As soon as I got off the plane my cell phone was buzzing and Dr. Jim Withers of Pittsburgh was calling. Jim is the founder of the International Street Medicine Institute and I serve on the Board of Directors. We are here for the sixth annual symposium and almost 200 health care providers will gather, share best practices and hit the streets to give health care to people who don’t have it.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Just landed. What’s up?”
“Joe is at the hotel and they won’t let him check in because he doesn’t have a credit card. Can you handle it and we’ll sort it all out later.”
“Sure. No worries,” I reply and hop into a cab for the ride to the Little Tokyo district of the city where we will meet.
$60 later I’m at the hotel looking for Joe. He is a formerly homeless Vietnam Veteran who lost his legs in the war. He is nibble in his wheelchair and is a member of the National Health Care for the Homeless Advisory Board and a member of Jim’s Board with me.
I found him in the hotel restaurant enjoying the Asian buffet. Joe has a grand personality and had charmed the waitress into letting him eat without checking in on the promise that I was showing up. Once you master panhandling it can always come in handy later.
“Hey Mike!” he bellowed when he saw me, forcing everyone in the café to stop eating and look at me.
He wheeled away from the table telling the waitress that he’d be right back and rolled beside me to the front desk where we checked in.
“Thanks Mike,” he grinned wheeling away, “I got to get back to my waitress.”
I suppose he was hungry for more than food.
Throwing my bag in my room, I took a walk through the Japanese district but the weather wasn’t cooperating and it started to rain. I made my way back to the Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens where we are staying.
“I recognize that cute butt,” I heard someone yell.
My friend Dr. Maria Brown of Chicago was sitting in the bar drinking and eating so I did my best Conner impersonation and strolled over to her. Maria is a teaching doctor who runs clinics for the homeless in the windy city. Anna Murphy who also treats homeless folks on the streets there. So we sat and talked and drank sharing with one another has friends who haven’t seen one another in a while. We mostly laughed though eyes grew moist a couple of times as we caught each other up. Maria keeps up with me on Face Book so she was more pointed in the things she wanted to know.
After they left, I ordered another glass of wine by myself. The bar was slammed and I was surrounded by laughing guys watching baseball and romantic couples holding hands and lovingly whispering to one another. I was an objective bystander.
I am glad to be here with friends from across the country who go to work every day determined to change the world from what it is to what they think it should be. These are passionate and committed women and men. I am proud to be associated with them.
And I’m mindful that while I restructure my life and have laid low at home, it is different when I am in Atlanta or New Orleans or L.A. I have rich and deep relationships in those places. I get a lot of requests from people and organizations to help them do something better or to emulate the things that I’ve done in my career.
So…it’s time to go dive in with them and figure out ways to make this a better place to be.
