Week 19

These last two weeks have been by far the most eventful out of the entire internship so far. Here is two weeks (abridged) in the life of Jordan:

Two weeks ago on Tuesday night, I was doing my desk shift. It was a pretty quiet night; a few comings and goings, but nothing to write home about. Then, at about 11:30, a fire alarm starts going off. This is a pretty regular occurrence in our buildings: many tenants smoke in their rooms, and sometimes this is enough to set off the alarm. After about 30 seconds of the alarm sounding, however, I go check it out. Banging on the door with no answer, I entered the room, and was greeted with my first honest-to-goodness fire. It wasn't too big yet, but there was fire on his desk, and the central alarm system was now going off. Within a few minutes it would have set off the sprinklers as well, so I grabbed the extinguisher off the wall outside the room and put it out quickly. Thankfully it was still small enough for the extinguisher to do the job, and the fire was out without needing to call 911 or evacuate the building. For the next hour or so I spent the time opening windows and clearing smoke, and figuring out how to turn the alarm off.

I thought that would be enough excitement for one week, but unfortunately I was wrong.

To give fair warning, this next part is not for the squeamish. If medical things or needles cause you to get queasy, you may want to skip this next story. I'll mark the end of it with ***********, so you know when to start reading again.



Two days later, on Tuesday, I was dealing with an overflowing toilet. I hadn't noticed the issue as I was outside at the time it started flooding, so by the time I got to it water was dripping down through two floors, and there was a good two inches of water on the hallway, with more still coming from the overflowing toilet. I got the toilet shut off, and then spent the next 15 minutes mopping.
Once the mess was cleaned up, I turned the toilet back on, and realized it was still not filling the rear (clean) tank properly. I took the back off, reached inside, and felt the last thing that any worker in the DTES wants to feel.

Let me break off the story here for just a couple seconds. There are two blood-born diseases that most people associate with the DTES: HIV, and Hepatitis C. Both are life-altering, but neither the death-sentence they would have been fifteen years ago. Also, with HIV, the virus can only survive outside of the human body for roughly ten seconds. Exposed to water or air, it dies quickly. In fact, there has only ever been one case of HIV transmission to a worker in the DTES, and even in that case there are a lot of complications. Back to the story.

Someone had removed the back of the tank and dropped a needle in, and then flushed the tank, causing the needle to get caught just under the rubber stopper designed to hold the water in the tank, putting it in the only spot I couldn't see. This is what was causing the toilet to run and overflow.

Thankfully, in times of high stress, I'm not one to panic. I'll panic later, when there's time, but at that moment, I was fine. I went quickly downstairs to the office, and began cleaning my hands with disinfectant alcohol rub, and examined how badly I was hurt. Thankfully, the needle just barely punctured my skin, with no real blood to speak of. Still, the risk is there, and so I immediately went to a nearby clinic, which then sent me on to St. Paul's Hospital downtown. My hospital experience was excellent - friendly staff, and I waited not even an hour to see a doctor.

Normally with a needle poke from the DTES, The doctors will recommend a cocktail of lethal drugs in order to kill any chance of HIV before it has the chance to spread. Unfortunately, this cocktail also makes you sick as a dog. Fortunately for me, however, due to the circumstances of the incident (1. exposure to air AND clean water for at least 45 minutes, the length of time I was sure the needle was there, and 2. the fact that it barely punctured the tip of my finger), the cocktail was deemed unneccesary - the chance of HIV infection is effectively zero, thank God. The only worry now is Hep C, and I'll need to wait a while for those results - but again, the chance of infection is extremely, extremly low - I would have better odds of winning the 6/49 Jackpot.

Enough for one week? I thought so too.

a few days later, my friend Mike came stumbling into the Jubilee, even drunker than he usually is. I made the unfortunate mistake of letting his friend past the front door, and they both became pretty belligerent. Another tenant from across the hall came out and started shouting as well, and soon I was in between them and took the first real punch of my life. Thankfully Mike was VERY drunk, and a punch that (I think) was aimed for my face hit my chest, and it was pretty half-hearted by the time it got there, and didn't even wind me. Still, it's the closest I've been to a fight, and the closest I really want to get.

Talk about enough adrenaline for one lifetime.

Finally, today I was riding my bike down Hastings, and a car parked on the side of the road opened his door right in front of me, causing my bike to stop, and my body to keep moving. Of course I was wearing a helmet, so everything was ok - I'm a little bruised, but not too bad. My bike wheel is bent up pretty good though, so it looks like I'll be replacing that... by the time I'm done with this old bike, it's going to have more new parts than old ones!

Well, I think that is more than enough for one update. Here's some prayer requests (some of them probably pretty obvious):

My health and wellbeing. I've taken a bit of a beating these past couple weeks. While the chance of any sort of infection is extremely low, and not something I am worried about, prayer is always great. Those of you who know me really well (family members especially), please try not to worry - I really am fine. Pray also for my physical safety - I'm a little sore from the bike crash today, and while again there is nothing major (I'm sure thanks at least in part to the amazing people I have praying for me), I do wish to heal quickly.

Pray also for the decisions I have to make in the next few months. I am thinking about going back to school in January, but I also have the option to stay here through until March, and I really don't know what the best option is yet.

Pray that we as staff members are as aware as possible of the needs of our tenants. I helped clean a room last week that was absolutely terrible. We had an ooutside team coming in to clean, and the tenant was either too heavily medicated or not mentally capable of telling us how bad the room was. We were able to get in and help with the situation, but there are always those people that slip through the cracks. Pray our eyes stay open for those.