM surgery, this colorectal surgeon was ready to cut into my abdomen and remove several inches of my intestines. I felt such anxiety that I asked for an anti-anxiety medication. The doctor prescribed Xanax. 

In the operating room, the surgical team discovered the five razor cuts on my wrist. When asked, I told them these were because I was overwhelmed by the anxiety and fear of the surgery. The surgeon decided to proceed. As far as I know, that violates every medical and mental health protocol that exists. He should have stopped the surgery the moment they saw the self-harm marks. They knew well enough there was a problem, because they had three guys from Behavioral Health visit me at my bedside after the surgery. After.

Furthermore, no one in that hospital system told me that the surgeon’s cutting a vertical incision would put me at a 40% risk of incisional hernia. I found that out the hard way. The first time I sat up in the hospital bed, the stitches tore open. I groaned in pain. The staff said, “That’s normal. It’s supposed to hurt the first time.” No, it never hurt like that again. And from that moment on, a loop of my intestines bulged out of my abdominal wall. The hernia was obvious.

I spent about 5 weeks very near death from the immense stress on my nervous system caused by this kind of mistreatment. During a follow-up visit, I told the surgeon that PTSD and major surgery don’t go well together. He told me, “You should keep that in mind.” I replied, “You should keep that in mind!” Months later, I found out that the supposed urgent surgery wasn’t; the kind of tumor they’d found takes about 10 years to turn into cancer.

Due to the ongoing effects of repeated medical trauma on top of the original severe PTSD, it took me about 2-½ years to file my complaint about the medicalized FGM with the state Division of Professional Regulation. I expected that the Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline would quickly and thoroughly investigate such a hideous case. What was I thinking? Delaware is the fourth most corrupt state. The licensing board seems to boost that rating.

Delaware Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Zoe Plerholples, who highlighted her work in domestic violence, originally supported my complaint. But she switched tack after meeting with some “experts,” whose names and titles she could not disclose. The DAG told me there wasn’t enough evidence that the doctor violated my right to informed consent, though it was clear in the doctor’s own records. Case dismissed!

The DAG’s betrayal compounded the effects of “the Dr. Goldstein special,” as a nurse had called the combination of consensual and non-consensual procedures that caused me such harm. I’m left to deal with the fallout of this immense and repeated betrayal trauma, compounded by the institutional betrayal perpetrated by the DAG’s solidarity with my abuser. I don’t even get support from Victim Services because, according to the DAG, I’m not a victim, just a woman who doesn’t understand what really happened. 

As far as I can tell, that urogynecologist continues to perform surgery on unsuspecting women without any accountability or justice. This echoes the cultural standard, which protects predators in white coats so well that sometimes it takes 400 complaints to stop a predatory gynecologist. 

Predators can only operate in permissive environments. With such an environment in ChristianaCare, backed by the state of Delaware, it seems extremely likely that the system protects many more lesser evils than medicalized FGM. It makes me wonder how many injured individuals suffer, thinking it’s only them, afraid to speak up, because everything in the system protects their abusers.

Even the two rape crisis centers here in Upper Delaware (Sexual Assault Resource Center and Survivors of Abuse In Recovery) downplayed what was done to me. Their reliance on immature interns to provide care for those of us who’ve been subjected to the worst–sexualized violence–makes them not just ineffective, not just complicit, but enforcers of the dominant view: women who don’t like being harmed by those who commit sexualized violence just need to change how they think about things, pretend nothing happened, maybe take some pills, and get back to work. 

But that’s not how human nervous systems work. Rape crisis center therapists’ ignorance of trauma caused me more harm. The poorly trained practitioners failed to recognize that my nervous system cannot feel safe in a culture that allows men to do these things and tells me I’m the problem if I don’t like it. This insane culture forces me to live with ongoing pain, flashbacks, triggers, intrusive thoughts, disturbing sensations when I move, and the Medical PTSD resulting from such egregious harm at the hands of caregivers. 

Thanks to three ChristianaCare doctors, the hospital’s lack of safety protocols, and the failure of the state to intervene, I’m triggered every time I see the hospital’s prolific logo. I am terrified of surgery and of anesthesia, which means the seven inches of abdominal hernia in my 14-inch abdomen is inoperable. After the trauma inflicted upon me at that hospital, there’s no way I can trust anyone to knock me out again, much less, dissect my entire abdominal wall and stretch three square feet of polypropylene from hip to hip and pubis to sternum. What could go wrong? Too many things.

So, I live with this permanent injury, the medical restrictions it requires, the likelihood that my abdominal wall will rupture, and the constant anxiety that the fragile quality of life I have rebuilt over the years could collapse again. It wouldn’t take much; I don’t have it in me to endure further harm.

Due to the enormous impact on my quality of life, combined with the lack of accountability and justice, I have continued to speak up about medical abuse, particularly the sexualized violence excused as gynecological care. The head of Patient and Family Relations, Denise Barbee, sent a letter seemingly intended to intimidate me into silence. I persisted. The legal department permanently kicked me out of the hospital system in June 2022. This severed my relationships with my three best providers and put me in a precarious position when I needed serious care, adding even more stress to my already medically burdened nervous system.

It seems ChristianaCare doesn’t care. It certainly didn’t care about me. Otherwise, it would have never let the harm happen in the first place. We wouldn’t have to talk about how I’m supposed to recover.

This is what happens when a system built to protect itself is handed the power to care for vulnerable people. It doesn’t protect patients. It enables harm. It buries complaints. It severs access. It leaves people struggling to recover on their own.

I’ve spoken to dozens of people who have been harmed or lost family members to this mega hospital system that seems to rule Upper Delaware. It seems nearly everyone is afraid of its concentration of power and money. Judging by her behavior, this includes DAG Plerhoples.

Delawareans deserve a system that honors our humanity, not one that gaslights us, silences our pain, and protects those who violate our trust. We deserve healthcare rooted in consent, safety, and respect. We deserve justice that listens to survivors, rather than dismisses our lived experiences to protect reputations and power. And we deserve to heal, not in isolation, but in communities that believe, support, and fight beside us. It’s time to dismantle the structures that shield abusers and replace them with systems that put people first. We get there by refusing to be silent. By organizing. By speaking out. By standing up for one another. Because the world we need won’t be given; it must be demanded, built, and defended. Together.