PEOPLES DAILY, THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2014
Page 35
Strange World
Woman donates kidney to her boss, gets fired 4 7-year-old Debbie Stevens, a divorced mother of two from Long Island, donated her kidney to help out her boss. You’d think the least she could receive in return was some gratitude, but instead she was promptly fired. The behavior of the boss in question truly seems unfathomable. Stevens now contends that she was being set
up and used by her 61-year-old boss, Jackie Brucia. Stevens and Brucia met as co workers at the billion-dollar Atlantic Automotive Group. At the time, Stevens was a clerical worker, while Brucia was one of the company’s controllers. Later, Stevens left the company in June 2010 and moved to Florida, but she happened to meet Brucia again on a visit to Long Island. It
was then that she came to know of Brucia’s illness and difficulty in finding a kidney donor. As a ‘naturally generous’ person, Stevens offered to donate her own kidney if the need arose. To which Brucia replied, “You never know, I may have to take you up on that offer.” A few months later, Stevens moved back to Long Island and asked Brucia if she could have her
old job back. Within a few weeks she was rehired, this time to work under Brucia. After two months, in Jan 2011, Brucia called Stevens into her office and asked her if the offer for the kidney was still good. Stevens was still willing to go ahead with it. “She was my boss, I respected her. It’s just who I am. I didn’t want her to die,” Stevens later told the media. But she now realizes that Brucia had only been
Debbie (L) and her boss Jackie
“grooming her to be her backup plan.” Stevens wasn’t a close match for Brucia, so she instead donated her kidney to someone else, so that Brucia would move up the waiting list. Eventually, Stevens’ kidney went to someone in St. Louis, while Brucia got hers from San Francisco. After the procedure, Stevens experienced serious pain, discomfort in her legs and digestive problems. However, she was pressured to return to work just three weeks after surgery. When she finally went back to work on Sep 6, 2011, she didn’t feel ready; even her boss was still recovering at home. Three days later, she was so sick that she had to return home. She then received a berating call from Brucia. Her words apparently were, “You can’t come and go as you please. People are going to think you’re getting special treatment.” Even after Brucia returned to work, Stevens got yelled at in front of co-workers all the time. When she went to visit a psychiatrist and had her lawyers send a letter to the employers, Stevens was quickly fired. Stevens’ lawyers now plan to file a discrimination lawsuit against the company. “Brucia turns on her, and she should have been kissing her feet,” one of her lawyers said. In spite of the bitter experience, Stevens does not regret what she’s done. “I have no regrets I donated a kidney because it saved the life of a man in Missouri.”
Woman addicted to drinking her own urine
I
t’s disgusting, funny and sad all at once, what 53-yearold Carrie from Colorado Springs goes through. She has been addicted to drinking her own urine for over four years now. Her urine intake amounts to about 80 ounces a day, and since she began she has consumed over 900 gallons. “I drink almost all the urine that comes out of my body. It tastes like water for me,” she says. What makes Carrie’s condition all the more weird is that she doesn’t just drink urine from a glass. I watched this video of a program about her on the TLC channel, where she gathers up the courage to confess her habit to her friend Denise. During the confession, she describes in detail exactly what she does with the urine. Some of it goes in the regular way, through a glass. But then she puts some of it in a Neti pot and drinks it nasally. And some, she actually drinks through
her eyes using an eye cup. She even brushes her teeth with it, and saves some so that she can rub aged urine all over her skin. Carrie says that it’s the nasal drinking that hurts the most. “The pain is different than any pain you’ve experienced.” Reading about Carrie, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why?” Why would anyone want to do such a thing to themselves. Doctors and psychiatrists do have a few theories as to what is happening to Carrie. Some say that it could be a type of Pica disorder, where people are obsessed with eating things that aren’t food. Others say that Carrie displays the exact symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive disorder, spending a good deal of time obsessing over her urine. According to psychiatrist Dr. Keith Albow, drinking urine probably allows Carrie to forget about stressful things. He says that Carries condition shows
a “real failure between what represents you as an individual and what represents waste
products to be discarded. She probably has guilt over ridding herself of her bodily functions.”
Counseling and therapy should be able to help Carrie. We sure hope it does.
Carrie