Press Conference Speech at Bellevue Hospital, February, 5, 2007

Hello everyone. My name is Theresa Sareo and I am a singer/songwriter and now public speaker here in NYC. Four years ago while standing on a street corner, I was struck by an SUV in midtown Manhattan and unfortunately, my entire right leg was severed at the top of my hip. I was brought here to Bellevue--a City hospital, and also, the number one trauma facility in NYC. I’m here today to let you know that I am the face of someone who was treated and saved at a public healthcare institution.

My injury was so severe that if I were brought anywhere else, I may not have received the state of the art trauma care available here that ultimately prevented my death. The ICU care is meticulous as well as the recovery care. Also, I did not need to leave Bellevue for my lengthy inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, for the entire 6th floor of this hospital is a state of the art rehab facility. How, could a City hospital be so renowned for it’s care? Well, for starters, it’s Medicaid that funds nearly 70 percent of this hospital’s services. And by the way, when the President is in NYC and should need emergency care--this is the facility chosen to treat him--or her.

In addition to these topnotch clinical departments, I was very surprisingly provided with a range of creative therapies that have been put in place at Bellevue to tend to the emotional piece of rehabilitating someone like me dealing with severe trauma. You can imagine how emotionally devastated I was when I realized my entire leg was gone. When Bellevue found out I was a singer, they used music therapy to help restore my breathing capacity, which was depleted from being on a respirator. It was amazing to me that a public facility could even provide such a tailor-made therapy--a way to connect me back to who I am as an individual after my identity had been completely shattered. I also used ART therapy as a way to express complex emotions I could not get into words. Senator Clinton, as you yourself said in a former congressional statement about art therapy: “Creativity can help people to cope with the immense personal pain and difficult emotions related to trauma.” Well take it from me--YOU ARE SO RIGHT. And I applaud your support of the arts within a clinical setting.

Being a working artist, I, like so many adult Americans, could not afford my own health care. But by Bellevue being a public hospital, an arm of Medicaid called Emergency Medicaid covered most of my three-month-long inpatient care. I fear that if Pres. Bush cuts more than the 80 billion dollars in Medicaid--Emergency Medicaid will be one of the first things to go--along with those precious creative therapies, and not to mention all the medicines that I needed. I truly can not imagine what my life would be like if Bellevue didn’t have the means to provide me with these enormously crucial services.

And so, because of the broad range of both clinical AND creative care I received here--in a public hospital--I am proud to be able to call myself a survivor. I am also the face of a disabled woman who lives life with amputation, and personally, I say we stop using billions of dollars to fund a senseless war that continues to dismember and disable our young men and women in record numbers for the rest of their lives. How this can continue to happen is inhumane. And by the way--our war veterans are finding the veteran hospitals more and more unable to provide the care they continue to need--so consequently--where are they turning? To Medicaid-funded public facilities like Bellevue. This is clearly a time to EXPAND the broad range of healthcare services --not reduce them. Why not use this hospital as a model for every hospital across America?

I am the living example, ladies and gentlemen, that any one of you can walk out this door today and your life can change without warning. Therefore, it is my greatest wish that EVERYONE can receive the kind of health care I did, should they need it. I deserved it, I am eternally grateful for it, and I will continue to fight for every American to have access to this same kind of care. I’m so thankful that Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton are here today leading the way in this very crucial time, and in this very important healthcare crusade.

Thank you so much.


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