Y’all know I like to keep it light. There are very few serious issues that I allow myself to ponder and obsess over, but this is one of them. This story made me cry and makes me scared and mad and ready to pinch someone’s head off.
Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond were a couple for 18 years, the parents of three adopted children, and foster parents to many others. After months of looking forward to a family vacation on the Rosie O’Donnell Family Cruise, tragedy struck. Their story, as taken from a lawsuit filed on behalf of the family by the Lambda Legal Fund, follows:
“Just as Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond were about to depart from Miami on a family cruise with their three children, Pond suddenly collapsed. From the moment Langbehn and the children arrived at Jackson Memorial Hospital, they encountered prejudice and apathy.
The hospital refused to accept information from Langbehn regarding Pond’s medical history, informing her that she was in an anti-gay city and state and that she could expect to receive no information or acknowledgment as family. A doctor finally spoke with Langbehn, telling her that there was no chance of recovery.
Despite the doctor’s acknowledgment that no medical reason existed to prevent visitation, neither Langbehn nor her children were allowed to see Pond until nearly eight hours after their arrival. Soon after Pond’s death, Langbehn attempted to obtain her death certificate in order to get life insurance and Social Security benefits for her children. She was denied both by the state of Florida and the Dade County Medical Examiner. The Lambda Legal Fund filed a lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital, on behalf of Janice Langbehn and her three children.
Because they are prohibited from marrying, gay and lesbian partners too often have to argue their right to hospital visits with ill loved ones. National standards for hospital accreditation allow visitation to family members; people not legally related are considered family members if they play a significant role in the patient’s life. This case illustrates the need for hospitals to recognize the legitimacy of same-sex relationships so that loved ones are not kept apart at a time when they most need each other. Furthermore, hospitals are fully responsible for adhering to national standards for accreditation and should be held liable if those standards are not met.
Lambda Legal has published a life planning tool-kit, a portion of which is designed to help same-sex partners protect themselves in a hospital setting by preparing legal documents in advance.”
Now, y’all, seriously, what the hell? This very scenario plays out every single day somewhere in America. This happened to a couple I know … except that the mother of the sick woman kept her partner of five years from seeing her because she did not approve of her daughter’s “lifestyle.” As her daughter’s next-of-kin, the mother had the right to make all her health care and financial decisions. It was a nightmare.
This could have easily been avoided if the couple had completed medical power-of-attorney documents insuring that their wishes would be carried out by a person of their choice. (And, you know, that is a good idea for everyone, gay or straight, married or single.)
For more about the Langbehn-Pond family, please see their blog (which pre-dates Lisa’s death).
Anyway, I say we get Kadinsky to take these hospital workers and toss them off the mountain.
Please comment below with your own words of righteous indignation … and prepare yourself for a curse-filled rant from our beloved Skinny Bone Jones.
Please comment below with your own words of righteous indignation … and prepare yourself for a curse-filled rant from our beloved Skinny Bone Jones.
June 27, 2008 at 12:32 pm
So. fucked. up.
June 27, 2008 at 12:36 pm
That story is so sad, and it’s so fucking unfair. It’s unbelievable from start to finish, really. They wouldn’t accept medical info/history from Langbehn? Ridiculous. What if there had been a chance of recovery, but Pond was deadly allergic to some drug or something? I would hope if I collapsed my doctor would listen to my roommate or anyone else with relevant knowledge to try to get as much info as possible. And even if they had to go and be homophobic asses and not let Langbehn in to see Pond, shouldn’t the children have been allowed in? Fucking ridiculous stupid nonsense.
On a much happier note – the fact that there is such a thing as a Rosie O’Donnell Family Cruise is awesome.
June 27, 2008 at 12:42 pm
@Cate: That is the part that I can’t figure out: They refused to take medical information from her because she’s gay? What if it had been a friend or neighbor, or anyone with relevant information? And keeping the kids from seeing her? The whole thing is so far beyond fucked up. I am really surprised that this couple jointly adopted children but didn’t have medical POA papers for each other.
June 27, 2008 at 1:05 pm
This makes me sick.
I am a lesbian.
I am a mother.
I am only recently allowed to marry my loverbird; we are not yet married.
Next month, she and I are taking a little vacation in Puerto Rico, with a brief layover, of course, in Florida. So, even if she and I were to get married in the next month, if anything happened to either of us in FL, it is clear that we’d be denied these basic human rights. We would be powerless to do anything.
Either of us could die a MARRIED WOMAN but completely, totally, utterly alone in some sad, dingy ER room, with a wall between us because of the fucking hate, ignorance, fear and bigotry of others.
You know, this is an example of something so beyond comprehension that you often hear with queer couples, but I’ve never heard of straight people being denied these rights because they aren’t married, or chose to never get married, or because they were engaged to be married and something tragic happened. I wonder if it ever does, and I doubt it. My point is this: It’s not a federal right that LGBT couples want in order to flaunt it, nor is it some kind of attempt to conform to a deteriorating institution that so many dismiss as antiquated and non-ideal. It’s something that we can never predict we might one day need, out of the blue, tragically or gradually, in order to function normally through death or sickness.
Those basic things – decency, dignity – we all expect we’ll be allowed to do, should the worst happen, can be arbitrarily denied based on one person or an entire state’s prejudices.
A friend of mine miscarried a few years ago in SF. Her boyfriend (now her husband) lived several hours away. I was the one who was there for her in the ER, sat with her in her room while his family and then he eventually arrived. When the nurse was going through all of the intake/admissions business, she assumed that my friend and I were a lesbian couple. We all had a little nervous giggle when I said, “I’m definitely a lesbian, but her boyfriend is on his way here now.” I was allowed to go into her room with her and stay by her side until he arrived. There were no issues whatsoever.
In those hours she didn’t know yet she’d miscarried for sure, and she was scared and upset and a little sad. I would have hated for her to have to be alone then. It’s nice to know that there is someplace here in the US where they support and even assume that two women are a couple, and treat them respectfully, with warmth, kindness and acceptance.
I wish every mother would stop and ask herself what she feels when she imagines her children being kept from seeing her as she dies. What she feels when she imagines someone keeping her from saying goodbye to her babies.
I wish everyone who was ever a child ask themselves what it would do to them to have to have lived their entire lives knowing that bigotry and hatred kept them from saying goodbye to a beloved parent.
I do not know what it is in a person’s makeup that enables them to so cruelly and hatefully keep children from their dying mother, to keep a dying human being away from the people she loves most in life and those from the woman who means everything in the world to them. I do not know what that it is, but it feels like evil, and I am grieving for this poor family and the loss they’ll have to struggle with for the rest of their lives.
Not even a federal change in law can give them back those last moments with Lisa, or give Lisa the goodbyes she so clearly deserved to have.
June 27, 2008 at 1:13 pm
PS. It’s really scary for me. It terrifies me. I am at peace with my own mortality and that of the people I love, though I hope I am fortunate enough to live a long and happy life, and that they do as well.
Still, stories like this make me feel a desperate, impotent sort of panic, because I know if something came to claim either of us…it is too bleak to even imagine. Something like this.
June 27, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I do not know what it is in a person’s makeup that enables them to so cruelly and hatefully keep children from their dying mother, to keep a dying human being away from the people she loves most in life and those from the woman who means everything in the world to them. I do not know what that it is, but it feels like evil,
It feels like evil, looks like evil, smells like evil, quacks like evil… Well, actually, it quacks like a duck. But all other signs point to evil, so I’ll go with that.
(Sorry, SBJ. Your comment made me all teary-eyed, so I am combating it with crappy, possibly inappropriate humor.)
June 27, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Even if the laws change, there are still plenty of people with their heads up their arses who would practice this sort of discrimination and think they are somehow “doing God’s work.”
Yeah. I look forward to the reckoning, because I’ve encountered a few who need to wake the fuck up and realize that The Gays are not going to live their lives according to the hatred doctrine of a bunch of backward and hypocritical thinkers.
My hope is that these folks take legal action against the hospital in a landmark case so that there will accountability when morons behaving badly are reprimanded in life and death situations.
This is a heartbreaking story, BAngieB. Thanks for sharing it.
June 27, 2008 at 1:21 pm
That’s OK, Cate. Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a natural speech writer. Sans swears, of course.
June 27, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Ugh. I am so disgusted and have tears in my eyes. I am really glad that the Lamda Legal Defense fund exists.
In an unrelated note, my mom came to visit me in the hospital when my appendix exploded and the doctor asked, “oh, is this your partner?” and I was like, “GROSS. That’s my MOM.”
June 27, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Lambda, I mean.
June 27, 2008 at 2:03 pm
“The hospital refused to accept information from Langbehn regarding Pond’s medical history, informing her that she was in an anti-gay city…”
right. you’re in america, wake the fuck up.
and i love how they act self righteous like they’re all following the rules and doing what’s right…meanwhile, being a fuckin human being doesn’t even make the cut. and that they can go home and kiss their wives/husbands/childrens and be happy with themselves like they didn’t do a thing wrong.
June 27, 2008 at 2:37 pm
As distressing as it is to read stories like this, I am always grateful to see this kind of thing getting national press. It draws much-needed attention to this type of injustice and demonstrates thoroughly how petty, inhumane, cruel, and meaningless these genstures of bigotry are.
June 27, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Jesus Fucking Christ.
This is so fucked up it defies any and all logic, I can not find ONE MOTHERFUCKING LEGITIMATE reason why this woman or those children should have been kept from the life partner and mother they knew, nor why they should be denied survivor benefits which I am sure they fucking PAID INTO.
What in the fuck is wrong with these people?!?!? We’re talking about a *literal* life and death situation, just about the most heart wrenching, soul shattering moments that could happen to anybody and all any of this utter bullshit does is serve to make things even more painful.
Hey, FLORIDA and you, JACKSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL PRESIDENT AND CEO MARVIN O’QUINN – take a fucking memo, this is not a gay rights issue, this is a HUMAN RIGHTS issue. Have you forgotten that your lofty title, community status and disposable income stem from your job in a HOSPITAL?? Hospital = place to treat, heal and comfort the sick and dying, where HUMANS go when they are ill and in need of care from other HUMANS who have pledged to provide it.
Who the fuck do you think you are, to instruct your staff to treat people this way? What’s that? It was never “hospital policy” to deny the acceptance of medical information from Janice Langbehn, you say? Oh well, tough shit, Marvin. You’re in charge, fucker so that means you’re still the first fuckshit asshole I’m tossing off the mountain. But hey, you’re the Big Boss, so feel free to take as many homophobic dickweed underlings with you as you like – I gotta lot of outraged friends to help toss the lot of you off the side.
June 27, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Oh, K, your rage excites me.
June 27, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Every last one of us needs to get out there and sign our documents and put our houses in order. This (sort of) happened to my BFF and her live-in boyfriend. She was in the doc’s office having an eptopic pregnancy removed, and she started to bleed out. They rushed her to the hospital, where she almost died – ALONE – because her parents weren’t in town and they wouldn’t let her boyfriend in to see her. They got married a month later (they wanted to; if they hadn’t, a medical POA would’ve done the trick). Too bad my friends don’t have that option.
Every day, it makes me sick to think that people who live in AMERICA and pay their taxes and raise children and go to work and vote and help their friends and live their motherfucking lives are treated like second-class citizens. Who the fuck are we to take one minute to pat ourselves on the back for civil rights advances when shit like this goes on in the supposed bastion of freedom?
Enough: I’ve had it.
June 27, 2008 at 10:12 pm
OH FUCKING HELL. Coming from a career in public health to hear of this injustice makes me physically sick, from a medical administrative AND personal perspective.
This is beyond fucked in so many ways:
1. Death/birth certificates are PUBLIC records, once on file with the state no one can be denied access to a copy. That death certificate should have been publically available in 3-5 days, at most.
2. The Hipocratic Oath says “you shall do no harm.” By refusing to accept a medical history from the available/knowledgable source the physician has violated that oath.
3. JCAHO (aka Joint Comission or J-Co) is the accrediting body of hospital nation-wide, there are numerous standards on patient care, ethics, responsive hospital board action, and community integration that were violated. I sincerely hope JCAHO is approached by Lambda regarding this case of grave misconduct/malpractice.
4. This hospital board needs to be removed, along with the CEO that allowed this agregious misconduct. A hosptial CEO is a dog on a leash to a hosptial board, s/he carries out their orders.
5. The feds through CRS should be asked to review how this case may indicate patient neglect and endangerment in that facility. Although CRS controls the payments of Medicare/Medicaid, they will examine records for ALL patients to determine endangerment/neglect issues on the part of the facility. A warning or action from CRS will cause a change in operation at a hospital and serves as a warning shot across the bow to other facilities.
This wonderful family deserved so much more than they were given by our nation’s health care system. I hope a CRUSHING EXAMPLE is made of this awful medical facility so that others do not endure this injustice. Thank you for letting up know about this case BAngB, please keep us posted.
June 27, 2008 at 11:11 pm
@ AGreenEyeDevil: That was fantastic. Amazing. Thank you.
@ MBB: Wow, it DOES happen to non-gays! That is also terrifying. Good God, it’s a fucked up world we live in.
June 28, 2008 at 11:42 am
Thank you SBJ. I hope Lambda will bring the endangerment and neglect details of the case to the attention of JCAHO and CRS…I believe it’s the only way to really affect change in this situation.
June 28, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I saw this article earlier and was disgusted. Yes, everyone needs a health care power of attorney. Not just trying to drum up business!
June 30, 2008 at 12:19 am
BAng, thanks for bringing this story up. It’s fucked up for sure. And it pisses me off that lesbians are treated like second class citizens.
Miami of all places – what’s the size of that place – it’s got to be a top ten market. You’d think folks were more open minded, but no.
I know you guys have brought up power of attorney. As someone who’s pretty accident prone and had several surgeries to prove it, do you guys have any resources where I can find more info on it? I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t done this, but keep meaning to.
June 30, 2008 at 12:53 am
@Bowling: I know that TN, where I used to practice, has form docs that were created by the legislature:
http://health.state.tn.us/boards/advancedirectives/index.htm
And here’s a site that lists the forms state-by-state, with a link to the American Bar Association’s site:
http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/forms.shtm
June 30, 2008 at 6:52 pm
i will not comment because someones murder might be linked to my from here.
June 30, 2008 at 6:52 pm
*me*
fuck they’ll pay for that too!
July 5, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Please excuse the blog intrusion, but I wanted to say that I looked at their blog, and Lisa’s heart was donated to a Florida man. Certainly this doesn’t make up for the horrid, inhumane treatment by the bigoted hospital staff, but it is nice to see that her death was able to give life to another (and maybe others), and that is something that her family can hold on to.
Also, I wanted to echo the importance of getting your papers together. I would also stress the importance of a regular will — especially when there are children involved. And when you have major life changes, it’s important to remember to update/change these documents. I used to work at an insurance company and I know many people whose exes received their benefits, as opposed to their current spouse/children, because they never changed the documents. And if you want to be an organ donor, but aren’t, you can usually do that at the DMV.
July 7, 2008 at 10:20 pm
My tears and rage leave me no words………except in the immortal words of my favorite Long Islander, Chuck D of Public Enemy………….FIGHT THE POWER.
We cannot keep silent in the face of this blatent bigotry. SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER!!!!!
FIGHT THE POWER!!!!!! KAKI
July 16, 2008 at 11:39 am
According to the lawsuit, janice and lisa HAD executed all the necessary legal papersz: durable healthcare power of atty, a will, advance directives, etc. The hospital had the papers w/in 45 minutes of lisa’s arrival.
Generally, a POA requires the hospital to 1) give medical info and 2) allow the agent to make medical decisions. Period. The question is whether it requires that the hospital provide access to the patient, esp. after medical decisions have been made (i.e., no chance of survival) and when visitation is restricted to “next of kin” or “family” (defined as legal or blood relations).
This lived experience of the Langbhen-Pond family illustrates that legal papers are a poor substitute for legal relationships. Legal papers don’t require the state to provide a death certificate with manner and cause of death (unlike the available death certificate anyone can get) which is what is needed by agencies to provide death benfits; they don’t allow a couple to stay together in nursing homes or residential facilities where rooms are reserved for married couples; don’t require the Red Cross, FEMA, etc. to allow a couple to stay together in shared housing after a natural disaster; don’t require state officials and funeral directors to allow decisions about funeral arrangements; don’t provide access to your loved one’s cremated remains; and otherwise are simply unable to provide the treatment and respect that legally recognized relationships automatically provide. And thats just to name a few.
Of course, legal papers help in many situations. And they may help janice get justice, here. But until we demand equal LEGAL rights for all — until the gov’t stops treating loving couples as legal strangers — this type of outrageous, tragic, indecent, inhumane, and unacceptable behavior will continue.
November 22, 2008 at 5:33 pm
hi this is Janice for the story.. yes it’s me… the first point that “if we had the legal paperwork it wouldn’t have happened” BUT we did have a living will and power of attorney and as soon as they wouldn’t recognize me.. within and hour of her arrival I had it FAXED to jackson memorial.. and the kids and I were still denied access for nearly 8 hours to say goodbye. So there you have it.. we did everything “right” and it still didn’t matter
November 22, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Hi Janice. Welcome.
First of all, of course, our sympathies for your loss.
I was actually saying that the couple I know who were in this situation didn’t have the paperwork. And I said I was surprised that you didn’t…and the fact that you did have it, which we subseqently found out, just makes this all the more upsetting.
This is an issue that directly affects several of us, including me, and IT BURNS US. Most of us, gay and straight, have attended the recent rallies regarding equal civil and marriage rights for ALL Americans.
Thanks for stopping by.
November 23, 2008 at 12:08 am
Thanks BAngieB. I also want your blog readers to know is that for 6months I tried on my own to ask for an apology and it fell on deaf ears. I even filed and online complaint against the social worker and the hospital “lost it” – they admitted that. So then LAMBDA agreed to take my case in August 07. They notified the hospital in February 08 – 1 year later to try to work with me to avoid litigation and they NEVER contacted LAMBDA.
But the kids and I take comfort that the organ donation people (separate from the hospital itself) fully recognized me – allowed me to sign the organ donation papers. And Lisa gave life to 4 people include a 12yr child with one of her kidneys. So even as rotten as we were treated, I knew Lisa would want me to look beyond this – as was her way – and donate her organs.
We still miss her terribly.
peace