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Auschwitz on Sesame Street continued

This center’s tour guide rushed Dr. Donna past the crowded picnic tables and into the facility. First stop was the gym. Telltale Sign #2 was all too obvious: the gym was gleaming but empty. Dr. Donna wondered aloud if its emptiness was due to the fact that, this being a major holiday, many of the clients were at home with their families.

"Oh, no," the tour guide told her, "we don’t let them go home on holiday. That would cost the company money."

At that point, Dr. Donna noted Telltale Sign #3: equipment in this gym was perfect. Not a scratch on the shaft of the rowing machine, not a chip in the paint of a dumbbell, not a sign to betray the gym’s use. "This must be new equipment," Donna commented. "Oh, no," the tour guide answered, "it’s the same equipment we’ve been using since we took over the center from New Medico a year and a half ago."

Someone with a keen or cynical eye for these things might conclude that the gym sees use only as a tour stop.

Then the tour guide was paged away to take a telephone call. Dr. Donna scooted back outside to talk with the folks at the picnic tables. She approached a woman who uses a wheelchair to ask what’s the story here. The woman’s story: she’d had her first exacerbation after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The hospital released her not to her home but to this rehab center. She had been there for a year and a half. "It’s like being in a prison," the woman told Donna.

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