Let's Bowl

No, I don't know what it's like to really be down and out.

On the way to clinicals yetserday, at 5:30 AM, I went through McDonalds, as usual. While waiting for my junky fast-food, I watched a tiny, old, homeless woman push a HUGE shopping cart of junk up a hill in 17 degree weather.

Then got to clinical. Spent the day talking to:

A person with aids, who contracted it from their ex, then started dating an abusive person. That person beat this patient so badly that the patient ran them over and killed them with their truck...after the patient got all their teeth knocked out, that is.

Another person who got on a train from Chicago to Santa Fe, but got off somewhere in between, carrying their backpack loaded with 7 bars of soap, some peanuts and some raisens. They were traveling back to their sexual abuser--their step-father--who has abused them since they were 6 years old. They think it is 1996--the year they were raped by a babysitter and started cutting themselves. They are schizophrenic, deaf, and now homeless. Found at the train station, they will be held for possibly 21 days then released--to where?

A person who was adopted as a teen then slept with their adopted parent until they were an adult. They finally said no, then proceeded to go crazy, literally. Yesterday they wanted to "kill all degenerates, rape mothers and preachers."

A person who, after injesting multiple substances like crack, alcohol, and marijuana, lost their children to the state after beating up a woman who had just had a hip replacement. Before going to jail, they were in the hospital for a few days getting stabilized--and barfing up their meds.

A quiet artist, who sat and drew pictures for us as they talked about losing a beloved job after having a long bout w/pneumonia. Losing everything else due to financial strain, they decided to try and kill themselves in multiple ways. Discovered by a friend during one attempt, they were hospitalized with major depressive disorder. They have lost their love of art and still want to die. Now that they are hospitalized with a psyche illness, their family has disowned them.

Throw in the guy with one leg who is detoxing and kept grabbing my shirt, a guy with staples across his head from an MVA he was in after doing every kind of drug he could get his hands on, a couple of gang-bangers walking around with "guns", and a guy who was convinced I had a knife all day long and you have quite the human picture of despair, depravity and hopelessness.

On my way home, passed a homeless dude standing in a knee-high snow drift, holding a sign that said nothing but, "God Bless You."

My son told me a minute ago, after he saw me getting teary again over my clinical day:

"Mom, you can't fix people. You are not the doctor--you are just there to reassure them and comfort them before surgery. You need to give them a cookie or something. That is what nurses do, and God didn't make you go try to be a nurse. He gave you a choice. Do you want to be a nurse?"
I nodded.

"Then you just need to go to school and try to help people and just do your best. Hey, I feel like a psychiatrist today--is that what you call them?"

"You're more like a counselor." I said. "Maybe you'll be one someday."

"No, I want to be president--he has a bowling alley. I just really want to bowl."