Week Eight (7/25-7/27)

  •  My time at the Covenant House came to an end with wrapping up my case files, answering the phones in the afternoon, and throwing together some toiletry bags for individuals who were living on the streets. The quietness at the Covenant House was mainly attributed to the fact that we ran out of funding for many of our programs that were able to provide housing and utility assistance. Every day in the afternoon I receive approximately ten calls from people looking to receive help on their utilities, but each time I have to explain that we've been unable to help anybody for the past two months. In the last week, we've also been unable to help anybody with first month's rent and deposit. Those funds have been exhausted, too. Our food pantry is being used in excessive amounts- so much that recently we've been needing to turn people away an hour before the building closes for lunch. We're also in a place where the food pantry is lacking in essential foods like chicken, beef, ramen noodles, beans, snacks, and other miscellaneous foods to make meals. It seems that during a time of extreme need throughout the nation is only exacerbated in such a place like Charleston. Even though Charleston is the largest urban area within the state of West Virginia, the dichotomy of extreme poverty and urbanism meets in a cataclysmic event where the vast majority is reduced to a growing class of working poor. Covenant House is in a perpetual state of waxing and waning trying to provide for the mass amount of people who cannot avoid having their electric or water turned off. Looking for money, waiting for money, pouncing at certain opportunities, and toiling to find more grant money.
  • Throughout all of this struggle and direct service, I've learned one very important thing about myself: Medicine is my calling and I will be a doctor. For a couple months I questioned whether or not I would be more suited for Public Health positions rather than that of a physician. I know that isn't true. Even when we've been serving people who need housing, food, or other hygiene products- there has always been another need that I cannot serve in such a social service/public health role: healthcare. Almost every person that comes through our door is looking for healthcare needs, demonstrating the immense intersection between marginalization and healthcare. People who truly need access to life-altering interventions are going to have aspects to their identity and lived experience that informs the access they have to healthcare and the quality of it. As a physician, I would want to fulfill the needs of such patients by incorporating public health knowledge into my regime. I know that this would impact my patients in such a fashion that it would be addressing more than the physiology at hand, but present sustainable pathways for treatments that people could engage in according to their ability, wants, needs, and ethics. There are more physicians needed who are educated, determined, and passionate about eradicating health disparities in such a fashion that the patient is the focus rather than the medicine itself. As a result of being in a strictly public health/social work position, I've seen that the intersection of marginalization and healthcare is so massive that it cannot be avoided in any of my work. It calls to me, I recognize it, and I will remain involved in addressing such a massive part of people's lived experiences. A great portion of our lives revolve around healthcare and medicine; I hope to be a generation of physicians who do more than treat the disease. I want to treat patients for who they are- as they are.

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