2nd page for signatures for Karina Hanson Letter

I have added this post simply as an over-flow space to collate the signatures for the letter here:

Karina Hansen - URGENT Please sign this letter to the Danish PM 

Please do not share this link directly, as people can access it from the page above.

Thank you everyone.  There has been an amazing response!

Karina Hansen - URGENT Please sign this letter to the Danish PM

Note - This post is from from 2015. Karina is now with her family.

URGENT:  Michael Evison has written this letter to the Danish Prime Minister pleading for the release of Karina Hanson back into the care of her parents.

There is a court case coming up soon, and it is possible that with multiple signatures from around the world, that we could influence the outcome for Karina.

Please add your real name and country to the comments below this post, so that Michael can easily compile the signatories to send to the Danish Prime Minister.

Deadline for signatures: Midnight on Thursday 29th October (GMT)

If you are in the UK, please also state whether you are in England, Scotland, Wales or N.Ireland.

__________________

Dear Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen,

We the undersigned wish to appeal to you, the leader of the new Liberal Venstre Government of Denmark, to rectify a grave error of judgement that was made by the previous Social Democrat Government in 2012.

I refer to the inhumane forced removal of Karina Hansen from her home and her family. Karina, like many of us, is a severe ME sufferer, in Denmark.

She was diagnosed with ME in 2010. ME was recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a neurological disease in 1969. Since that time, Karina has had her ME diagnosis stripped away, by the Danish psychiatrist Per Fink, who later refused an offer by the world renowned ME expert, Dr Nigel Speight, to fly to Denmark and perform a second opinion test for ME on Karina.

Per Fink has now been treating Karina with psychiatric treatment for two and half years, with no apparent success. In fact a statement from the Hammell center, said that Karina now has brain damage, which she did not have at the time of her removal from home in 2012.

There is mounting research around the world, to suggesting that psychiatric exercise treatment given to Severe ME patients, harms them irrevocably, perhaps to the point where they cannot recover.

One of the symptoms of Severe ME is inflammation of the spinal cord and brain. So it hardly a surprise that brain damage can be an outcome.

The Hippocratic oath that all good doctors take, says "Do no harm". It would seem that this has not been observed.

In 2011, the Norwegian Director of Health apologised to the Norwegian ME patients, for not believing that they were seriously ill and for their previous irresponsible treatment at the hands of the Norwegian health service. This was repeated by the current Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg in 2015.

Denmark is currently not well regarded, for ME treatment in Europe and probably the modern world, mainly due to the situation surrounding Karina Hansen. Thousands of ME sufferers around the world are following Karina's situation with great concern. For the second year running, they will be sending birthday cards to Karina and cards to her parents. In the hope that she will receive them and realise that so many people care about her.   

The new Danish Liberal Venstre Government, now stand at a crossroads in this situation. They can either continue the treatment of Karina, initiated by the previous Social democrat Government, or they can apologise for what has happened to Karina, as Norway and take measures to rectify the horrendous situation that Karina and her family now find themselves in.

Karina should be released from the psychiatric treatment regime that was initiated by the previous Social Democrat Government and moved (with agreement from her family) to a suitable non psychiatric care home, near to her home and family, where they can visit her whenever Karina is well enough to accept visitors, as is the case with normal hospital patients, until she is well enough to return home to her parents care.

The state guardian should be removed and her parents should be reinstated with their parental responsibilities for their daughter. Karina is still only a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. We appeal to you to please give her reason to hope for a better future.

___________________

Please feel free to share this post widely to gather as many signatories here as possible. (Gathering names from around Facebook and Twitter is time-consuming, so please direct people here to add their names.)

There is also an ongoing event on FaceBook to send cards to Karina for her birthday. It can be viewed here: Cards2karina: Hostage of Denmark - 33 months & 3 birthdays deprived of freedom

Thank you.

Notes:
 If you have several names to add, they can all be listed in a single reply.

You may need to select "anonymous" in the menu on the comments box (if you have no Google ID) - also make sure you hit "Publish" in order to comment.

It seems Blogger is not allowing further comments on this blog post, please follow the link and leave your name here: 2nd page for signatures for Karina Hanson Letter

Edit: Concerned about some direct statements in the original letter, I softened the impact of some statements and Michael has now seen these. No further edits planned.  The essence of the letter remains the same.

Guest post from Simone: Chronic illness...

Chronic illness...

Successive losses that wear away at the Self. Eroding the familiar "I" slowly, over time, like water on soft stone until, later, little is recognisable. Misshapen, only the careful attention of an archaeologist can piece together the original form. There is no escaping the relentlessness of the grief. It is an invisible grief... there is no funeral, no wake (though occasionally there are flowers). Largely nothing to signify the extent of the decimation of a life that once was. Only rubble. Ego death.

The loss of roles, skills, abilities. Each quietly slips away, unheralded. Try holding on to them, they slip through the fingers. A sense of inevitability... powerless to halt the erosion.

Often there is a new identity, that is unwelcome: disabled, welfare recipient, sick, dependent, unemployed, pitied. These jar... the ego rejects them, they're not "me", not "I". There was a time when the "I" was other things, and maybe there will be a time when a new "I" forms. In this in-between, there are only these labels, not adopted but imposed from outside... these are the new "I". Try them on... they don't fit well. "Not me! Not "I"!" the ego cries.

In a world that idolises the ego, serves its vanity, where status is god, to lose identity is to lose status, and to lose status is to lose identity. Ego death is terrifying, painful, traumatic and invisible to most. The potential for liberation, of finding a new "I", is there; the death and loss of the Self a prerequisite.

Relentless erosion, until there is nothing. Until, perhaps, a new.

*

Thank you to Simone from Australia for this eloquently written guest post.  

A New Hobby

ME is a life-altering illness, and because of this hobbies that once gave much pleasure often have to be dropped.  However this is not a post about loss, rather it is about a new more ME-friendly hobby that I have found!

Recently I won a Panasonic GX7 camera through a National Trust competition.  The idea was to take a photograph of a sign saying "Thank You Nature" and then share it with the National Trust on social media using the tag #ThankYouNature.

My husband had previously suggested I might enjoy photography, but I had balked a little at the cost of setting up, not sure that I would really take enough photos to justify such expense.

So when this competition came up, I entered (several times actually) and won with a funny little image with wild flowers between my toes!

The GX7 camera I won, ended up being ideal for me as it is so very light and yet has almost as much photographic ability as a full DSLR.  New lenses for it are also much cheaper than for DSLR.

So I bought an extra lens or two and started to take photos of the birds on the feeders here at home. I've also got a bit fascinated by scenery.  Anyway as a new, and less energetic hobby, I find there is much to recommend it.

Here are a few of my favourite shots to date:

 

Still so much to learn, but a great excuse to sit still outside for extended periods of time. :)

PS I've just got started with Flickr - You can view more of my photos here.