Walking with the Poor, or Hep-B: The Final Injection, Part 2

My mission that morning (December 17th) was to receive the final of 3 injections for immunization against hepatitis-b. I can't say it was doomed from the start, but it was destined for revision, and probably for my own good. For one thing, if I imagined that I was walking with the poor, my own mode of transport was something of a contradiction--cruising along in the heated cab of my car, sipping a cup of fresh coffee, checking my sheet of directions from Google Maps. I had even left in plenty of time, so no worries. But I was impervious to these thoughts as I drove along, sipping and turning and merging, relaxed, feeling proud--almost noble--that I could resist the urge to steer with my knees, whip out my cell phone and text my wife some critical memo like "b back 4 brkfst."

Somewhere along Vietnam Veterans Boulevard I misunderstood a direction for a slight right and exited too soon. Lost, I pulled off the highway and stopped at a used car lot for directions. Some guy I presumed was the janitor gave me quick directions and I jumped back in the car. Then my wife called and asked if I were there yet. "No," I said and began to complain to her about the directions I had looked up and printed. She had my list of public health clinics and was kind enough to call the one I was attempting to reach, just to be sure I was going the right way, even though I knew exactly what I was doing. As I was pulling back onto the highway she rang back and told me that the clinic I was driving to was out of hep-b vaccine. My momentum got the better of me. "Impossible--why would they make an appointment for me to take this shot if they didn't have the vaccine?" "Well, that's what they said." She's been around me too long to think I would just listen to reason. "Okay, well, I'm this close, so I'll just go by to be sure. Otherwise, I'll have to pay more." I had been encouraged by the fact that their pay scale was based on income, and part of me was saying, "yes, but you could afford to pay the full price." I drove on.

After another wrong turn I discovered that I had turned off of Long Hollow Pike too soon and was headed away from the clinic. A nice Indian lady pointed me back in the right direction. Then I was looking for Blythe Avenue and was paying close attention to the directions for turns and distances. No Blythe Avenue. Several intersections later I stopped at an antiques store and went in for directions to the clinic. (At least I was in the right town.) Upon walking in I realized I had entered a slower environment. The first person I asked directed me to a second person, a woman behind a counter. She explained that I had missed Blythe Avenue because that street had been renamed for a woman named Dorothy Jordan, a school teacher who had been murdered. The woman giving me directions objected that Google Maps had directed me through the housing projects, and so she began proposing an alternate route up the highway, but then, unsure of herself, she led me to a third person, perhaps the manager or owner, who completed the directions. At one point all three people were offering suggestions. I felt like bolting out of the store now that I had what I wanted, but I thought about the fact that they had stopped what they were doing and had bothered to try to help me.

As I drove following the new set of directions, I began to wonder who Dorothy Jordan was. Up the highway, I turned left as advised and with a park on my left and a graveyard on my right drove down toward the clinic. I passed a church with a sign by the entranceway: faith is not a leap into darkness but a step toward light. That hung on me as I turned right and then into the clinic parking lot. I checked in, twenty minutes late for my appointment and worried that I would have to come back another time for the final injection. Few people were in the waiting room. After about 15 minutes the nurse called my name and looked at the chart. "Oh, are you the one whose wife called? We're out of hep-b. Sorry. We ran out yesterday afternoon." And that was it--no free hep-b today.

As I was driving back out of town, I began to recognize some places that I had seen before. I had been here before but didn't recognize it at first because of the direction I was traveling in. And my brief contact with the woman giving me directions made me wonder again, who was Dorothy Jordan, and what senseless thing had happened to her here. And as I passed the housing projects, I noted how large an area they covered and wondered why this little town had need of such a large tract of public housing. Although still in need of the final injection, I began to feel ridiculous for driving so far with such determination to pay less for a shot than I needed to, and even when I was asking other people for directions and they were giving them to me, I wanted get what I wanted and bolt. The Big Mo was gone. I slowed down.

By mid morning I was driving in to Nashville with Lynn to try again for hep-b #3. At the clinic ( first come first served) in case I hadn't learned my lesson to slow down and take things as they came, I walked in and presumed that an empty waiting room meant a shot in about 3 minutes. No, the clinic was closed for lunch until 12:30. So, we went for lunch and decided to chat until 1. When we returned to the clinic, the waiting room was crowded. Lynn and I were just about the palest people there, and much of the English spoken was either with heavy foreign accents or incorrect grammar or both. There was a smell of body odor...my own. Some of the people in the waiting room were visibly sick. Most of the adults looked stressed and preoccupied, and at least some of the young children, some of them crawling around on the floor, seemed more or less happy to be there--curious about each other or caught up with a toy. We waited about an hour or so and then went in for the shot: cost $35 bucks. It was over--the final injection. And I felt ridiculous for having rushed around thinking I was walking with the poor by going to get my hep-b shot at a health clinic.
I had a long way to go yet on the road to perfect bliss.

Just to keep things honest, that photo of me cringing during an injection is really from a few days later at a local drugstore clinic where I got a shot for the H1N1 virus: what a man!

Walking with the Poor, or Hep-B: The Final Injection, Part 1

Sometimes I imagine that a reality I mandate would be best. Fortunately, I have never managed to fully realize the 100% me-authorized version of how things ought to be, but two decades of steady money and health benefits can nurture a lot of fantasies. Before leaving my job to become a Franciscan lay missioner, I was able to have a thorough round of checkups and tests, refill needed prescriptions, and complete most of the immunization shots to prepare me for service in Bolivia. And the process was not too costly in time or money because I was in the system and of the system.


Becoming a Franciscan missioner in training has left me without prescription drug coverage in my gap health insurance¹. Eventually I had to refill that 40 mg per day prescription for Lipitor², and I did so about a day before hearing a radio interview with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in which he stated that the average cost of a 30-day supply of Lipitor in the US was about $130. 00 compared to $33.00 in Canada. "Bernie," I shouted (I was alone in the car and released my inner banshee), "they burned me for $140.00!" I didn't exactly set my GPS for Toronto (I don't own one) but my fight-or flight mechanism was activated.


The next day I began making phone calls about getting the last of three shots to complete my immunization against hepatitis-b.  I was trying the public health clinics in the Middle Tennessee area. One phone call informed me that the clinic in my home county was out of hep-b vaccine and wasn't sure when the next shipment would arrive. That was no good; I needed to complete this in at least the next week. I tried several others and learned that hep-b vaccine was apparently in short supply except for two health clinics (one in Sumner County and one in Davidson County) and at the travel clinic of a major medical clinic in Nashville (the cost there was about double that of the other two). The Davidson County Clinic wanted positive ID of residency in the county and otherwise would charge about $55.00. The Sumner County clinic was farthest away, but they didn't seem to care where I lived, and they even said that the cost would be based on my current income. This sounded too good to be true; upon joining the Franciscan Mission Service my income adjusted to a level more befitting my vocation. I made an appointment for 9:15 AM the following morning, printed directions from Google Maps and went on to other plans.


The next morning I rolled out with my directions, my checkbook and my cup of coffee--ready for the final injection. [Stay tuned]


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¹ And I thank MD, our Blue Cross and Blue Shield agent, for the coverage we do have.
² Before doing so, I should've checked with my health care savings analyst, CB; she knows this stuff.

Relinquishment: more than values-based downsizing

Relevant quote when forthing: "Let us go then Tesakeh. I shall not feel comfortable until I know what it is we have to fear."

The current move for Lynn and me is about letting go of many things so we can be more free to work with the poor, but the process is challenging.

Moving is the best antidote to hyper-accumulation of stuff. Lynn and I just finished our formation process as Franciscan lay missioners¹ and had to move our belongings from the room where we lived since mid-August. The objects fit into fewer categories (store, donate, toss, pack for Bolivia) than the number of boxes we hastily stuffed them into. Some of the items-to-store would actually make their way back to Middle Tennessee during our farewell trip, and a few went to a basement corner in the mission house, Casa San Salvador.  All of this moving weighed heavily on my knees-heart-mind as we trudged multiple laps up and down the narrow stairs from our third-story room to the basement or our car.  While we were assessing a smaller volume of stuff than when we left our house in Middle Tennessee, the sorting process resurrected the same concerns: is it something I'll be thrilled to be rid of (take my sleeper sofas, please) is it a personal vanity thing or a tool I may really need; if it's a tool, will it be functional in the new environment (farewell, leaf blower; adios, lemon zester) and if so will I need it and must take it with me or can I probably replace it with an equivalent later; is it part of my connection to someone else (toughest category of stuff to reassess, I think) and so will I regret giving it up because it reminds me so much of our relationship that I will feel--irrationally--like I am destroying my relationship with the person if I get rid of it, or even destroying that person because I have come to think of the object as the person (in this case, maybe jettison the object pronto and, hopefully, the obsession and misplaced affection²). Of course, this kind of evaluation process coupled with late hours and extreme fatigue results in the scenario of person, object, and box, with the person looking blankly from the object to the box and back again, blinking, getting slack-jawed, and waiting for the decision to register the ka-ching of a sales event and on we go to the next object (are we there yet), and multiply this x2 and we have Lynn and Joel on the verge of succumbing to the logic of Joe³ the nomadic golfer from Beaumont, Texas, and just torch it for the sake of moving on.  But we don't.  We sort it and box it and get some rest before a few days of driving. We have family and friends to connect with before leaving for the next three years.

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¹ Formation, at this point, no slight intended to the formation process, feels a bit like acquiring a driver's license in the US and then finding oneself suddenly dropped in a rental vehicle on a roundabout in London.

² I think of this at first as Chang Hsi-hsum syndrome, but shouldn't our compassion extend to Chang's case too so that we don't denigrate his need to assuage ourselves about the things we cling to? Of course, we can't have compassion without comprehension, so the connection involves evaluative self, object and subject.

³ "Three moves are as good as a fire--two if you're tight and go with it--one if you're more about goin' than stayin'."

Formation and Looking Back

At Casa San Salvador Lynn and I are attending twice-daily learning sessions to prepare us for mission service to the poor in Bolivia. Most of these are informal, around a table in the large sitting room on the first floor. Some sessions focus on cultural awareness, emphasizing the need for objectivity when we inevitably begin to encounter different ways of doing things. We also discuss how our own enculturation can drive hasty responses. We try to practice greater sensitivity to others partly by learning more about our own unique personalities and backgrounds and those of our fellow missioners. We talk about some self analysis techniques, methods for approaching social analysis, popular education, and leading from behind. All of these are preparing us to play a supportive role where we are stationed, learning from the people we serve.

First steps

Lynn Myrick (my wife) and I have joined the Franciscan Lay Missioners (FMS). For the next few months we're living at Casa San Salvador, the FMS mission house in Washington DC, where we hope to learn how we can better serve poor people both here and then outside the United States. Throughout our marriage Lynn and I have thought that missionary service might one day be right for us. During the last two years, and while Lynn was completing an internship as a campus minister at Furman University in Greenville, SC, we started reading about missionary service, and making applications. This past spring we attended a discernment weekend with the Franciscans and shortly afterward accepted their invitation to join them. We've been here two weeks and feel good about our decision: good instruction, dedicated fellow missioners, a well-organized program. I'll go into more of that with my next post and also look back briefly at the incredibly challenging process of making good on that accepted invitation.