BETTER TIMES

PAST BETTER TIMES

Sitting down with Derya, watching 10 Things I Hate About You has brought back so many memories for me, most of better times.  I remember when Derya was in middle school. She went to the school that I teach at. In one of our classes, we watched this movie, “10 Things I Hate About You” as part of a larger project.  For those of you who don’t realize this, the show is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. There are all kinds of Easter Eggs buried in the story, from the name Verona, the quotes, and the storyline that parallels the storyline of Shakespeare’s play.

It’s hard to not watch this show and feel some of those memories come back to me.  Her expressions as she watched the movie for the first time or when her eyes lit up at the reference to Shakespeare.  Derya, for those who don’t know this, is an avid lover of literature. While she is more friendly with modern literature she can appreciate in a pinch the wordsmithing of the Great One!

Movie Memories
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@FreeDerya #FreeDerya  
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I’m sure the cool music, handsome actors and funny storyline probably helped as well, but the bit of me that’s the educator hopes that Derya saw the love literature at these times that I helped to facilitate.  

As I was explaining.  Watching this movie brought back so many memories.  I thought of the tall bookshelf of Derya’s that had been in her room, filled with books; books in a row, stacked on top of the rows until they bumped into the shelf above.  Each shelf bowed. The titles going on and on, spread from classics to modern day. Fiction stories, self-help stories and the collection of short stories that she had gathered together.  Her closet, filled with hanger after hanger of the clothes she gathered over the years. The stacks of shoes that had been bought and worn along the foot of her bed waiting for her to rush out.  She was always seemingly five minutes late cruising down the stairs with her backpack over a shoulder pen stuck in her ear and a textbook in the crook of her elbow.

Lost Love of Literature

That book shelf is gone from her room. The books boxed and stored for someday. Instead, sitting outside her room it has the binders filled with her medical information that we have available for her multiple doctors.  Now the binders fill the shelf, medicine sits on another shelf and sitting on top is the collection of care items that we use for Derya. The closet is filled with more support storage, the shoes packed away but for a few.  The backpack filled with her books from college when Samime went up there and brought all her things home from college. The textbook is lost, I’m sure packed away with the others. The pen long ago used up from the things that Derya has scribbled to us over the years.  

Instead of reading the latest bestseller, or writing her own Great American Novel. Derya struggles to understand her identity as she waxes and wanes through this disease and the turmoil caused by bad people intent on their own designs.  The young woman she was is gone. The pain I see in Samime’s face at this awareness is etched in the lines of wrinkles that have grown in my own. These wrinkles aren’t laugh lines but ones filled with sadness the tears matching Samime’s pain.

MONSTERS

Life is different for Derya.  It’s heartbreaking. What’s really heartbreaking.  It was in May 6th of 2016 that Derya was well on her way to a cure before she was snatched up by the people who would ignore her diagnosis.  They knew better. And in their knowledge they turned Derya from a functioning, driving, capable young woman into a girl who struggles to feed herself.  Derya drove herself to New York City.  

Many of my associates tell me that they have no interest in going into NYC because they feel that there are monsters, bad people and a real chance of having something bad happen to you.  Intellectually I know this isn’t true. But look at what happened to Derya.  And this wasn’t done by some criminal element bent on harm.  If it wasn’t Bellevue that changed this functioning young woman into what she was – then who was it?  Exactly

Life isn’t different for Derya only.  And yes, there are Monsters in NYC.  Monsters who will steal your life – but don’t worry about the criminal element as much as those bad actors who say they want to help!

ABOUT US!

James Baldini blogs about his daughter’s care and the tragedy that has surrounded the entire family of Derya Demirtas.  Derya has had Autoimmune Encephalitis for nearly four years now.  The young advancing, brave and stalwart young woman Derya Demirtas, has suffered much throughout that time.  As has her family and friends.  In someway we hope to see a change within the medical community so that it may better adapt to this disease and prevent future generations of victims.

You can read more from James Baldini @  www.JamesBaldini.com

#FreeDerya #JamesBaldini

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