I was about to tell her about “Medicine on the Trail” and the charity work I was there to publicize. I figured that might interest her, and the more publicity, the better. But the more she talked, the more I doubted whether I wanted to reveal too much to her. She spoke quite disparagingly about her readers, and even more so about the poor communities she wrote about. I figured it would be best to read up on her and do my own investigative reporting before telling her why I was doing the thru-hike.
We reached my hotel. Wendy was staying in a B&B a bit outside the town, “to get my hands dirty,” as she put it. So, we said goodbye. I wished her luck with her story. She wished me luck with the hike.
The hotel was a charming two-story wood structure with the forest trees on either side and the rolling mountains in the distance behind it. I was greeted at reception by a lovely older lady ripped straight out of a tourist guidebook, fit with a slow Southern drawl, who offered me a warm greeting and warm cinnamon tea.6RykerIn Suches, my first stop was at Union General Hospital. I expected to find a run-down, fly-infested operation—like the older residents in Massachusetts had warned me about. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. I even wondered how spending a few days here could be considered charity work. It seemed more like a hospital I would be very lucky to get hired by.
I shared my impressions with Doctor Raskin. He laughed. “Yes, Union General is a fine hospital, but your colleagues back home weren’t exaggerating. The conditions can get pretty dire the farther you go into the mountains. There are communities there, some twenty to thirty miles away, with next to no access to care.” He winked and pointed at me. “That is until you show up.”
I had hiked all day to reach Suches only to be told that I would spend the next three days hiking around it, reaching into isolated communities too dispersed, too distrusting, too poor, or too proud, though mostly all of the above, to come into town for check-ups or for basic medicines they needed.
“They only come to us when it’s too late,” said Doctor Rankin. “And sometimes, they aren’t able to do even that. Imagine a simple cut gets infected, and the nearest doctor is twenty-some miles away. Plus, you don’t have money to pay a doctor, even if you did trust doctors. Which you don’t.”
“I see.”
“Most of what ails them gets treated with distilled liquor,” he said.
I followed him through the hospital as he passed from room to room, saying hello to the nurses, checking in on the patients, and resuming our conversation each time we stepped back into the corridor.
“Diabetes, malnutrition, alcoholism, infected sores, and abrasions—that’s what you’ll be dealing with mostly.”
I nodded though he wasn’t looking at me but peeking into the rooms along the corridor.
He stopped and looked at me. “They’ll look at you sideways, at first. Don’t be thrown by their suspicions. They’re good people. They’re just guarded, you know?”
“But they’re expecting me, aren’t they?”
“Sort of,” he said, then we entered what I presumed was his office, though it could have been a somewhat organized storage room. In Georgia, like in Massachusetts, it was often difficult to tell the difference between a doctor’s office or a make-shift storage room.
“Do you know how to read a map?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Good.” He picked up a map from the clutter on a nearby shelf, flashed it at me, then folded it and put it into the front pocket of a camouflage backpack that had been lying against the foot of a chair. “That’s your itinerary. There are fourteen stops.”
He handed me the backpack. It was lighter than my hiking backpack, and I was thankful for that.
“Plus, you’ll need medicine, of course.” He reached to another shelf, pulled from it a tin medical kit, and handed it to me.
It was significantly heavier than it looked. I took it and let out an “ouf.”
“She gets lighter the longer you carry her,” he said.
I eyed him with a raised brow. “Is that the truth?”
He smiled, clapped his hands together, and pursed his lips into a tight smile.
“Is that it?” I asked.
He extended his hands, open with the palms up. “Unless you have any questions.”
I had a thousand. I didn’t know where to begin. “They’re expecting me, right?”
“We like to make visits once every two months. But”—he shrugged— “we’re short-staffed as it is, and volunteers are hard to come by.”
I nodded.
“It’s been a while,” he continued defeatedly. “Some may be surprised to see you.”
The other questions, I figured, could only be answered on site. That was the typical learning experience of a resident.
“We’ll meet up tomorrow morning, and you can tell me all about it?” he asked.