Health care, timing and a room full of Higgs bosons

I'm constantly amazed at the good that one finds on the Downtown East Side.

That shouldn't be a surprise to you, I suppose, since we do talk a lot about the positive things we see in that part of town; but I still marvel.

Case in point: Wednesday morning, a woman came in in very bad shape. She was drunk, she was feeling ill, she wanted someone to call an ambulance to take her to hospital. And she was pregnant. Rhonda is her name. I had been upstairs, making sandwiches, and Danilo pointed her out to me. She was leaning against one of the pillars outside. I went out to talk to her and pray over her until the ambulance arrived. It didn't take long.

The paramedic came out to get her. "I'm the ambulance guy," he said. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" Rhonda nodded. "I'm drunk and I'm pregnant," she said, "and I'm sick." She climbed into the ambulance on her own. "Anything else to add?" the "ambulance guy" asked us. Danilo shook his head. "She says she's missing her son," I added. "You mean she can't find him or she's just lonely?" The assumption was that this was a child who had been taken from her by Social Services. "How old is he?" the ambulance guy asked her. "26." "Oh. Lonely, then."

Lonely, in a city of over 2 million.

As the Psalms say, "selah". (Pause and think about it.)

The ambulance guy talked to Rhonda quietly and with immense kindness. She would likely be taken to St Paul's Hospital, which is the nearest facility to the DTES. Since it's also in the West End, where I live, I've found myself in the emergency ward a few times, too, and have seen their dealings with "street people". They'll treat patients who are drunk or drug-sick, but let them know, in varying degrees of severity, that they can't expect to get treatment when they keep doing it to themselves. Rhonda will likely get a stern rebuke from the nursing staff -- but she'll still get treatment.

I was reminded of Lesley, a woman who was having a "drug episode" just over a year ago and we needed to call an ambulance for her. By the time it arrived, though, she had second thoughts about going and the ambulance guy and I had to convince her to get aboard. I said to the paramedic as he was about to leave, "I'd hate to think what would happen if someone had a heart attack or there was a bad traffic accident or something." "If there was," he said, "another car would handle it. This is what we do."

(Don't misunderstand: I've often seen the tough-guy side of paramedics, like the time they refused to transport a fellow who was smashed and rude and abusive inside one of the local "pharmacies" (basically a methadone dispensary). That would be the incident that gets reported to DTES "activists" as an example of the harsh treatment locals get from The Man. The dozens of times each day they go to help someone, regardless of the cause or circumstance, often go unreported.)

Almost overlooked in this is the fact that The Lord's Rain was one door that was open at a time when she needed it -- and other places might not have been open for business. Again, right place - right time.

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Richard, one of our favorites, is currently in St Paul's. He had been walking home when he started to feel weak and get a deep pain in his back. So he sat down on a bench until the pain went away and then he got up again. But he felt dizzy and sat down on the sidewalk. A friend from the same SRO (single-room occupancy) came by, saw him and called an ambulance.

Turned out, Richard had some sort of infection that had gotten into his vertebrae. He's been in the hospital for the past three weeks now (I only learned about it two weeks ago -- communication can be one of the hardest things on the Downtown East Side: people can go for weeks without being seen and then turn up as if nothing had happened; sometimes, they like it that way), receiving antibiotics and getting his strength back (he's in his mid-60s). He's also bored out of his tree and spends a lot of time reading sci-fi and westerns.

And Richard is getting good care, which is a real blessing. But it occurred to me, what if he had had to pay for his health care, or if he even balked at going to hospital because he might not be able to afford it? His is certainly not a case where he "brought it on himself". I'm gratified for a health-care system that wouldn't turn people away for lack of funds. (It might be tempting for a Canadian to draw a comparison with the US system, but Reggie Stutzman -- former pastor at the Bowery Mission in New York and now heading-up Real Life Church in the Bronx -- tells me Richard likely wouldn't have been turned away in the States, either.)

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So a Higgs boson walks into a Catholic church, and the priest says, "we don't allow your type in here". And the Higgs boson says to the priest, "but without me, you cannot have mass."
-- don't boo me, that wasn't my joke (Milton Berle)

As it has been in scientific circles, pool halls and executive suites at ballparks, I'm sure, the discovery of the Higgs boson -- the so-called "God particle", because it's supposedly the catalyst that creates matter (or something) -- was a topic of hot discussion at The Lord's Rain. The discussion went something like this:

ONE GUY -- Hey: didja see they discovered the God particle?
OTHER GUY -- Yeah! Hey - ya know what? You're a "God particle"!
FIRST GUY -- Yeah! And so are you!
OTHER GUY -- And so's he (me)! And so's she ... and him ...

Within about 3 minutes, it was declared that all of us in The Lord's Rain -- and everyone we'd meet outside -- was a "particle of God".

And we all went about our business.

Bravo for perspective.