“It ain’t
fun and games,” Mike told us. “Too cold. I was about ready to hit a cop to get
a few nights in jail for hots and a cot.
“You know
what that means, don’t you?” Mike looked at us like we weren’t keeping up with
the conversation. He might have been right.
We were
following up on the reports of frostbite among our Resource Advocate Program clients
at Springs Rescue Mission. Sarah, the chief RAP angel, asked Mike if he would chat with us.
Mike agreed—as long as we’d tell more people about how the cold affected him
and his friends.
Mike has
frostbite. Before you escape to pleasant notions of frostbite being the
leftovers of an innocuous 3 a.m. visit from Jack Frost or Suzy Snowflake, let’s
cut to the chase. Frostbite is when blood literally freezes in your veins. It
almost always starts in the extremities (toes, fingers). Then, if untreated, it
works its way back toward your heart as gangrene.
Mike woke up
one morning a few weeks back to find his left foot so swollen he couldn’t put
his shoe on. A friend propped him up so he could limp four-and-a-half miles into
town from their camp site to see a doctor. The doctor found frostbite in the
toes of both feet.
No matter
what the temperature since then, Mike has made the journey into the Mission to
soak his feet six days a week. The regimen has restored normal color to the
toes on his right feet, but not his left. There, two toes are still black. Mike
has to make the hard call to allow the amputation of those toes or not. He
hopes against hope the toes will recover color and circulation, like the ones
on his right foot.
There’s no
guarantee of that. And the longer Mike waits to make that call, the greater the
possibility that gangrene will cost him his left leg up to the knee.
Mike weighs
those odds even as he talks to us. Then he changes the course of the
conversation.
He coughs to
clear his throat. For all the drama that could so easily be leveraged out of
his situation, Mike is matter-of-fact. “While I was freezing…”
It is clear
Mike is searching for the right words instead of taking a dramatic pause. He
thinks for a moment. “While I was freezing,” he says slowly and softly, “I
talked with my son. He’s gone on. Talked to my parents and a couple of friends
who have all passed, too.
“Couldn’t
feel anything from my knees down or my chest up, so I poured kerosene over
myself to commit suicide. I just didn’t get it lit.
“These
ladies [the RAP staff] got me through. They’re helping me get what I need. It’s
worth the time I spend here. I want to work. I want to get past this and find a
job and be warm someplace I can call home.
“We light
candles in the tent. We use little propane bottles and a burner to try to stay
warm. But it wasn’t enough to stop this” – Mike points to his feet – “from
happening.”
What does it
mean that Mike can say with not an iota of hype, “While I was freezing”? Not a
metaphor. Not a simile. Just his blood freezing in his veins.
It ain’t fun
and games.
