My Heart Hurts

On this night, Thanksgiving Night 2024, I share a sad story and a sub-story within the story.

In a slow moment in my day, I turned to Facebook and saw a live video feed by Mal. He was doing his thing on the streets, specifically Kensington Avenue, when he unexpectedly came across the moment when one of our loved ones was being pronounced deceased by an ambulance crew, and a sheet was being placed over the young man's body while they awaited the van, which would take his body away.

That is heartbreaking enough, and yet there was one sub-story that would have gone unknown inside of this video, and it is that part of this video, in addition to the death witnessed in the video, that breaks my heart on this night of Thanksgiving. 

At approximately the 5-minute 30-second mark in the video, Mal walks across the street to discuss the situation with the men and women sitting on the sidewalk. Amy, one of my Delco 5, referred to as Allison in this blog series, is the woman in the dark winter coat who offers the most information. 

I'm telling you this now because I want you to try to understand something. The men and women who you see on the streets have backstories. Amy's backstory that I'm aware of involves a near-fatal overdose and two doses of Narcan, which I gave her and from which she revived only to be told by a registered nurse in the emergency room, which an ambulance took her to, that she must get out of the emergency room. 

Amy's time on the streets may have been permanently interrupted if that registered nurse had fulfilled her moral and professional obligation and treated Amy as a patient and not as an addict to be dismissed. 

We speak of the dreadful nature of drugs on the street, and they are dreadful. We must look at our own healthcare provision of these amazing human beings and how we can do things better and more entirely in ways relevant to the patient, not simply the bottom line of the organization commissioned to provide the care.