There’s a drunk homeless man with
a cut on his head, called in by a tourist
who didn’t even stop her car, just
reached for a cellphone and drove on
by. Then Susan, with her neck pain and
her orange sweater. A 91-year-old Rus-
sian woman having an asthma episode
that is more or less resolved when we
show up. Her son is worried, though:
she lives alone, he can’t stay the night
and they can’t afford a home-care
nurse to stay with her.
All of these patients face serious
issues with housing, food, basic life
skills. The 911 call is less about an
emergency and more about an inabil-
ity to provide for themselves. A lack of
access to basic needs like food, water
and hygiene will all eventually become
medical if ignored for long enough.
Bare fridges lead to malnutrition;
broken plumbing creates infection.
Addiction becomes overdose. Some
folks call us hoping for a trip to the ER
when they just don’t want to spend
another night alone.
Susan tells me she takes medicines
for high blood pressure, psychological
issues and pain management. She’s
had one heart attack. She ran out of
most of her medications about a week
ago and hasn’t been able to make it to
Safeway to refill. She looks up at me, a
little embarrassed. “I didn’t think they
do anything anyway.”
She tells me she has some Haldol—
an antipsychotic—left, but she doesn’t
always take that one because she
doesn’t like it. Her knees rock back and
forth on the gurney, which is probably
a side effect of the drug. Patients on
lifelong psych meds often twitch a bit
without realizing it. She tells me the
blood-pressure cuff feels too tight.She’s been receiving disability since
she was 24 or 25, for hallucinations. She
moves around. She gets disability pay-
ments and welfare sometimes. She’s
been sharing the room with Marcos*
for several years. I look her up on our
computer system; we’ve transported
her four times this month. She says she
usually wheelchairs down to Safeway,
but it’s been cold this week.
As we’re pulling away from her
hotel, I ask her, if she has been sick all
week, what was it that changed tonight
to make her call 911?
“I keep blowing my nose, but it’s still
runny,” she says.A LACK OF ACCESS TO BASIC NEEDS LIKE FOOD
AND HYGIENE WILL EVENTUALLY BECOME
MEDICAL IF IGNORED FOR LONG ENOUGH.rd.ca 75