i have been going to a couple homeless clinics. they are relaxing to work in, because the volume is lower and so are the expectations, by which i mean, you do not have 15 minute scheduled appointments. you can talk for as long as you need to.
i have been too busy to write.
but i'll tell you what. on ash wednesday last week, in the homeless clinic at the salvation army, i saw this lady from new orleans. she's been here in milwaukee since 2005.
remember 2005?
she had been a chef, and a "minister of music" at church, with a wide circle, she says, of friends and choir pals and extended family. she has been stuck here, in this postindustrial northern-urban wasteland, ever since the hurricane.
the family? we don't talk much. nobody has a phone. a church home? i don't know, somehow i just never got anywhere. a job? been cooking here and there sometimes. not my kind of cooking. now there's no jobs anyhow. plans for the future? want to go back home? i don't know... sometimes you just lose your way.
sometimes
her breathing went bad as soon as she got up here. she was, what, 45 years old, then? she'd had asthma as a little girl, but it went away, and then in high school she played basketball and ran track, and never had any trouble breathing.
down there, it's hot, all year round. it's steaming. i'm not used to this cold air. i can't get used to it. i used to sing. i can't sing. i can't work. i can't do anything. this cold weather all the time.
so she "hits on the pump" - uses an asthma inhaler - 3-4 times an hour, and a few times every night to sleep. (you're supposed to call the doctor if you need it more than four times in one day.) she ran out of her own inhalers right away, but she got one from her neighbor and then a couple more from "this guy in kentucky i know."
this guy i know
i do believe that, as more and more of our friends and relations lose their jobs and with them, their health insurance, this will become a more familiar part of the future face of drug dealing: 'a guy' who can sell you some inhalers. or some metformin for your di-beetus. or some blood pressure medicine. since you can't get to the doctor to get your rx, and you got no more low-copay meds. or, on the other hand, you're the 'guy in kentucky,' making enough money for cigarettes by selling your inhaler, metformin, water pills, to your neighbor.
the lady from nola first came to the homeless clinic 2 weeks ago, and was given an inhaler and metformin and water pills. but she is so very worried, all the time, about her bp and diabetes, she decided she'd need to take all these drugs at twice the prescribed doses. and you know what? not only were these double-doses the same i would have prescribed her anyway... but also, her blood pressure and blood sugar were perfect.
unfortunately, she was blowing all her food money buying extra drugs from other people (not to mention poisoning herself with asthma inhalers). she kept taking more and more medication because she "knew" her blood and her sugar were high.
how did she know they were high? her vision was blurry. the sugar gets out of control and her eyes get blurry, and then the high blood gives her the headache. like right now, my eyes are blurry, she said, trying to read her new prescription bottles.
i had to laugh. "how old are you?" forty-eight. "put these on," i said, taking off my own
cheaters
and handing them to her. she held them up to the light and frowned. naw, these are way too strong. they'll hurt my eyes - "put 'em on! now, can you read this?" and i handed her a fine-print drug foldout.
her jaw dropped. she looked out from under the specs, then through them, then over them, then through them again. you mean, i need glasses? am i gonna have to go to an eye doctor? "look, your blood sugar's perfect. your blood pressure's perfect. and anyway, these aren't glasses glasses, they're just cheaters from the walgreens. they cost, like, seven bucks."
the young, pretty nurse walked in. "are you telling her about these?" she asked, taking her own magnifiers off her head. "i got mine at the dollar store." how much did they cost? "a dollar... it was the dollar store, right?"
dollar glasses
the woman was dumbfounded. you mean, i been taking all these drugs because of high blood and di-beetus, and all along i was just getting old? "we prefer to call it 'mature'," i said primly.
she couldn't stop shaking her head, astonished, laughing.
she pulled out from her wallet a tattered old business card with a scribbled-out phone number written on the back, and said she wants to bring us all lunch, at the clinic, some of these days. here's what she wants to make us:
shrimp jambolay'
an' crab corn bisque
or maybe hambone gumbo
s'm fried tomatoes
an' okra stew
an' maybe a chocolate praline pie.
some of these days
