conuly

And nobody better ever say otherwise.

There's a man on the block who falls down. I personally have seen him on the ground at least three times in the past few months, and I'm sure there's been more incidents. Let's be clear, he may have been intoxicated at least some of those times - but he also just can't walk. His legs do not properly bear his weight, and also, he's not capable of moving his feet the right way.

So today I saw him, helped him get to his walker, got our wheelchair, helped him get to his house... and halfway up the stairs convinced him that he has to go back to the hospital. Not RUM-C, they're awful, so I agreed, out of the goodness of my heart, to call him a Lyft and send him to Staten Island University instead. I say "send him", I could already see that he needed somebody to get him into the ER.

Well, my mother's in the hospital right now, she had a pacemaker put in today, so that's actually not so great a hardship.

I just had to run and get the wheelchair back into the house, and when I got back he said he needed to go in and get his insurance card. I knew it, I knew it as soon as he said it - he was going to struggle to get in the house, and as soon as he was in he'd decide he wasn't up to going to the hospital. And damn if I wasn't right.

This all took about an hour, by the way, and now my arms are sore. But, because I am nice and going out there anyway, I offered to stop by in the morning or early afternoon to see if he feels up to going. Because he needs to be in a hospital where they won't just punt him out again, which is what happened at RUM-C when he went - apparently, they tried to have him go home on a bus. From the hospital. After an operation. JFC.

(To be clear, I'm not sure that he needs hospitalization per se, but I'm certain he needs a social worker, or, barring that, friends and family. He doesn't have friends and family. I asked. Experience suggests that nothing gets assistance faster than being trapped in the hospital, unable to go home but equally unable to pay. If nothing else, he needs somebody to expedite him moving to a new residence with no stairs to get in, and that's not going to happen unless he calls attention to himself.)