Reading the Chronicle today while sipping a coffee with Linus at my feet, I was inspired by this article about a Grandmother who cooks meals for the homeless despite having lost her apartment and also this letter to the editor by a 12 year old detailing all the ways she has given back- collecting old coats, raising $$ for foster kids and putting up decorations. In fact, here’s the letter in its entirety:

What the holidays mean

In response to the editorial “Attention, shoppers” (Dec. 1), I was glad to read the last paragraph “and don’t forget about others this season.”

This season I have helped out by collecting coats for the needy at One Warm Coat, helped stock the San Francisco Food Bank, raised money by selling nuts for my Girl Scout troop that enabled us to buy toys for kids in foster care for Christmas, and this weekend I will be decorating Ocean Avenue with ribbons on the parking meters.

Please tell all your readers that some people really need their help this season, and don’t take everything for granted. This holiday season is not only about gifts and shopping.

DOREEN PACINI, age 12, 7th grade

So, when it comes to the spirit of the holidays and helping my fellow man, I’m getting schooled by an evicted Granny and a 7th grader.  Time to fix that.  “We should really do something,” I thought.  Yes, I volunteer at in the Emergency Department once a week at the SFGH Trauma Center, however that is relatively self-serving as it directly relates to my career and possibly future med school applications.

And the very nature of my job nowadays is helping others, but come on… I get PAID for that! I want to do more.

So- what should we do? What can I do? We could take a cue from Granny, and cook a bunch of meals and bring them to the homeless. But to be honest, after getting assaulted and almost stabbed by a crazy guy in the Tenderloin last week, I am not very inclined to be out interacting with a bunch of possibly crazy junkies. Perhaps a touch of PTSD in that, but… :shudder: I am not really up for it right now.

My friend Elaine carries around Cliff bars in her purse at all times and distributes them whenever she walks by a homeless person. Maybe I could do something like that- get a couple of boxes of Cliff bars and dole them out. I’d rather do something more, and as I said, I’m not very down to be initiating interactions with random homeless people.

I could go through all my old clothes and bring them to the Salvation Army. But I do that almost once a year already, so things are pretty weeded out at this point- especially because for the while I wasn’t working we were too broke to buy any new clothes!

Hmm, hmm…

Well, a few minutes of google searching led me to this site, which lists volunteer opportunities in various cities, and has some specific holiday volunteer opportunities. As a certified health care worker, looks like I could dole out swine flu shots to the needy.  And this place looks great, however they need people on Fridays, and I work all day on Fridays. Argh, work schedule rules out a bunch of stuff because I just had to bypass about 5 other things that wanted people on weekends.

Ooh! I found something- wrapping gifts for needy kids. I love wrapping. And they need people on MTW right before Christmas. This could be good.

Oh and here’s another- bringing meals to lonely elderly on Christmas Day. That works as well.

Alright- I just called both those last two places and signed up!   The nerd begrudgingly agreed to deliver meals with me on Christmas morning as well.  (He balks, however I suspect under that indifferent interior he is a big softie).

me: oh hey how about doing this? delivering meals to lonely elderly on christmas morning?

Earl: if you want

me: dont be so enthusiastic

Hurrah!   This is gonna be great.  What about you?  Any ideas for helping others this holiday season?  Are you inspired to do something?

Well, this moved along quickly (Much faster than I thought it would- TB test, background check, orientation & interview all completed in under a month)!

Today was my training day as a volunteer at the new ER. It seems a bit more… strict than the last Emergency Department where I used to volunteer. Because it’s a higher volume, higher level trauma center teaching hospital, it makes sense that they have to keep a tighter reign on the volunteers. This could be a bummer, because it means I’ll get to do less stuff (no more helping nurses take samples, put in IVs and foleys), however they do have ER Technicians, which I’m hoping to become… Hopefully I can befriend a few of the ER Techs, learn those ropes and perhaps even network my way in eventually.

The vibe I got was you basically go in, put your face down and do the work for about two or three months and not really bother anyone, and then once they get a feel for you, you can start kind of asking questions, making yourself a bit more known, observing treatments and doing a bit more. It seems like they get a lot of volunteers who just come in, do it for two or five months, and then leave… so I could see why the high turnover is a big disincentive for the nurses and physicians to want to make an investment in getting to know the volunteers. Hopefully after a while if I make it known that I’m a student, relatively intelligent and hardworking, and eager to learn I can find someone willing to take me under their wing and get some exposure. I *did* recognize one doctor already who I know already from volunteering in the ED at St. Lukes- crazy what a small city this is!

As for right now, it looks like my duties are going to consist mainly of cleaning and changing beds, restocking room supplies, liaising with patients and generally helping nurses and physicians with whatever else they need. I think I’m going to put together a giant fruit plate (or cookies? On the fence about this… it seemed like the last ER where I volunteered used to get so many freaking trays of sweets all the time that I bet they would be dying for some healthy stuff) and bring it in for all the nurses next week for my first shift as a way to get started on the right foot.

There were so many beds! I feel like I barely oriented myself!! My training was about two hours long. I was trained by a person in a very similar situation as myself- he is a career changer as well. Formerly an IT executive, he’s now going to nursing school. Not only was he a great trainer, but super helpful telling me about some colleges around here to be doing post-bacc classes. He currently volunteers in the ICU at the same hospital, so perhaps we’ll run into each other again.

Oh my gosh- you know what else?? The uniforms we get to wear as volunteers are FREAKING ADORABLE!!! They consist of a scrub “seersucker” blazer and khaki cargo scrub pants. Instant love. I have to say, very very cute… I loved my old volunteer uniform as well. What can I say, I guess scrubs suit me. I’ll post up some photos of the uniform soon- right now I am heating up the iron to iron-on the Emergency Department patch they gave me. Lol- iron on patches. How old school is that? We don’t even own an iron, I had to borrow one from our neighbors.

So as it stands right now, I’ll be volunteering every Wednesday for a five-hour block. Once I’ve done that for a few months or so, and learned the ropes a little, I think I am going to try and get in on an “exciting” shift… maybe Friday or Saturday late nights. My trainer told me to expect to see a lot of ETOH and otherwise altered patients.

All in all, really psyched! Here’s to another step in the right direction towards future goals.