He is a young man and a fairly new patient with us. Despite his age, he has already lived a life of trauma and is severely mentally ill. He spent the summer on the streets of Hyannis where, as one of our Case Managers noted, "He didn't blend in." He was, excuse the term, 'odd', and even
approached and interacted with tourists as a part of his psychotic world. In a lot of towns he
would have been hustled along, brought to court, been treated disrespectfully. Not here in
Hyannis. The community saw his needs and rallied around him instead of pushing him out. Duffy
paid for a stay in a motel for a while so he could stabilize his life. When we could no longer pay,VinFen, M25, the Town of Barnstable and the Council of Churches stepped in, because, when housed, he was doing much better. Stable housing is the underpinning of health.
Now a couple of months later, he has received a voucher from Housing Assistance and has a small place to call his own. He is very involved in his care here at Duffy, seeing our psychiatric nurse practitioner and participating in the Bridge Group. He is engaged in his primary care appointments. He's now coming to more appointments than he's missing and has stability that he didn't before - now that a village has rallied together to, perhaps literally, save him.
"You guys never abandoned me."
A patient of ours has recently gone to a nursing home for a stay of rehab from long term health issues. He's engaged with Duffy for primary care, medication assisted treatment for substance use, and case management. He's been a tough guy to work with at times - he has a way of hiding what is going on with him and things spiral down. When his case manager visited him at the nursing home recently, he spoke at length about how he felt about Duffy.
"You guys never abandoned me," he said.
"For a while I didn't want to talk to anyone; did you know that? But you all just kept coming back to me, coming back and coming back. Even my family has given up on me. I was so sick the last time I was there... and you all did a great job taking care of me." He was so grateful that Duffy never, ever gave up on him. Now his big goal is to get back to his job, healthy and stable. He knows Duffy staff will be there to support him each step of the way.
