A Healer-Mother Fights for Change
By Kerry J. Bickford, VOICES Editor
It is often said that you don’t know what you don’t know. As much as you can be immersed in something, there can be gaps of information that you don’t know that may have contributed greatly to what you do know.
When I invited Joan Peters-Gilmartin to an interview for VOICES, I thought I knew a lot. I knew that her youngest son, Cory, had died of an overdose in 2014. I knew that she experienced many highs and lows in her grief journey that followed, and that she had expressed her grief and outrage by fighting for changes at the local, state, and national levels. I knew she was relentless in her advocacy to create awareness and reduce stigma, and my heart was heavy as I imagined what it felt like to be on this mission. Meanwhile, I was equally immersed, but in the active addiction of my sons. I listened closely to her words and watched as she and others set out to educate, advocate and commiserate with others. The addiction journey had ended tragically for them, and yet, there they were – fighting for recognition and justice for those who were suffering or had died from substance use disorder. As much as I hoped that I could learn enough from these brave parents to avoid the loss of my own son, I didn’t know I would be sitting here, eight years later, devastated by my own loss and committed to the same cause.
Cory Gilmartin died in January of 2014 “from acute fentanyl poisoning after a relapse from his longest period of sobriety in 13 years – which was about the time this deadly opioid first showed up on the streets of Southeastern Massachusetts,” recalled Cory’s mother Joan Gilmartin, who was forced to relive the death of her own 29-year-old brother, under similar circumstances, years earlier. She recalled how it devastated her parents’ marriage. She and her husband, Daniel, Cory’s father, vowed to “grieve together,” having both witnessed what not doing so had done to her parents. Still, like many other parents, she reflects on how hard it was for Cory’s only brother, Andrew, who was 34 at the time. He was married, working, and raising a family in New Jersey – suddenly brotherless and far away from the support of his parents. In the years since she and her husband have had time to reflect on the impact on Andrew, now a family practitioner, she finds it important to apologize to him for the havoc that addiction wreaked upon their family as they struggled to help Cory. They spend as much time as they can with Andrew’s family – including their three young grandchildren, one of whom reminds them all of Cory, which is as healing as anything can be.
Joan recalled how she and Daniel survived those early days – by remembering Cory and talking about him whenever the opportunity presented itself. Cory was working toward his journeyman's plumbing license with his father – a master plumber – when he died. Because of this, many people in the construction field, as well as customers, approached Daniel and confided about similar circumstances with their own children. This opened up many opportunities to talk openly and to help reduce the shame and blame felt by so many around substance use disorder.
Meanwhile, Joan became involved in the Open Doorway of Cape Cod (ODCC) – a grassroots group of local residents from all walks of life, including health care providers, educators, and community leaders, many of whom, like her, had lost children to addiction. The ODCC’s mission was to provide people – who were suffering from or affected by addiction – with a judgment-free place to offer support, resources, referrals, education, financial aid, and more, in a judgment-free and stigma-free space.
As International Overdose Awareness Day 2015 approached, The ODCC organized a two-day road relay from Bourne to Ptown, planting purple flags at each police department to represent the number of opioid deaths on Cape Cod. This idea came to Joan as a result of a display she had seen of combat boots representing soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I really wanted to present a visual concept of loss,” said Gilmartin, who early on had to challenge the mistaken concept that Cape Cod did not have this problem. It was embraced by the local police departments who also relayed flags from town to town to show their support for this mission. Since then, this idea has been replicated across the state and beyond, all because of this group of caring and bereaved parents who were committed to remembering every life lost in this battle. Something else I didn't know.
Her tireless efforts continued as she traveled over the bridge and into the statehouse. In 2015, Gilmartin, a Physician Assistant in Family Medicine on Cape Cod (now retired), helped support Governor Baker's bill cutting the number of addictive medications a doctor could supply during a first-time visit, thereby allowing some time to look into the patient’s prescribing record. At the same time, there were changes made allowing doctors to hold patients who presented in an addiction-related, life-threatening situation for up to 72 hours, which concerned her because there weren’t enough beds to accommodate these people upon discharge. This is still a challenge seven years later.
“My proudest moment was when I had heard enough from a Purdue Pharma Sales Rep, who was coming into the medical office I worked at weekly stating that oxycontin was non addictive, and that providers should feel confident prescribing the drug for non-critical pain applications. I told him he was a liar and to leave the office and not come back,” said Joan.
“My least proud moment was when I learned of the death of the drug dealer whose home my son had died in (from a fentanyl overdose) –one year later and on Cory’s birthday. At first, I felt some sense of cosmic justice, but then I realized that someone else had lost their own son and was suffering and that he had probably been dealing to support his own habit. These are important insights into the narrative of my personal journey,” said Joan, as she continues to come to terms with the loss of a beloved son that has set her on a path of redemption for others whose lives, like hers, will never be the same.