It is cool here.
The tropical depression that dumped rain on Tybee Island over the weekend has made its way to Pittsburgh so the sky is cloudy and the air is damp. We are in Shadyside, an area that is full of medical schools and students. All of the students are wearing scrubs as they surround us at an outside table at “Harris Grill”. We’re making plans for meetings with potential supporters of the Street Medicine Institute which is tomorrow’s agenda. During the evening, we sip drinks, talk and watch students rush everywhere.
I like Pittsburgh a lot. The airport is a good one, the drive to the city is a pleasant almost country experience and then you enter the Fort Pitt tunnel and BAM you’re in the city! The town is great, I like the Steelers, and the place is full of friends.
Reflecting over the past years, several personal milestones passed here. The first time I came it was an invitation only gathering of seventeen people working to change the way health care is accessed in the nation. I met lifelong friends and out of that grew the Street Medicine Institute which is the work that I’m now doing.
It was here that the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous (Jerry Rainey) called me early one February morning while a blizzard blew outside of the airport windows and I stood watching planes get de-iced. He read me the latest coverage in the Savannah Morning News of our work and then described what I looked like as the political cartoon. There is no worse way to receive the news. When I finally got home and read it all for myself he had blown it all out of proportion.
I got stuck here for four days the following February and had my first hot tub experience in the snow. Bottles of wine were stuck in the snow and we sat in the bubbling water under a tree with frozen ice hanging from it. The rest of the time I was trapped in a hotel room and bars at the airport writing and contemplating the fact that there was no one waiting for me anymore when I got home. It was a most depressing time. I remember that Johnny O kept checking on me.
Last April I sat in a Pittsburgh Hospital Conference room and heard my name brought up to do the work that a relatively small group of people believed in … changing access to health care for those with the least access … the street homeless. If they can have access then it can work for anybody. This stops them from constant emergency room visits and ambulance rides which cause the cost to go up for the rest of us.
At the time I was on a Sabbatical healing from wounds both self-inflicted and purposely orchestrated by others. The end of that self-reflective period began that day.
In August I sat in another Pittsburgh Hospital cafeteria working writing a business plan for the Street Medicine Institute. Another two days were held up in an airport hotel interviewing potential staff. We then retreated to the “LaMont” a lovely restaurant on the hill overlooking the city at night.
There have been a lot of milestones.
I watch the students in their scrubs rush by, sit at the tables sipping beers, laughing and talking loudly about their futures. Vigor and energy abounds and it is hard not to feel it. It has the feel of growth, hope, dreams … everything looking towards the future ... full of conviction of the things that are going to be.
“Hey Jim,” I say to the very famous Dr. Jim Withers, “it’s almost like we’re going back to college at this time in our lives. You know we’re part of this group, each of transitioning from the past to what is going to be next for us.”
He sips his drink and nods. “You do have a collection of friends who are fun to be part of.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I hurriedly respond as I do, “but the point is we all understand that we’ve graduated from whatever our lives were. Now we’re enrolling for the next part. We’re building our own lives the way that we want them to be.”
“The only thing holding us back is us,” he says.
“Exactly,” I say and we toast. “To hell with holding ourselves back!”
“To hell with it” he says.
“We’ve got futures to build!”
So in this place of so many milestones for me … another has been passed.
