- Hey everybody.
Latisha just called me--
- (laughs) What did I call you?
- Oh, you can't remember? - Stewie?
- Stewie?
- Stewie!
No, it was Tom Cruise.
- Oh yeah, Tom Cruise grandpa.
- Tom Cruise grandpa.
- Yes, she did.
- But, y'all might wanna date him
on 777-9311 hotline.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom Cruise's grandpa.
Then I was Tom Cruise's great-grandpa.
- I don't remember that.
- Yeah, you did that, yeah.
- Yes, she did.
- Well, he looks good to be a great-great-great--
- Oh my god. - Alotta greats
and I don't mean there's great Tiger stadium.
- You two made my day today so thank you.
- Yeah, see he pushes his belly up on my arm,
so I can't (laughs)
(Charmingly playful, folksy melody)
♫ I saw her here just last night
♫ It was so good til the morning light
♫ Now she's no where to be found
♫ Have you seen her
- Hi everybody.
I'm gonna really work hard at vlogging more.
There's a lot of challenges for me.
I'm an old-school broadcaster
so the YouTube format
which is, as far as I can see it, anything goes
and what we would consider mistakes
in old-school broadcasting
are actually creative.
So some of that I have to get over.
The other issue is
I'm out on the streets,
I'm handing out socks,
I'm meeting people.
Sometimes they're very challenging locations.
I don't always have permissions.
So, it's something that I've got to grow into.
I also really don't have format yet,
which is kind of what I am doing now
is I'm trying to establish a format.
Last week, the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness
invited me to speak.
And when we were talking about me traveling to Michigan
they said, "you know what,
why don't you just fly into Detroit and rent a car?"
That got me thinking,
and next thing you know I'm traveling around Michigan.
This vlog is going to be in two parts.
The first day,
this episode,
is the day I spent with Street Medicine Detroit.
What a wonderful day.
Hey everybody, I am here at--
Where is this place?
- NSO Tumaini Center.
- And I'm here with Dean
and we're gonna go out on the streets today.
Explain your backpacks that you have over here.
- Well, the backpacks are divided into medications,
treatments, and diagnostics.
This has all the things we need to do testing or draw blood.
We take a lot of medication with us.
We give everybody we see a month's supply of medicine.
And this is for wound care,
dressing changes, splints, and things like that.
- So, tell me about homelessness in Detroit.
What type of clients do you see on a given day?
- Homelessness in Detroit is a particular problem.
We have about 16,000 homeless in Detroit
by the last point-in-time count.
Also, they tend to be more medically fragile
than the rest of the country.
We did the Homeless Death Prevention Study in 2010.
Nationally, 42% of the homeless people
who responded to that survey
met the criteria for vulnerable.
In Detroit it was 51%,
so Detroit is particularly hard.
Another thing on that survey was that we had
much lower numbers of elderly.
So that implies that
homelessness is particularly fatal
to elderly people in Detroit
compared to the rest of the country.
We're going out with Wayne State medical students
to a shelter that specializes in women and children.
It's called COTS.
And we're gonna hopefully see some patients there
and bring healthcare to them.
- We're gonna have fun. Cool.
- So, the students have arrived.
- The students have arrived.
- I have a T-shirt for you.
- [Mark] You do?
Hey everybody.
- Hi, I'm Fareshtay.
I'm a first year medical student.
- I'm Alex.
Yeah, I'm a second year medical student.
- I'm Adam, I'm one of the street leaders today.
And I'm a rising second year student.
- I'm Samantha and I'm a graduating fourth year student.
- I'm Amanda, I'm the other street leader for today
and I'm gonna be a second year next--
- I'm Dennis and I'm a rising second year.
- [Mark] And I don't think I caught your name.
- Ashley. I'm a nurse practitioner student at Oakland U.
- [Mark] Awesome.
(vibrant, energized music)
Thank you.
- All the street leaders are on the street medicine board.
So, my job is I'm on the technology side.
So I work with the image and inventory system.
(vibrant music with active drums)
- So while the medical students
were seeing women at the homeless shelter
I decided to go for a little walk
and I just met this homeless man
flying a sign on the corner.
Gave him some Hanes socks and he says to me,
Oh my gosh.
You know,
I love when homeless people
share nuggets of wisdom like that.
It really helps to put perspective on life.
(active, energetic music)
Then we came back to the neighborhood services organization,
where all the medical students just kind of
did an update of the day.
What went well and what went bad.
After that, a few of the students
just saw a few of the homeless people
that stay at the day center.
- Antihistamines,
Lidocaine for injections,
glucose test strips,
cough syrup.
All good stuff.
- Dean was talking about Narcan kits
and I said, "you know, gosh, neighborhoods I travel in
I probably should have one."
To save a life.
So Dean's giving me a kit and then training me.
So what do we do here?
- You put the needle on the syringe,
flip the top, draw up the Narcan in the syringe,
and then inject it in the muscle,
deltoid muscle right there.
- [Mark] Okay.
- I usually reserve this for people who are not breathing
or breathing very shallowly.
If someone has used and they're just kind of drowsy,
but they're breathing on their own,
I wouldn't give them Narcan.
I'd just observe them.
(velvety, smooth jazz with heavy drums)
- We're driving around Detroit
looking for people who are experiencing homelessness
to see if we can get them healthcare,
get them enrolled in services.
The unsheltered homeless or rough sleepers
tend to be more resistant to services.
Typically are sicker.
Rather than letting some condition fester
until it's eventually treated in the emergency room
we can find them and treat them on sight.
It improves the outcomes and saves money downstream.
(velvety, smooth jazz with heavy drums)
- Just visiting a homeless woman that was under a bridge.
She's been there far too long.
Glad the Street Medicine Team visits her and checks on her,
but we've gotta get her into housing.
You know, Dean says housing is a punchline
and other services connect to housing in some way.
There's just not enough housing.
We need more housing to get these people off the streets.
You can walk and talk, right?
- Oh, alright so I used to work for
Boston Healthcare for the Homeless
over at Barbara McGuinness's house.
- Doctor Jim O'Connell.
- Yep. And that's honestly how almost I got this gig.
- So how long you been doing this?
- We've been doing this gig since October.
- [Mark] So why is it important for you guys--
med students, right?
Why is it important for you guys to be out on the streets?
- I think it's because a lot of our patient population
that we'll be seeing at Detroit Receiving
a lot of those patients are living on the streets.
There's a stigma attached to living outside on the streets.
It's important for us as physicians to understand that
and really not let that stigma get in the way of us
providing quality care to a lot of these patients.
- But you said that I was Tom Cruise's grandfather.
- He's Tom Cruise's great-great-grandpa.
- Oh now its great-great-grandpa!
Oh my gosh, so tell me how long have you been out here?
- For like three years.
- That's way too long.
- Yeah. Take it from me its not good for a woman.
- No. Homelessness is horrible.
- Yeah. Take it from Tom Cruise's grandpa.
- Great-grandpa.
- Sweet home, Alabama.
- (laughs)
- Now say something.
- You look like Bruce Lee's brother.
- I do look like Bruce Lee's brother.
I should take a bow.
- Yeah, we saw this lovely couple
they were living right here on this lawn.
And one of them
was having a little bit of respiratory problems.
So we were able to provide some Albuterol for them,
that's like an inhaler.
She also mentioned that she had a heart murmur
but we think that was called a Patent Foramen Ovale
and that can kind of mix up oxygenated
and deoxygenated blood but we weren't able to hear anything
and it seems like she's alright.
- I just had a wonderful experience .
This couple has been living out here
and they are definitely in love.
And it's just really great that the medicine team,
Street Medicine Team can come out and check on them.
I hope you enjoyed part one of
Invisible People Tours Michigan in 2017.
This vlogging stuff is new to me and how I figure it is
you've just gotta jump in,
you've gotta just start making it happen
and you'll learn and grow.
If you guys have any suggestions
please leave 'em in the comments.
Please subscribe.
Please like this video.
Please watch a bunch of Invisible People videos
and share them with all your network.
Really need to grow this channel.
If you love what we're doing, support on Patreon.
Next episode, we got to Traverse City, way up north.
It was really, really amazing.
Stay tuned.
(steady, upbeat music)