This is my life?

Tuesday (10/5) was a very slow day at the clinic in the homeless shelter. . .until about noon, when my whole week got turned around. A guy in a wheelchair showed up at the door to the clinic with a bandage around the left side of his face and over his left eye. He was about the thinnest person I have ever seen, at he was pretty much covered in dirt.

He took the bandage off his face to show one of the nurses his wound (from skin cancer which was slowly eating away at his skin), at which time I got to see the most gruesome sore I have ever seen--and ever hope to see--in my life. It took up almost all of his left cheek and was so deep that I was surprised no cheek bone was visible; I’m guessing it was at least a half-inch deep. He said that most of the nerves were exposed, and apparently he had woken up that morning to ants crawling in and all over it, and wanted us to make sure that he had gotten them all out.

As he sat in the clinic we found him some food--much of which he couldn’t eat since exposed nerves kind of hurt when you chew--and his story slowly unfolded, a little bit to each of us. He has no family members to speak of; his only sister is in a coma at M.D. Anderson in Texas, who is dying of the same cancer as he. He has Medicare of Medicaid--I can’t remember which--which will pay for his frequent visits to the emergency room (because of seizures) but not his medications as it is based in South Carolina. He needs a California mailing address to get his prescriptions covered here, but doesn’t exactly have one as he is homeless (we got that taken care of for him, too).

Apparently he came to California from South Carolina when he heard UC Berkley was performing experimental surgery on the kind of cancer he has, which is how he got stuck here. Apparently his cancer was too far advanced for them to operate on, however, as they would have to remove large parts of his brain--where it has taken up residence--which would basically render him a vegetable.

He became partially paralyzed and paired up with his wheelchair when he survived a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge--one of the few people in history to survive such a thing. He told me he tried it after his wife was killed by a drunk driver. They had gotten married when she was 13 and he was 14, and he told me that they pretty much raised each other. She was 23 when she died and he told me that he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since; hasn’t been able to, actually.

He was a very independent guy, though; he wouldn’t let anyone help him up the stairs or to the bathroom. He said he had worked so hard to develop muscle in his calves that he wasn’t going to let it go to waste (or let anyone offer him any kind of help, it seemed).

Apparently he had been working as a mechanic until recently, when he just couldn’t remember how to put an engine together anymore because the cancer in his brain had taken such a deep hold. He refuses to get a disability check because he says there is a difference between being disabled and being handicapped. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that one yet.

We did find out that he had been offered hospice care at a very nice facility but turned it down because he would have to sign over all his assets (what assets?) to them, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet. It seems to me that this presents him with a viable and comfortable option, but who am I to tell him what to do or how and when he should give up his independence, which is really the only thing he has left?

So we filled his anti-seizure medication, got him a mailing address and a place to sleep for the night. We also prayed with him, as is our custom, but please keep Ronnie in your prayers and ask that God might give him the wisdom and the strength to do what is best for him.