First Doctor Visit in Ten Years

Last week I went to my family doctor for the first time in a decade. After moving to Kitchener I just never bothered to take myself off her roster. Every once in a while something would happen to remind me that I was still registered with her, such as when I got my COVID vaccinations. The person screening me would ask me if I had a family doctor, and I'd always have to think for a bit before being like, "Actually, yeah". 

At one point I decided that I should try to find a family doctor in Kitchener, but the system said it couldn't register me with someone new because I was already with someone. I kind of chickened out of unregistering with her because it's so hard to find a family doctor nowadays that I didn't want to give one up if I wasn't sure I could get a new one, even if the one I was with was in a different city.

I was surprised that she remembered who I was, although she told me that she didn't remember me with a beard. I told her that she likely would have seen me with it once, after I came back from Canada World Youth.

This turned out to be the case, because she looked up the record of my last visit with notes about what to follow up on. Last I'd talked to her she had recommended me to see a dermatologist about some multiplying, scaly red lesions that had manifested around my left ankle during my time abroad.

Back then, I was fresh out of Mali. I'd gotten an email from Canada World Youth saying that someone in my group had contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis, and that we should all get checked ASAP. I looked up the symptoms for the condition and it looked like what I had. 

In the email they said they couldn't disclose the identity of the person who had been diagnosed with it, but I knew someone that had these symptoms as well, so I sent him a message. I asked him if he was the one that had gotten the diagnosis, and he said that he was and that I should get checked.

So I went to my doctor (and this was the last time I would see her until now). She took a skin sample and recommended me to this dermatologist. But the guy canceled on me twice, pushing me way past the time limit that CWY suggested I get checked. When I finally did see him, he said that whatever I'd contracted, my body had fought it off before I'd seen him.

I told him "I think it might have been cutaneous leishmaniasis" and he shot me a dirty look. I know that medical professionals don't like it when patients play Dr. Google, and a 21 year old kid putting forward such an unusual diagnosis probably made me look like a hypochondriac. So I quickly told him that the reason I believed this was because I had been living in a village in West Africa, and someone else with the same symptoms had received this diagnosis. He just scoffed and chastised me for using such simple logic, telling me that just because someone else had something, didn't mean I had the same thing.

So now, coming back to the present, I'm sitting in my family doctor's office and she wants to go over the notes of this dermatologist. She reads them out loud, and the guy said he suspected I might have contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis from an insect bite in Mali!

So he made fun of me for putting forward that idea, and then he wrote it down as his own thought! I mean come on, I'm not a scholarly article, you don't have to cite me, but the fact that he would dismiss my thoughts verbally and claim them as his own kind of stinks.

It felt like a joke that took ten years to tell.

Encampment

There's a field near the Kitchener Go transit terminal where a number of homeless people have set up an encampment. I remember the first tent that went up. It was notable because it was in such a public space, and because it was flying a Canadian flag. I remember thinking that the flag was interesting, because it was a decoration meant to be seen by the public. Usually it seems like homeless people attempt to live on the edge of the public eye, not wanting to be invisible but not drawing too much attention to themselves either. Their lifestyles seem to be pragmatic and focused on survival. This act of self-expression seemed to go a bit beyond that.

Every time I would walk by that field, it seemed like there were a few more tents. They set out city garbage cans so they got waste disposal services, put out drying racks for their clothes, built planters and started growing community gardens. To me, the people look relatively clean, healthy and relaxed. I noticed that women live in the tent city. Due to an additional layer of vulnerability, female homeless people will often make extra efforts not to be seen, so to me this indicated that they felt safe in this setting. Last I saw the encampment, in addition to the Canadian flag there was a Wampum flag, an Indigenous rights flag, and another I didn't recognize. They had community spaces with chairs and tables with vases full of flowers.

I would go so far as to say the encampment looks nice.

There's a lot of talk about what to do with the tent city. Some people want them evicted, some people want them to be supplied with port-o-potties. By the count of an article I read, there are currently 52 tents on the property.

People that want them gone say the people living there are dangerous, that it smells like excrement, and that they leave needles everywhere. In theory I might believe the comments about the smell and needles. You have a large quantity of people living without plumbing or bathrooms, eventually it's going to develop a scent, and it's not hard to believe that some residents struggle with addiction. I doubt they vet their residents too hard or discriminate much. In practice though, I've been by there a lot and I've never noticed a smell or seen a needle.

As far as being dangerous, I think there isn't much of an argument for that. I think that people are less dangerous when they have a shared community and rely on one another for collaboration, when they have a reputation to protect, and when they have a place that they can feel somewhat safe. I understand the high concentration of this population is intimidating for some people, but if they were to be dispersed, there would still be just as many homeless people in the city. They would just be isolated and made desperate through further lack of resources, and with fewer means of defending themselves. I think that people in these situations are more dangerous.

It seems to me that the people who complain about the encampment aren't too concerned about safety, but rather they don't like our homeless population to be so visible. They don't want to think about the people who live among us in these conditions, and they would like them dispersed into smaller, easier-to-ignore groups.

I've heard homeless people talk about street life as being chaotic, and how you can't trust anyone. In comparison, the encampment wouldn't work except for a sense of community and collaboration. Residents of the tent city report feeling safer than in government funded shelters.

This call to evict the tent city kind of reminds me of our busking laws. To be allowed to play an instrument on the street, you need to get a busking license. This can prevent people who are already vulnerable from offering a service for their income, and reduces them to begging. I've never been sure why we want to enforce people to live in those conditions. Just like with that law, this call to get rid of the encampment feels like taking away the accomplishments of people who are already vulnerable.

My only qualm with the tent city is that it might lead people to become complacent, and think that it's okay that people live without plumbing, heat, or electricity. Shelter should be a basic human right, and if people see that they are capable of having some quality of life, it might disincentivize people to provide better alternatives. However, the visibility also might help draw attention to issues of homelessness.

With rent prices the way they are, we can expect a rise in our homeless population. The starting rent where I used to live was $940 a month. Now, the same place is going for $1700.

Unfortunately, the region has decided to evict the residents of the encampment at the end of the month. Shame.