Junior Theme is a project that causes continual stress. Today I had my first meltdown of I'm sure what will be many to come. I started feeling the stress and pressure of getting this project done, and it has not been very long. We have to have 5 annotated bibliographies by Monday and I feel like I am so far behind. But there is one particular source I have really enjoyed and wanted to talk about.
I have been reading a book called, Ask Me Why I Hurt, written by Randy Chirstensen with Rene Denfeld. The book is a first hand account of Dr. Randy Christensen who devoted his life to caring for the homeless children who live on the streets and have no place to go. He travels from town to town in Arizona, in a Winnebago as a portable doctor's office, treating the homeless children.
Within the first 50 pages of the book, we meet a young, very reserved girl, named Mary, who wears a bracelet around her wrist that says, ask me why I hurt. She is very skeptical to tell Dr. Chirstensen or his assistant Jan anything. As she begins to trust them more, she finally tells them the story of why she hurts. Turns out, she had been sexually abused by her father,and was so scared because he threatened to kill her if she told anyone. She ran away and found shelter in a hole dug in the ground. Dr. Christensen was able to find out all of this information after weeks, waiting for Mary to trust him. He ended up helping her find her aunt who would take care of her and give her a nice home, rather than a hole in the middle of the desert.
This is just one of the heart throbbing stories of the patients that Dr. Christensen helped. There are many others in the book along with the doctor's own personal conflicts and how he feels helping these children. It is a very easy read that is very hard to put down, but hard to read at the same time because of the sadness of the topic. I don't know if I will end up using this information in my paper, but I think it will be good to get an emotional account of the serious issue of child homelessness.
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