One more fucking thing

On my way to get yet another MRI, this time with contrast, I encounter Karlo, one of my middle eastern neighbors. “Someone broke into my apartment yesterday,” he says .“My window overlooks the roof of a garage and they pretended to be construction workers and hopped the fence and got on the roof of the garage. From there, they somehow opened my locked double-hung window, they didn’t even break the glass They took a bunch of cash. We called the police and they came and took a report and dusted for fingerprints. They told us not to keep much cash in the house. They looked at the building’s cameras and there were two guys, one was wearing a white sweater.” “That sounds hard to keep clean,” I say, “If you are climbing on roofs and jumping fences.” “They had their faces covered,” he says. “The fingerprints might be more useful,” I say. “If they have ever been arrested before, their fingerprints will be in the system”. When I get to Union Square, I am waiting with a much older woman. “Are you having an MRI?” she asks me. “Yes.” “I am too. I had one before of my head because I lost my hearing on one side.” “That must have been scary,” I said. “It was. They gave me that dye. It created better pictures.” “I already had one without it and they couldn’t see and so now I am having one with it. Just drink a lot of water to wash it out of your system, “ I tell her. “Did you read that somewhere?” she asks. “They’ve told me before.” “They should put it on the paper because it’s a lot of things to keep track of.” I nod. She’s dithering about the dye . “I hate having to make these decisions at the last minute”, she says. Just then the tech shows up and sends me through a set of doors. “Good luck ,“I I said to her as I headed to the scanner. I have a favorite MRI machine, a sign that I spend way too much time here. MRI 1 at Union Square is a little bit wider, and I don’t feel like my shoulders are being scrunched. It also has a really pretty backlit scene of a spring day with cherry blossoms on the ceiling. I thought they were just doing the scan with contrast, but it turns out that they did a regular one, pulled me out, gave me the dye and then put me back in, making it last a lot longer than usual. I am not particularly bothered by the noise of the MRI, I have even fallen asleep in them on occasion, but a muscle in my back keeps cramping which made it hard to stay still. Trying to distract myself, I thought about yesterday’s new intake, a quiet 20 year old from a Dominican family. The staff have already had her complete the registration form while she was waiting, so I don’t have to ask any basic questions. “How can I help her you?” I ask. I always let clients tell us where they want to start. She sits silently for a moment and I can see she is struggling to get words out. “I’ve never said this out loud before,” she gets out and then she tears up. Misty hands over the tissues, which have somehow wound up on her desk. She still can’t bring herself to speak, so I say gently, “you need somewhere to go.” She nods yes, crying harder. “What happened?” asks Misty carefully. “I was at the doctor,” she said, “and they asked me about my sexual activity, so I said I was a lesbian. My grandmother always comes with me, and she wants to know what’s going on….” At this point, Misty and I both cringed knowing that the story was going to end with the grandmother kicking her out, we have heard versions of this so many times before. She tells us about how within 24 hours her phone was swamped with hostile messages from a lot of family members as word spread. She went to stay with an aunt, the one cool aunt, out of state but she was too restrictive so eventually she came back. She moved in with a girlfriend until they woke up. Now she is staying w a friend and their family. “They’ve been great,” she said, “but they encouraged me to seek help. I’m afraid of the adult shelters, but I looked up LGBTQ places, and I read your reviews.” I consider her options. There are way too few LGBTQ youth shelter beds. Sylvia’s, which was often the fastest to get into, is not really functioning, because the church where they are based stopped providing financial support. I told her about AFC and warn her about the waiting list. The last client I sent there waited five days to even be assigned a case manager. She had jobs and wants to work again, is a high school graduate interested in college, and seems sad but not severely mentally ill, so I told her about Trinity Place and scheduled her for a psych eval so I can do her referral. I also told her to check out The Door, both their employment programs, and their young adult supportive housing. It’s not a quick process, but that is long term housing. They finally let me out of the MRI. I don’t know if it’s the contrast or what, but I was completely exhausted. I got on the R and fell asleep. Later on, I was patting Connor when I got an email alert – the results were ready. “Nerve sheath tumor, most likely a schwannoma, measuring 1.4 x .8 x .8cm filling the left C2-C3 neural foramen.” I don’t like the “most likely” – I would rather have a definite answer – and I don’t know what they’re going to want to do about it. One more fucking thing.