On my lunch break...

I am currently taking lunch at Connections, the homeless healthcare clinic run by Yakima Neighborhood Health. This clinic is pretty small, serves both medical and dental patients, with the only prerequisite being homelessness. Homelessness is not necessarily restricted to living on the streets, rather it includes couch-hopping, crashing at someone's pad for a while, living at a Mission, staying in a mental health facility, and of course, park benches and under bridges. Yakima has been presented with both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that they have the funding to open a clinic such as this one that serves free of charge to anyone without an income, but the curse is that it draws homeless people from all the surrounding areas because of the benefits it provides.

Today I have seen a number of patients (including a boy in high school), some seem perfectly normal. They are polite, claim to not use drugs or alcohol, have no past history of incarceration or mental illness, etc- yet...I can't help but wonder if they are so normal why they do not have a place to live. Others are clearly drug seekers whose symptoms and pains change with the minute. Lastly, there are others who I think actually go out of their way to make the female employees feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. I actually had to have another worker come into an office with me half-way through a visit because the man I was beginning to treat was so out of line and inappropriate. But...for every mysogenistic scumbag there are a number of good people who are being helped by the services we provide.

Life is great at home, we all went to an outdoor concert in the park, came back and had a bit of a dance party, played some cards, and ate an entire ball of cookie dough. On our way to bed I ended up stopping off in Sam's room (across the hall from my own) and sharing some moral and political dilemmas I am facing as a part of my job. Five minutes later Grace and Jaime came up and we ended up debating the American health care system, socialism, and US policies towards immigrants and deportation until well past midnight.

That is all- I wrote a post last night in bed after talking to Jaime, Sam, and Grace that I will probably post tonight that explains more about my job and the clinic itself!!!