The Showers Saga - 5 (originally posted Dec 27/07)

If ever we needed proof that the shower project is a necessity on the Downtown East Side, I got it last night, in spades! Jim is one of the regulars at Carrall Street. It's clear that he loves the Lord -- usually has his TV tuned to one of the evangelist shows, like 100 Huntley Street or Benny Hinn -- and keeps his room key on a shoelace around his neck with a "PRAISE 106.5" key fob. And he comes to Carrall Street, regardless of whether we're serving a full meal or just a snack.

But since he had a stroke about 3 years ago, he doesn't communicate well: can barely talk, and his hearing and comprehension have been damaged. On top of that, he broke his collarbone two years ago, and it's never been set properly. One of the broken bones occasionally pokes through the skin, and it causes him no end of pain when that happens. It can really turn your stomach, the first time you see it. My first time was praying over him for something else, and I patted him on the shoulder, nearly launching him into the stratosphere. That's when he pulled the collar of his shirt down and showed me.

There's a long story behind Jim's shoulder, and interestingly, the orthopedic surgeon who has been handling his case believes that doing nothing -- i.e. not trying to repair the clavicle with a bone graft -- is the best option. Removing the entire clavicle is in second place. The doctor is concerned the repair job could break again and get infected. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but I have no doubt about his sincerity -- one thing I've learned at TransLink has been that the best solutions are often counter-intuitive.

ANYWAY ... the bone broke through the skin again and last night, Jim was in a great deal of discomfort. So I took him up to St Paul's Hospital Emergency after our Bible study at Carrall Street. I know about as much of his medical history as anyone, so I go along to do the talking for him. Fortunately, Dr Goetz was on call at the hospital at the time, so he was able to see us personally. But as we waited for him, Jim turned his attention to another medical problem: an array of nasty, itchy sores all over his body. A health worker from the Pender Health Unit had gone to Jim's hotel room last week, and left him with several jars of anti-itching cream. She suspected he had bedbugs, but the place had just been fumigated, so we both looked for some other possible causes. Last night, Jim peeled off his t-shirt and started sorting through it, and sure enough ... the bedbugs were there. He then hunted them down and killed them, but there was no way he was going to put that shirt back on. I gave him mine, and we fired the offending garment into the "destroy" bin, along with discarded needles and other things that can't be washed.

Up till this year, the only exposure I'd had to bedbugs was the little nursery doggerel: "sleep tight/don't let the bedbugs bite", which poses quite a conundrum, since keeping watch against voracious vermin would require constant wakefulness. (Oh, yes ... the other bedbug exposure was the tale of the railway customer in the 19th Century, who had been bitten by bedbugs in a sleeper car, and wrote a scathing letter to the president of the Pullman Company. He received back a letter over the Prez's signature, apologizing profusely for the experience, offering free passage on the next trip, and assuring the customer that steps would be taken to make sure this doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, the original letter had been paper-clipped to the reply, along with a handwritten note on the original, "Send this SOB the bedbug letter". Great Moments In Customer Relations!)

Anyway, between Danilo's battle with the bugs at his SRO hotel, and now Jim's experience, it's evident that these little brutes are nothing to be taken lightly. If people have a clean, safe place to wash up, that can hold down some of the factors leading to outbreaks such as this; and can (for those looking for even more tangible benefits to society) reduce the demand on our health care system. That's why the showers project is needed.

Judging by the way support is coming in, God thinks so, too. The showers project now has a name: "The Lord's Rain". Barry's wife, Judith, suggested "God's Rain", and that witnesses, because I'd been looking for a name that had some kind of Biblical connotation. Rain doesn't get mentioned much in Scripture, aside from the get-the-animals-in-the-ark-Martha*-it's-startin'-ta-pour! kind of rain and the former and latter rain references in the OT prophets, so any direct reference might be lost on people. But "The Lord's Rain" (I think it rolls off the tongue better) has that pun on "reign" (in case you missed it), which makes it -- I think -- a pretty good name.