I have been homeless and on drugs for the past 20 or more years of my life. In June of 2025, I got a horrible abscess on my neck from shooting drugs. No drug addict wants to put down the drugs and go to the hospital. That is why most of us die.
But I knew if I did not go get medical attention, I would probably die, so I went. The hospital the EMTs took me to said they did not have an Ear Nose and Throat team, so they sent me to another hospital that did. That turned out to be Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, one of the best.
They told me I was going in for emergency surgery to have the abscess drained. They also told me it was four and a half inches deep and seven and a half inches long into my chest. I was immediately rushed into surgery.
About six or seven hours later, I woke up in a single room in ICU with a feeding tube in my nose and a ventilator down my throat. I could not talk. I could barely hold my eyes open, and I had tubes hanging out of my neck. I was told that during surgery I stopped breathing and it took them a minute to bring me back. That is why I was on the ventilator, which scared the heck out of me. I would have never thought something like that was going to happen.
After two days of being on a ventilator, not being able to eat, drink, or talk, they finally took it out. What a blessing. I was moved into my own room on a different floor, and that is when the tough part began. Every day they had to take blood, check my neck which had staples all the way through it and two tubes hanging from it, and deal with everything else that came along with it. I was fed up with being stuck with needles over and over, and seeing different doctors constantly. No rest for the wicked.
All this time I kept thinking to myself that I was homeless. I could not go back out on the street with a big gash on the side of my neck and staples. How would I keep it clean? Where was I going to go? What was I going to do?
Around my third day, a man and a woman came into my room to talk to me about some of my options. They knew I was an addict and homeless, so they were trying to help me find somewhere to go and guide me onto a better path. They were so nice. I started listening to what they had to say. Normally I would tell people I was not ready and they would not come back.
But this time something clicked. I am 45 years old and have nothing to show for anything. I knew it was time to change. I asked to speak with them again, and they came back the next day. I told them I wanted to be placed in a treatment facility.
Now, keep in mind, I have been getting high for over 20 to 25 years and not once have I ever gone into recovery, or a treatment center, or gotten help. I was fed up. In the six months before going to the hospital, I probably overdosed about nine times. I did not know why, but later found out that fentanyl was in everything.
While I was still in the hospital, I found out that my kidneys were basically failing and I needed to be put on dialysis on top of everything else. I ended up having a catheter put in my chest and was sent to dialysis in the hospital for three hours at a time every other day. My mother was a dialysis nurse when I was growing up, so I knew the little ins and outs about it, but not to the full extent of what I am going through now.
This was a new hurdle. I wanted to go into a program, but they had to accept people who were on dialysis. I did not even know if that existed.
But remember the couple who was trying to help me from the hospital? They came and told me they found a great place for me to go, and they accept people on dialysis. Who would have thought?
Two days later, I found out I was being discharged and everything was set up for me to go to the recovery center. The program was called Health Solutions of MD. They were taking me to the house where I would be staying. My heart was racing. I started to freak out. I did not know where I was going. I would not be able to cover my feelings with drugs. Did I really want to do this? That was the question I kept asking myself.
I figured it could not hurt to try, and I was going to put on my big girl pants and go for it.
Now it is November 10th, and I left the hospital on July 12th. I have been clean and sober ever since. One of the reasons I have made it this far, besides the groups and meetings, is because I started journaling. I use the Gratitude app for daily affirmations and for journaling my thoughts. This app has been on this journey with me since the day I started recovery, and it has been such a great asset to my healing.
Maybe I will write another story later down the road and share where my path has led. Until then…
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