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Friday, May 28, 2010 Gary Coleman died after suffering an intracranial hemorrhage two days earlier. He was at home when he suffered this hemorrhage, but died at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center when his life support was terminated. http://wcbstv.com/national/gary.coleman.hospitalized.2.1720765.html
It is a shame that when people suffer and start demonstrating a different kind of behavior, our society would rather badger them like one would do in a courtroom, rather than trying to figure out what is wrong. Our society needs to know that people really can't help how they act all the time.
When you see that someone has a problem you shouldn't egg them on, what you say might frustrate or anger that person. Metaphorically speaking, there is no need to pour salt on the wound of another human being or take a knife and keep twisting it inside an already open wound. Human beings should know better, after all we're supposed to be the intelligent ones of the species. Sometimes I wonder because it seems that some people are really mean spirited or perhaps some people aren't really nice caring people.
Gary Coleman might have acted a little strange and perhaps one might even have called his behavior belligerent. None the less he should not have been egged on like some wild animal; he was badgered like a hostile witness who had committed a horrendous crime. At home from my where I was sitting, this man seemed to be broken and sick, someone that couldn't stand up under the pressure of certain questions, or should I say the way questions were thrust at him.
When administering a drug, a doctor usually takes the safest and most effective way to administer medication; we should be like those doctors or better still like the nurses, since they are the ones who administer the medications. Those nurses are really like the back bones and spinal cords of the medical profession. Many of them have a quality of patient care that goes way beyond that of a doctor in hospital settings; it's called tolerance and they are like the mothers to many patients in the hospitals. When someone is sick no one knows what kind of pain, mental or otherwise that the individual is going through. I hope that hindsight will enable people to be more humane when dealing with the sicknesses that are going on in our society. Someone that is a guest should be treated like a guest, and not a stepchild. It is not the job of a host to prove someone guilty; it's the responsibility of our Judicial System to prove those cases.
As I say in my book "Born In The Wrong Country," when speaking about Epilepsy..". "The blame that I put is on ignorance, but unfortunately people remain ignorant to this, as with other ailments and many other diseases." ".. This is what happens when we don't know how to relate to various diseases in our lives.
Does anyone understand what a seizure might do an individual? Do they understand how one might feel after having a seizure in public, especially under the scrutiny that goes with being a child star? People who have started having seizures can be in kind of a denial because of what seems to be a cruel and unusual punishment, which leaves one feeling exhausted and fearful. If one can deny the seriousness of having seizures in order to keep friends and others from asking questions or talking about it, then the fear is lessoned, and normalcy is easier to maintain. Does anyone truly understand the ramifications a seizure can cause? I dare say that having a seizure is nothing that one would highlight as a career moment or put on their resume. I for one didn't come totally clean about having seizures and being an epileptic until I wrote my book "Born In The Wrong Country," so until one has lived with having seizures, experienced the fear, anxiety and depression that might accompany such a drooling ordeal, then they will not understand.
When I wrote my book I had to ask myself several questions, and one question was how honest did I want to be? I realized that to tell the stories in my book that I had to go beyond what I was initially telling and not hide who I am. I had experienced having seizures for almost forty years, and I am not a celebrity, but someone like Gary Coleman who started having seizures late in life, who already had two failed kidney transplants, would probably feel traumatized to some extent.
Here was an actor that was having financial and marital problems on top of his long time medical problems, and now all of a sudden started having seizures; how do you think he felt with this added pressure? http://wcbstv.com/entertainment/Gary.Coleman.seizure.2.1411907.htm l He probably thought that he already had enough on his plate, and now with the seizures, he probably was crying out for God to help him. Those of us looking on from the outside usually miss what is happening; sometimes our indifference or arrogance can really stifle us. This is all the more reason why we as people need to be more cognizant of what others are going through; we cannot understand what we haven't gone through, but we need to try.
Remember that when someone is suffering and really fighting for their life we may not even know it, which is all the more reason that we should act like the caring human beings that we speak about all the time, after all this is what real love is all about.
On Friday, May 28, 2010, someone wonderful lost his fight. May Gary Coleman rest in peace.
