The Key for Mike

Note: Mike has been featured in a couple of Light on Las Vegas Street blogs since January. I thought you might appreciate this update on Mike from my colleague Sarah Stacy, 

the Director of Spring Rescue Mission's 

Resource Advocate Program.

Early last fall, the Resource Advocate team at Springs Rescue Mission met Michael. Camper, drug addict, felon, and very quiet man.  What was notable about Mike at that time was that nothing about him was particularly remarkable.  He was never loud, attention-drawing or even looking for help.  He camped with a rowdy crowd and it’s possible that their general boisterousness accentuated his quietness.

             Mike's life changed in early January when he woke up in his tent with a foot so swollen he couldn’t put on shoes. Somehow he made the four-mile-plus trek to the homeless health clinic to learn that toes on both feet were frostbitten. He spent a little time in the hospital to make sure there was no infection and right away made his way to RAP to figure things out with his advocate.  As if this wasn’t trial enough, less than two weeks later his daughter was killed in an auto accident that left his youngest granddaughter on life support.

            “Until Miss Susie, no one ever cared about me." Mike’s advocate did work hard to make sure he had clean dry socks every day, a special pan to soak his feet, and some privacy in an unused office for that laborious task. How do you sit and soak in warm water when you live in a tent in the dead of winter?  Susie was with Mike when he got the news that his daughter had been killed, and she was there to listen to his pain through the process of hitchhiking to Denver on weekends to visit his precious granddaughter, Angel.  But there was another team of angels who came to Mike.  

             Lisa and Tim are faithful volunteers in Supportive Family Services who offered him prayer on February 23rd, and he accepted their offer and came to understand and accept the offer of his Heavenly Father for redemption and a new life. “I never knew it was that simple and that I didn’t have to earn it” Mike says frequently. Life certainly hasn’t become perfect for Mike since receiving Jesus, but he has been clean and sober, even through making the decision recommended by medical staff that he withdraw life support from his granddaughter who gently passed the next day. Still he has persevered. He has turned to God’s Word on an MP3 player for growth and encouragement. He has led one campmate to receive the Lord.

 And yesterday, he walked into my office, put the key to the first housing he's had in years on my desk, and simply said "Thanks." 

The key – maybe it really came long before the physical key to an apartment was in his hand.

“While I Was Freezing…”

“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.  

Socks, Part Two: Preventing Frostbite and Its Fallout

My good friend Sarah Stacy, who manages the Mission’s Resource Advocate Program (RAP) for the chronically homeless, is genuinely excited about the possibilities of more socks for the neighbors we serve. She states her case far better than I could ever hope to rewrite it:

“The homeless are at great risk of frostbite on their feet for a number of reasons, one of which is damp socks or dirty socks that lose their ‘fluff’ (those air pockets between the fibers that help our feet stay warm) and ability to protect the skin. 

“Frostbite can take up to two years of extensive medical treatment to get taken care of, including inpatient care, managed pain control (which is risky for those with addictive personalities) and visits to wound clinics several times a week during the healing process.  It’s ugly as the tissue that was frozen falls off.  Medical personnel usually have to wait until the toes ‘self-amputate’ to preserve as much of the foot as possible in the healing process. 

“Treatment is painful and VERY EXPENSIVE to the community. Yet adequate footwear, including socks, could prevent the problem. 

“One of the yuckiest parts of caring for the homeless is asking to see their feet in the cold to help prevent these problems.  We have to educate, educate, educate our homeless to take care of their feet, and providing clean warm socks is a major way to help.”

So one more time for those of you in the Pikes Peak Region: You can find sock drop boxes around town in Colorado Springs. There are boxes located at TCF Bank (Powers & Constitution), Remington College, Nazarene Bible College, Gold’s Gym Briargate, The Coffee Exchange, Hollywood Theater (where Timothy Green will debut on August 15) & Community Bible Study.

Your gift of just one pair of socks could save someone a lot of pain, and the community thousands of dollars. (Imagine what a package of six pairs might do…)