Maggots, Excrement, and Blood June 14, 2007

Maggots, Excrement, and Blood      June 14, 2007                   

What kind of society is so disdainful of people in need that man who is poor, a double amputee, and who has AIDS lives on the streets?  Such a man came to Manna House today.  He was pushed up the ramp to our porch and a few of our guests asked me if he could get a shower.  My first response was that the list for showers was full, but then the smell from this man told me that he needed a shower right away.  Two of our guests helped me lift him in his wheelchair up over the stoop at our front door.  As we did, I noticed drops of some kind of liquid coming from under his chair. 

            A few minutes later, as Ashley and I tried to lift this man into the showers, I found out where the drops were coming from.  His backside was covered with a foul combination of excrement, urine, blood, and maggots.  He told us he had come to Manna House hoping we could give him a shower, and get him cleaned up enough that he could return to the streets.  I thought initially we might be able to rinse off the filth covering him and get him into a shower.  But it quickly became evident that he needed medical attention.  Just one attempt to rinse him off while he still sat in his wheelchair left the shower room floor covered with a smelly mess and several of us gagging.

Kathleen called an ambulance.  Once the paramedics arrived and they were told of the situation they said he needed to be cleaned up before they would take him to the hospital.  His care, they said, would be better if he came without so much filth on him.  Each of these three paramedics was compassionate, generous, and professional.  They and Kathleen came up with a plan by which he could be moved from his wheelchair into the shower.  His clothing was gently removed and he was eased onto a small plastic chair in the shower stall.  This movement left him shaking from pain, as his skin broke open further from the maggots eating him.  The smell was so intense even one of the paramedics struggled to keep her composure.

            After he was rinsed off, the paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher, and then they began to negotiate the turns out of the house.  As he was being wheeled out the front door several of us assured him that we were glad he had come to Manna House, that we would be keeping him in our prayers, and that we would come to visit him in the hospital.  He was soon in the ambulance and on his way to the Med.

            Then the cleanup began.  The porch, the living room, and the clothing room—all had a trail of liquid from his chair.  The shower room was the worst; the floor was covered with the maggots and the crud that had covered this man.  As we cleaned, the intensity of what had taken place began to sink into my heart. 

            I have heard the story of St. Francis embracing a leper, overcoming his repulsion to share God’s love.  I have heard the stories of Jesus stopping to heal a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years, and stopping to heal lepers, the blind, and the paralyzed.  Now somehow it seemed that I was in those stories.  I wondered if Francis had gagged at the smell, or Jesus had been repulsed by the ugliness of illness.  I know I had gagged and had been repulsed.  I also know God spoke to me about just going forward and doing what needed to be done to care for this man who had come to Manna House.

            I am also left angry and frustrated.  I know TennCare has been cut.  I know how public hospitals like the Med bear the brunt of care for the poor and their funding is cut and cut and cut.  I wish President Bush and Governor Bredeson would have seen what I saw this morning and smelled what I smelled.  I also wish they would have been in our shower room to meet this man who through the humiliation of strangers caring for him, seeing him in this way, remained patient and dignified and forgiving of our attempts at care.  I also wish everyone who speaks disdainfully of the poor, of people on the streets, and who do not give a damn about people suffering for lack of health care and housing would have been there.  Maybe standing together confronted with the smell of excrement and rotting flesh we together could come up with a way to care for people in need.  Maybe standing there together we would take to heart Jesus’ words that our humanity is at stake in whether or not we feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, give drink to the thirsty, and visit the prisoner and the sick.  Maybe we might even get angry enough to demand the changes we all need to live together as a compassionate and just society.