UPS & DOWNS  May 2000

WAYFARERS' HOUSE

Happy May Birthday, Sherry!

Welcome to Betty H., Judy, Carla, Robin and Darlene.
FAREWELL AND GOOD WISHES to Kathie W., now a resident at the George Porter House, Tracey, Liz, Ethel, Lisa, Alisha, Hannah and Bernadette.

THANKS to all the Wayfarers' cooks who baked and cooked and prepared food for Meeting Ground's Annual Meeting on May 21 at Clairvaux Farm. There were annual reports, financial and other statistical presentations and an election of officers at the 18^th Annual Meeting. A worship service of celebration preceded the buffet supper.

We learned from Margaret Holland (see Loaves and Fishes, May - June, 2000) that the Elkton Community Kitchen now has the following contributing organizations: Elkton Presbyterian Church, Elkton United Methodist Church, Harford-Cecil Food Bank, Immaculate Conception Church, Meeting Ground, Paint'n Place, Pencader and Chesapeake City Presbyterian Churches, Ray of Hope Mission, Rock Presbyterian Church, Settlement House, Social Services Help Center, Spirit and Life Bible Church, St. Rose/St. Joseph Parish, and Trinity Episcopal Church as well as many individuals.

The George Porter House has now received an occupancy permit as a group home from the Elkton Zoning Board.

Time Warp?

What does Wayfarers' House have that most people no longer have? Something our parents and grandparents had and most of us do not: a doctor who makes house calls.

Every Monday morning someone on duty at Wayfarers' calls the office of Dr. Joshua Aaron to let him know how many residents at Wayfarers' House, George Porter House, and/or Clairvaux farm need medical attention, and Dr. Aaron packs patients' files and medications he may need and tells the caller about what time to expect him. While he has no scheduled appointments at his office on Monday afternoons, Union Hospital may need him, and he must then delay his visit to the House.

He had only been in Elkton a few months when he realized there were patients in our town who have little or no medical insurance, scant funds of their own and who may have needed health services for a long time. He wanted these people who so often have had rough treatment by the world, and who have sometimes even ill-treated themselves, to become connected or re-connected with the health care system. Especially he wanted to provide a "lift" to them, a relationship that helps build their self-confidence, a relationship like one from an earlier time when the family doctor knew you and your family.

In fact, Dr. A. Especially wanted to help families stay together. He has a family of his own. He and his wife Gia have three sons, the youngest, Justin Mark Aaron, having arrived on January 7 of this year. Family life can be severely threatened by a serious illness: a parent hospitalized for along period, a job lost, a bank account drained, a death that could no longer be avoided even by skilled care. It was a desire to prevent a drift into catastrophic ailments and the separation they can cause that prompted this physician to offer his services to a shelter for homeless people.

Dr. Aaron functions as a general practitioner when he comes to the House on Mondays and treats acute ills, referring residents to appropriate specialists, hospital or public health facilities, supervising medications, providing health information and especially letting individuals know they are valued, cared about.

In fact, this physician is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonology (everything that relates to breathing, such as lung diseases and sometimes heart problems, too), critical care (anything severe enough to put one at risk for dying, things that land one in intensive care) and sleep medicine (any sleep disorder from sleep apnea, which is transient cessation of breathing, through excessive sleepiness during the day to insomnia, ailments that can overlap the fields of psychology and neurology). On his wall hang diplomas from the University of Connecticut, Brown University and Thomas Jefferson University. Small wonder that Dr. A was recruited by the medical community in Elkton two and a half years ago.

He practices in both Fallston and Elkton, Maryland, and ca frequently be found in Union Hospital, sometimes in the intensive care unit.

His goals of relieving suffering by helping our residents get medical and health care extend to the very specific situations in which homeless people often find themselves. Some have acute medical problems such as respiratory infections and skin rashes from living outdoors or infections from living in close quarters in shelters, whew illness can spread quickly. Some have chronic problems like hypertension, for example, for which they need temporary medication. They also need to be linked with appropriate hospital staff for blood pressure checks and public assistance to help them back to health. A resident may be pregnant when she arrives. Getting her established in the health care system for pre-natal care is important for the welfare of both mother and fetus. The director of the shelter as well as Dr. Aaron encourage registration for health insurance as soon as possible. Costs in our medical system have often pushed providers of medical services to swifter treatment of patients and away from more sustained relationships, a distancing that a population with so many severe needs can ill afford, needs this doctor has moved to meet where he can. He neither files claims for those who have insurance nor charges anyone in the shelter who has none. The frequent changes in the doctors who have cared for residents of shelters has had to do often with their lack of adequate health insurance and also with the other circumstances that have resulted in their frequent moves, town to town, and state to state.

The people who are desperate to find a place to call their own usually have been made homeless by three kinds of difficulty. This has been demonstrated in studies of populations who are in shelters for the homeless. These are not separate but often overlapping categories.

Some have chronic psychiatric problems which impair their functioning. This group need medications, follow-up and help in getting back into the health system.

Another group are impaired by addictions; they need encouragement to stay free of the substances that have blighted their lives, a support system that notices any back-sliding into use of drugs. Union Hospital provides free drug screening, and the director of Wayfarers' House has only to call Dr. Aaron to arrange the test. This is necessary for the residents who are trying hard to stay drug-free; they need the supportive drug-free environment.

The third category of difficulty that brings men and women to shelters is abuse. Whether they are victims of mental, sexual, or other physical abuse, the individual will have experienced a loss of self-esteem and will likely need encouragement to seek whatever help is needed. This group will frequently need legal counsel as well as time in a safe place to heal.

Whatever the reasons be that bring a given person to a shelter, you can be sure he or she comes filled with fear. They may be jobless, homeless, destitute, and suffering both physically and emotionally. That they are discouraged is s a given. They need someone they can trust to talk to. A caring doctor who makes house calls here is another name for love.