I have probably been "ruined for life" since delving into service several years ago. But lately, I've been really feeling the emotional toll of that phrase so commonly thrown around in Jesuit circles.
I visited the previously-mentioned Mrs. A. and her family in the hospital on Saturday afternoon for a few hours. It helped me understand some of the larger issues at hand; specifically, the fact that Mrs. A. was one of the two bread-winners in her home. She lives in a trailer with her husband, her 21-year-old daughter, her daughter's husband, and their 1 and 2-year-old children. She was in the hospital for 10 days, which meant she missed work and therefore missed out on desperately needed income. Furthermore, the whole thing was all probably for naught because the third hospital in Atlanta (which was unfortunately Emory University Hospital...) declined the transfer request to do the surgery. So Mrs. A. was released from the hospital on Tuesday evening with an oxygen machine and a piece of paper written entirely in English about the fact that she has follow-up appointments with a hematologist and a cardiologist next week. She told me that she wishes that she had just never found out about her congenital heart problem, and honestly, I don't really blame her. If I had been able to see into the future, I probably would've never made Mrs. A. the first appointment that began this whole ordeal.
Last night at clinic, I had a patient, Mrs. B., start crying in my arms. Her husband has Hepatitis C and the clinic has been paying for his appointments with a liver specialist. Yesterday, the doctor told Mr. and Mrs. B. that Mr. B. is as good as dead if he doesn't have a liver transplant, but since he's not technically disabled, he won't be able to get the Medicaid that could potentially pay for the transplant. Furthermore, Mrs. B. was fired from her job the day before because she's had to miss too much work to bring her husband to all these appointments (they live over an hour away from Savannah). Mrs. B. told me she was only making $10/hour, but it was enough to at least stay afloat; now she's worried about having to give up her house if neither her nor her husband are able to find some form of work. Mrs. B. struggles with very serious anxiety, as well as a slew of other health problems, that obviously compound all of these other issues. I was able to get Mr. B on a prescription assistance program, and I'm trying to do other little things to help them out, but the situation keeps getting more and more messy.
This afternoon, I spent a lot of time talking to Mrs. M. on the phone. Her husband was one of the aforementioned managers of a McDonald's that was raided last week. She says that he is completely innocent of any criminal charges and that the whole scenario was created because of racial tensions at McDonald's and in society in general. He is facing both criminal and immigration charges though, because he also happens to be undocumented. She is preparing to sell literally everything she owns, send her two teen-aged children to live with family in another state, and move in with a friend so that she can pay the exorbitant lawyer's fees. I have confirmation from an attorney friend of mine that the lawyer she has is the best in the area for this sort of thing, but the entire situation is literally turning her life upside-down. The great irony of the situation is that Mrs. M. was a lawyer in Peru before she immigrated to the U.S. Mrs. M. isn't a patient of mine, but the woman she is moving in with is a patient at Good Samaritan (who I was luckily able to tell today that the lump in her breast isn't cancerous...phew). Random community connections actually put us in contact yesterday...the Hispanic community in Savannah seems to all know each other. Anyway, there obviously isn't anything I can do for Mrs. M. or her family other than pray and help them access small forms of assistance (like food). But Mrs. M. and I spent quite a while chatting and crying together today about the myth of the "American dream", about why racism exists, and about the state of the new immigration law in Georgia (which, surprisingly, hasn't yet been signed by Gov. Deal). I've never met Mrs. M., but I sincerely hope that I do before I leave Savannah.
Good thing I don't want to be a social worker...I don't think I could handle this type of work forever.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
El Día de la Comunidad
What a weekend!
Yesterday was SJU National Community Day. Linda and I got up early to go to America's Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia. It was kind of sad not entering the SJU chapel seeing everyone in bright-colored t-shirts and hearing people complaining about being hung over, but I wore my "...With and for others" t-shirt with pride yesterday.
Linda and I, along with almost 100 other people, stuffed 15,000 grocery bags for elderly citizens of Savannah. It was fun, and we especially enjoyed making fun of how long it took some people to catch on to the assembly line system. I was initially sad that none of the Hawks living within 50 miles of Savannah responded to my email saying that they wanted to participate with me, but one man (who got his Master's at St. Joseph's College in 1961!) ended up mailing me a $300 check as a donation to Second Harvest, and he and his wife are taking me out to Thai food for lunch in two weeks!
Random important fact that I learned yesterday: Approximately 30% of food in the United States gets wasted. (Second Harvest works by getting surplus food from local grocery stores and re-distributing it as free or very low cost to those in need. In fact, Linda uses Second Harvest regularly for her clients at the community center where she serves.)
Today was an adventure. Linda, Regina, and I went to Fort Pulaski on Tybee Island. We walked to the furthest point of the fort, which is about a 1.5 miles from the parking lot, and then waded our way through the water to the Cockspur Lighthouse, which was about 45 yards away. We prepared by buying $5 tennis shoes at Walmart last night, which was definitely a good idea because the mud and oyster shells destroyed them almost instantly. (Entering the fort was free today because it's National Parks Week or something...so the $5 would've gone to our admission otherwise.) We also timed the trip perfectly by figuring out when low tide was; at high tide, the trip would have been almost impossible. The only glitch in our adventure was that I tried to walk along the sand, instead of on the shells, and ended up being knee-deep in the mud and unable to move before I even realized what was happening. Luckily, Linda and Regina pulled me out before I panicked, and now I have awesome battle scars up my legs! The water and weather were absolutely perfect, and we were pleasantly surprised that the water only went mid-way up our thighs. Climbing the lighthouse was kind of scary since most of the bricks on the stairs had eroded, but we made it to the top and got a beautiful view of the islands. And we even signed the visitors log to prove we did it! The best part was that we didn't see any alligators or sharks, which we were all petrified of (instead we saw lots of crabs and dead jellyfish).
I'm thinking of leaving my muddy shoes in my closet when I leave Savannah with a note telling future volunteers that they definitely need to make the trek to Cockspur!
Yesterday was SJU National Community Day. Linda and I got up early to go to America's Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia. It was kind of sad not entering the SJU chapel seeing everyone in bright-colored t-shirts and hearing people complaining about being hung over, but I wore my "...With and for others" t-shirt with pride yesterday.
Linda and I, along with almost 100 other people, stuffed 15,000 grocery bags for elderly citizens of Savannah. It was fun, and we especially enjoyed making fun of how long it took some people to catch on to the assembly line system. I was initially sad that none of the Hawks living within 50 miles of Savannah responded to my email saying that they wanted to participate with me, but one man (who got his Master's at St. Joseph's College in 1961!) ended up mailing me a $300 check as a donation to Second Harvest, and he and his wife are taking me out to Thai food for lunch in two weeks!
Random important fact that I learned yesterday: Approximately 30% of food in the United States gets wasted. (Second Harvest works by getting surplus food from local grocery stores and re-distributing it as free or very low cost to those in need. In fact, Linda uses Second Harvest regularly for her clients at the community center where she serves.)
Today was an adventure. Linda, Regina, and I went to Fort Pulaski on Tybee Island. We walked to the furthest point of the fort, which is about a 1.5 miles from the parking lot, and then waded our way through the water to the Cockspur Lighthouse, which was about 45 yards away. We prepared by buying $5 tennis shoes at Walmart last night, which was definitely a good idea because the mud and oyster shells destroyed them almost instantly. (Entering the fort was free today because it's National Parks Week or something...so the $5 would've gone to our admission otherwise.) We also timed the trip perfectly by figuring out when low tide was; at high tide, the trip would have been almost impossible. The only glitch in our adventure was that I tried to walk along the sand, instead of on the shells, and ended up being knee-deep in the mud and unable to move before I even realized what was happening. Luckily, Linda and Regina pulled me out before I panicked, and now I have awesome battle scars up my legs! The water and weather were absolutely perfect, and we were pleasantly surprised that the water only went mid-way up our thighs. Climbing the lighthouse was kind of scary since most of the bricks on the stairs had eroded, but we made it to the top and got a beautiful view of the islands. And we even signed the visitors log to prove we did it! The best part was that we didn't see any alligators or sharks, which we were all petrified of (instead we saw lots of crabs and dead jellyfish).
I'm thinking of leaving my muddy shoes in my closet when I leave Savannah with a note telling future volunteers that they definitely need to make the trek to Cockspur!
Friday, April 15, 2011
La injusticia
I'm sitting in my car, in rush hour traffic, grateful to finally be done with this hellish week. I turn on the radio, only to hear another advertisement telling me that I should be freed from the terrible burden of shaving by getting laser hair removal. Ah yes, the important things in life.
I look to my left. I have just passed McDonald's, one of the three in Savannah that was raided on Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Evidently, a few managers at the restaurants were selling fake IDs to prospective workers. When ICE cleared out the restaurants, everyone who was white, black, and basically anything other than brown was told to leave. That's good; I mean, Africans, Canadians, Asians, and Europeans can obviously not be undocumented, right? And neither can very light or very dark skinned Hispanics, amazingly enough. And I'm sure all of the workers who were arrested were doing terrible things with the IDs, like putting into someone else's social security. (Granted, if you watch Fox News, the workers used these "stolen identities" to do things like "ruin American Citizens' credit".)
I'm feeling a little more than frustrated. Yesterday, the Georgia state legislature passed a bill, HB 87, targeting illegal immigration. Its premise is quite similar to SB 1070 that was passed in Arizona last year, but supposedly Georgia used language that will hopefully avoid injunction. Gov. Deal has already said he'd sign the bill. So now if someone who is undocumented gets pulled over for having a tail light out, failing to use a turn signal, or not stopping for 3 seconds at a stop sign, they can be deported. And there is no rule that forces authorities to notify the individual's family; the individual can simply be moved to a detention center somewhere and will wait there until deportation occurs.
The law comes at an interesting time, since Vidalia onions are literally being picked as I write this less than 2 hours west of where I am sitting right now. Georgia's economy is based almost entirely on agriculture and tourism, and we are in the middle of Savannah's prime tourist season. I wonder who is going to work cleaning hotels, busing tables at restaurants, and landscaping the city's beautiful area. I wonder who is going to work the farms and the factories across the state. Good thing there are lots of U.S. citizens who are ready to line up for these jobs when our undocumented residents leave for a less racist state. (Did I mention that South Carolina is only a few miles north of where I'm sitting?)
This upcoming weekend is known as Orange Crush on Tybee Island. Historically, it is a beach weekend with mostly black college students. This year will be the first year that there won't be "random police checkpoints" on the road to Tybee, since they keep facing allegations that these stops are a cover-up for racial profiling. This decision was announced yesterday, too. Good thing we're replacing bigotry towards one group with bigotry towards another.
Maybe I'm just tired. Here are two very small examples of what my week consisted of:
1. I've been on the phone practically a million times with a married couple that I lovingly call "the twins" (aka Mr. and Mrs. R.) and their entire family. "The twins" are uncontrolled diabetics; they were the first patients that I successfully solicited free insulin for by writing really sweet letters to pharmaceutical companies about how they barely make ends meet by selling tortillas on the side of a road in the boondocks of Georgia. Mrs. R. had a mole between her eyebrows that caught the eye of one of our doctors; she was referred to a dermatologist in mid-March, who did a biopsy. It turns out that she has invasive skin cancer. The kicker of this part of the story is that the dermatologist's office knew on March 14, but didn't notify Mrs. R. until April 6 (and only after I called them a million times, reminding them to find an interpreter and call her). Mrs. R. has been referred to the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta, where they will charge her an arm and a leg to get treatment. I had to book her appointment, which I had to coordinate around her special eye appointment because she was just diagnosed with glaucoma last week, too. The daughter of "the twins" is a single mother of a 1-year-old, and is suffering from some major depression. She came in one evening last week to talk to me and just started sobbing, so I've been working to get her some counseling. On Tuesday, the daughter-in-law of "the twins" called to report that Mr. R. had a routine x-ray done of his back for some pain, and evidently he has cancerous growths in both of his lungs. He had a few more diagnostic tests done yesterday and today, so I already know that next week will likely be full of trying to coordinate his treatment in Savannah with his wife's treatment in Augusta and Claxton. No one in the family speaks more than a few words of English, but, in case you were wondering, the family is in Georgia legally.
2. One of my patients (Mrs. A.) had a ridiculously high hemoglobin in a routine blood test last week, so we referred her to a hematologist/oncologist. When I called to tell her that I made her this appointment and that I'd be sending an interpreter, she was all kinds of confused because she "felt fine." The doctor ordered a few more routine tests, and discovered that Mrs. A. has a tear in her aortic septum. In other words, there's a hole in her heart. It's a congenital defect, but now that she's getting older, it's affecting her body. The doctor admitted her to the hospital, and Mrs. A's daughter called to tell me they were trying to transfer her to a hospital with a better cardiology center (likely in Atlanta) where they could do surgery. Mrs. A's daughter is younger than me and has 2 small children. She speaks almost zero English, and she's trying to understand her mother's health situation while also taking care of her family. Today, a social worker went to talk to Mrs. A. to find out her documentation status. Being that she is undocumented, 2 of the 3 hospitals that were contacted for the transfer have declined. Mrs. A. is on heparin to thin her blood; with the amount of hemoglobin she had, she was at a very high risk for a stroke. She'll be in the hospital through the weekend, hoping that the last hospital in Atlanta will accept her. Then come the complicated questions: how will she get there? Who will pay the bills? This is not to mention the whole issue of doing a risky surgery. Some people have already opined that she should just go back to Mexico to get this procedure done. (Out of sight, out of mind perhaps?) I'll be visiting her tomorrow afternoon.
I feel emotionally exhausted. Today marks exactly three months until my commitment at Good Samaritan is done. I'm trying to think about housing for the fall and about what I'll be doing with my month off this summer. But I'm preoccupied thinking about all the injustice going on around me.
I look to my left. I have just passed McDonald's, one of the three in Savannah that was raided on Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Evidently, a few managers at the restaurants were selling fake IDs to prospective workers. When ICE cleared out the restaurants, everyone who was white, black, and basically anything other than brown was told to leave. That's good; I mean, Africans, Canadians, Asians, and Europeans can obviously not be undocumented, right? And neither can very light or very dark skinned Hispanics, amazingly enough. And I'm sure all of the workers who were arrested were doing terrible things with the IDs, like putting into someone else's social security. (Granted, if you watch Fox News, the workers used these "stolen identities" to do things like "ruin American Citizens' credit".)
I'm feeling a little more than frustrated. Yesterday, the Georgia state legislature passed a bill, HB 87, targeting illegal immigration. Its premise is quite similar to SB 1070 that was passed in Arizona last year, but supposedly Georgia used language that will hopefully avoid injunction. Gov. Deal has already said he'd sign the bill. So now if someone who is undocumented gets pulled over for having a tail light out, failing to use a turn signal, or not stopping for 3 seconds at a stop sign, they can be deported. And there is no rule that forces authorities to notify the individual's family; the individual can simply be moved to a detention center somewhere and will wait there until deportation occurs.
The law comes at an interesting time, since Vidalia onions are literally being picked as I write this less than 2 hours west of where I am sitting right now. Georgia's economy is based almost entirely on agriculture and tourism, and we are in the middle of Savannah's prime tourist season. I wonder who is going to work cleaning hotels, busing tables at restaurants, and landscaping the city's beautiful area. I wonder who is going to work the farms and the factories across the state. Good thing there are lots of U.S. citizens who are ready to line up for these jobs when our undocumented residents leave for a less racist state. (Did I mention that South Carolina is only a few miles north of where I'm sitting?)
This upcoming weekend is known as Orange Crush on Tybee Island. Historically, it is a beach weekend with mostly black college students. This year will be the first year that there won't be "random police checkpoints" on the road to Tybee, since they keep facing allegations that these stops are a cover-up for racial profiling. This decision was announced yesterday, too. Good thing we're replacing bigotry towards one group with bigotry towards another.
Maybe I'm just tired. Here are two very small examples of what my week consisted of:
1. I've been on the phone practically a million times with a married couple that I lovingly call "the twins" (aka Mr. and Mrs. R.) and their entire family. "The twins" are uncontrolled diabetics; they were the first patients that I successfully solicited free insulin for by writing really sweet letters to pharmaceutical companies about how they barely make ends meet by selling tortillas on the side of a road in the boondocks of Georgia. Mrs. R. had a mole between her eyebrows that caught the eye of one of our doctors; she was referred to a dermatologist in mid-March, who did a biopsy. It turns out that she has invasive skin cancer. The kicker of this part of the story is that the dermatologist's office knew on March 14, but didn't notify Mrs. R. until April 6 (and only after I called them a million times, reminding them to find an interpreter and call her). Mrs. R. has been referred to the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta, where they will charge her an arm and a leg to get treatment. I had to book her appointment, which I had to coordinate around her special eye appointment because she was just diagnosed with glaucoma last week, too. The daughter of "the twins" is a single mother of a 1-year-old, and is suffering from some major depression. She came in one evening last week to talk to me and just started sobbing, so I've been working to get her some counseling. On Tuesday, the daughter-in-law of "the twins" called to report that Mr. R. had a routine x-ray done of his back for some pain, and evidently he has cancerous growths in both of his lungs. He had a few more diagnostic tests done yesterday and today, so I already know that next week will likely be full of trying to coordinate his treatment in Savannah with his wife's treatment in Augusta and Claxton. No one in the family speaks more than a few words of English, but, in case you were wondering, the family is in Georgia legally.
2. One of my patients (Mrs. A.) had a ridiculously high hemoglobin in a routine blood test last week, so we referred her to a hematologist/oncologist. When I called to tell her that I made her this appointment and that I'd be sending an interpreter, she was all kinds of confused because she "felt fine." The doctor ordered a few more routine tests, and discovered that Mrs. A. has a tear in her aortic septum. In other words, there's a hole in her heart. It's a congenital defect, but now that she's getting older, it's affecting her body. The doctor admitted her to the hospital, and Mrs. A's daughter called to tell me they were trying to transfer her to a hospital with a better cardiology center (likely in Atlanta) where they could do surgery. Mrs. A's daughter is younger than me and has 2 small children. She speaks almost zero English, and she's trying to understand her mother's health situation while also taking care of her family. Today, a social worker went to talk to Mrs. A. to find out her documentation status. Being that she is undocumented, 2 of the 3 hospitals that were contacted for the transfer have declined. Mrs. A. is on heparin to thin her blood; with the amount of hemoglobin she had, she was at a very high risk for a stroke. She'll be in the hospital through the weekend, hoping that the last hospital in Atlanta will accept her. Then come the complicated questions: how will she get there? Who will pay the bills? This is not to mention the whole issue of doing a risky surgery. Some people have already opined that she should just go back to Mexico to get this procedure done. (Out of sight, out of mind perhaps?) I'll be visiting her tomorrow afternoon.
I feel emotionally exhausted. Today marks exactly three months until my commitment at Good Samaritan is done. I'm trying to think about housing for the fall and about what I'll be doing with my month off this summer. But I'm preoccupied thinking about all the injustice going on around me.
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