Click here and here  and here for previous updates. Click here and here for later updates.

The last few months have brought some changes to the women of Can’t Catch a Break. Not all are of the life-changing sort, but I still marvel at the pace in which new crises arise in the women’s lives. Illness, death and disappointment in and of themselves are not extraordinary – they are the stuff of real life that all of us experience at one time or another. Rather, it’s the relentlessness. Some of the women don’t have time to catch their breath and assimilate one set of challenges and changes before the next set erupts.

Andrea is still unemployed and lonely. “I had a poor Christmas,” she told me. On the positive side, she is still securely housed in a well-located studio apartment.

 

Ashley is a gloriously happy stay-at-home Mom. I personally can vouch for the cuteness of her children. She posts daily photos of their antics and they keep me in stitches. Her husband is doing very well at work, they had a lovely Christmas, and both extended families are great sources of support and company.

 

Carly has had a busy few months. She remains fully engaged in her spiritual life – fighting Satan and trusting God — though she has not yet found a church that suits her perfectly. She quit the last church she’d been part of when the pastor “made white supremacist comments.” Having spent years living with a wonderful Black foster family, Carly will not tolerate racist comments in her presence.

Her big news is that she is pregnant! With a baby on the way she enrolled in a job training program which she graduated with a certificate that should pave the way for an entry level healthcare job. She still dreams of being a nurse in the future.

In the meantime, she remains stuck in an apartment that is saturated with mold and covered in rodent droppings. She desperately wants to move out but has not been able to find a landlord who will accept a tenant with a “voucher.” (Typically through the federal ‘Section VIII’ program, these vouchers cover rent according to a specific scale for low-income people. In tight housing markets like Massachusetts it is very difficult for voucher-holders to find apartments, even though the voucher guarantees rent; that is, the government agency pays rent directly to the landlord.) Because her living conditions trigger severe asthma, she has spent a great deal of time in the hospital.

For more on her housing struggles click here.

Elizabeth: See “Eulogy for Elizabeth, Update”

Francesca is (still) a survivor. She is happy living part-time with the man she met last year. He is a stable, family man living in a semi-rural community at some distance from Boston. He works very long hours so she often comes back to Boston and stays for a few days with friends or with one of her sons. She has many close girlfriends of various ages and generations, and she enjoys being an “auntie” almost as much as she enjoys being a grandmother to her two lovely grandchildren.

She has had some serious health problems over the past months. She lost over one hundred pounds and spent a few stints in the hospital. She has been diagnosed with Crohns and Colitis, and then developed a C.difficile infection in the wake of antibiotics she was given for back-to-back kidney infections. She felt miserable with all of this, but is thrilled with her new svelte body!
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Ginger moved back from Florida. She had moved there to be with a man she had met but that fell apart after a day or two. She called to tell me that, “I came to Fort Myers [and ended up] homeless. Last night I had a stomach virus. I threw up all over the bus. I had to go to the hospital. I was there all night. I’d been eating out of the trash. I have nowhere to in Florida.”

She called me from a local sheriff’s office next to the bus station. We figured out how to arrange to purchase a bus ticket for her. The next bus would leave in 12 hours and the trip would take two days. She had no money for food.

I spoke with the sheriff to see if there would be a way to help her out so that she wouldn’t risk being arrested for panhandling or soliciting sex for money. He said no. I wrote in my notes: “The irony that we’ll pay for a night sick in the hospital from eating in the trash, but we won’t pay for someone to get food.”

We spoke briefly when she returned to Boston, but since November I have not heard from her. I’ve tried every phone number and every friend and relative I can think of. I did catch a quick glimpse of her hanging out in the Boston Common with a small group of people whom I know to be homeless. It’s hard to know what to think. For many years Ginger has called me regularly at least once each week.

Isabella has had a horrid few months. She, her husband and her husband’s teenage son had been staying in the small living room of a one bedroom flat rented by a friend of hers. Both she and her husband were doing quite well on a methadone protocol that required them to come to the methadone clinic daily. In the Fall, after many months of applications, she landed a wonderful job. The new company sent her to a training seminar and she began to work in an office setting that she loved. Then, two things happened just about simultaneously. One, a more extensive background check carried out by her employer revealed her history of incarceration and she was let go. Two, her husband picked up heroin use (again), suffered what she considered a “psychotic break” that landed him in the emergency room and then the psych ward, and he destroyed all of their possessions.

Several weeks later he died of a heroin overdose.

Two weeks after that her roommate was given notice to move out; the landlord planned to empty out and renovate the apartment. She is now couch-surfing with a friend who lives in a town quite a distance from the methadone clinic that she needs to attend each morning. Isabella does not have a car.

Kahtia has been having a rough time. She still has not received her children back from state custody and she pines for them, as they do for her. After a few months in a sub-standard foster care situation they now are living with a foster family that Kahtia (who is not allowed to meet the family) believes is good to her kids based on how they are dressed and what they say when she sees them once a week in a supervised visit at the DCF office. I asked what she has to do to get them back. She said she’s already done everything she has to do — parenting classes, therapy, clean urines — and now is waiting on the next court date which is in February (two months off at the time). I asked her why the date is so far off and she said, “that’s just how it is.” Part of the problem is that she’s had at least three different DCF workers and two different DCF supervisors which “prolongs the case” (her words) because each time the new worker has to do a new assessment. She has gone to Court repeatedly and each time things are put on hold because of the new worker.

In the meantime she is struggling with serious health challenges and now needs to keep a portable oxygen tank with her wherever she goes. She has gained a great deal of weight and struggles getting up and down the stairs to her fourth floor apartment. She says it is highly unlikely that she will be able to move to another apartment on a lower floor.

The good news is that her husband is really coming through for her and the kids. He’s been working steadily and bringing all of his income home, coming to all the supervised visits, and staying by Kahtia’s side through the many medical problems and emergencies. He has sat with her in the hospital, stayed up with her at night, and done whatever he can to make her comfortable.

Melanie has long been one of the few women who has been steadily employed, securely housed, on good terms with her family, and in a stable relationship with a very decent man. I hadn’t heard from her in quite a while until she called this Fall, somewhat out of the blue. Distraught, she told me that she has an enlarged spleen. The doctors don’t know why though they have done many tests. Her concern is that her employer (a social service agency) is going to put her on short term disability which means that she’ll be paid only 70% of her salary and she knows that she can’t pay her bills on that. “If I have to go down to 70% of my salary I will get in my check $352 / every 2 weeks.” We went through her budget together dollar by dollar, and her calculation is absolutely correct. “I’ve used up all of my sick time and vacation time with going to doctors and then just being too sick to go into work.” She went on to say, “My job is the best thing. My Aunt said it’s my calling [to help people].”

Her asthma and depression are also acting up and “I am crying a lot” (my note: which is rare for her). She can’t stand on her feet or sleep on her left side. “I’m literally in pain.” The doctors offered her narcotics but she refused because she is an addict (that is how she defines herself though she has not used drugs at all in ten years.) She’s lost 16 pounds – “I can’t eat and I feel overwhelmed.” She also has gall stones in her digestive system, pain in her shoulder and a broken toe. She said the doctors do not know if these problems are related to one another.

Continuing updates will be posted so check back!