'Urgent needs from head to toe': free clinic had two days to fix a lifetime of needs
‘Urgent needs from head to toe’: This clinic had two days to fix a lifetime of needs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-clinic-of-last-resort/2019/06/22/2833c8a0-92cc-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html?utm_term=.b22ac047ab5a
CLEVELAND, TENN. — They were told to arrive early if they wanted to see a doctor, so Lisa and Stevie Crider left their apartment in rural Tennessee almost 24 hours before the temporary medical clinic was scheduled to open. They packed a plastic bag with what had become their daily essentials after 21 years of marriage: An ice pack for his recurring chest pain. Tylenol for her swollen feet. Peroxide for the abscess in his mouth. Gatorade for her low blood sugar and chronic dehydration.
They took a bus into the center of Cleveland, Tenn., a manufacturing town of 42,000, and slept for a few hours at a budget motel. Then they awoke in the middle of the night and walked toward the first-come, first-served clinic, bringing along a referral from a social worker for what they hoped would be their first doctor’s checkup in more than four years.
“Urgent needs from head to toe,” the social worker had written. “Lacking primary care and basic medication. They have fallen into the gap.”
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She had been diagnosed with several chronic health conditions in her 20s and 30s, but lately she couldn’t find a primary care doctor and she couldn’t afford to see specialists. For the last several years her only medical treatment had come as a matter of last resort, at the emergency room, and the unpaid bills from those visits had ruined her credit until she began to avoid being treated at all. Now she was trying to manage her leg pain by adding paper towels to cushion the inside of her shoes and buying an herbal extract sold at gas stations. Stevie had seen her lose her balance and fall three times in the past week. Her leg muscles sometimes trembled, and she rarely had an appetite.
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He had been born with a cleft palate and two holes in the lower chamber of his heart that required annual monitoring, but he hadn’t seen a cardiologist since high school. He had an abscess in his mouth, arthritic knees and a damaged kidney, none of which were his priority now.
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“What’s been bothering you?” the volunteer asked, turning to Lisa, and she wondered where to start. With the neuropathy in her feet? Or her digestive disorder? Or her heart murmur? Or her anxiety and depression that often led to panic attacks? Together she and Stevie had spent two decades accumulating pain, cycling in and out of homelessness and addiction. They’d lost a baby to stillbirth; another child to the foster care system; a house to foreclosure; a series of menial jobs at Cracker Barrel, Hardees and Walmart; and the private insurance that had come with those jobs. Now Stevie was on disability insurance, and Lisa was uninsured in part because Tennessee had chosen not to expand Medicaid.
Some of the hundreds of people in dire need of care wait in a parking lot for 12 hours in below-freezing temperatures for a chance to be seen in Knoxville in February. Tickets were handed out first come, first served. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
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Accessibility to health care is a serious crisis in this county. 
