Originally Published January 15, 2005: Long Live The Queen!
\nIt was a really sad Holiday Season because of our girls who has been featured in our paper several times\u00a0known as The Dancing Queen became very sick. She was very sick one day and her roommate called the
\noffice up and said, \u201cCarol needs your help!\u201d
\nWe all went to her room to see why she was sick. By the time we got to her room and checked her\u00a0oxygen she was at 68 percent and that is near death. So we called an ambulance and thought she would\u00a0be home in a few days.
\nAs we waited for the medics to arrive, Sean, who got up from his bed, decided to make sure we were\u00a0ready for a full code. He ordered the in-house-medics to get the AED, oxygen and airway tools just in\u00a0case she coded prior to rescue getting there.
\nLater that night we called the hospital to check on her and they said Carol was in the ICU, was intubated\u00a0and they needed to speak to her next of kin. She really had no family that knew anything about the situation so Sean stepped in. She had assigned Sean as her health care surrogate. This is done by clients who have no family, they prefer us to make medical decisions for them in case they were extremely sick.
\nSean consented to all forms of aggressive treatment because he and Carol talked about it in the past. \u00a0We all had faith that Carol would pull through. \u00a0Now let\u2019s tell you all a little about Carol\u2026
\nSome of you may remember her, \u201cThe Dancing Queen,\u201d and \u201cQueen of the Tent City\u201d where she was\u00a0raped and got HIV and Hep C from her assailants.
\nFour years ago the doctors told her she had about six months to live. Well, not Carol! She became a\u00a0changed woman and said she wanted to live. From that point in time, she never used crack again.
\nShe used to smoke it all the time but when she found out death was near she did a complete internal\u00a0make over, that\u2019s right, just like on TV. She went from a crack head to working the front desk. She even\u00a0volunteered for security when we were shorthanded.
\nCarol, as Sean would call his perfect pain in the butt, was really good friends with all the staff; and\u00a0played mom to the weak and played bully to the rough. Carol was a real queen in her own way.
\nI use the word was because this is the past and we do hope the future can be like the past. She has hit\u00a0Sean a couple of times when she got mad at him, but with all those punches she was still the love of our\u00a0lives.
\nCarol is also an Angel to some, like her good buddy John McCormick who gets more press than Sean. \u00a0Carol would make sure she looked after John and if someone ever messed with him she, at age 58 would\u00a0go to the biggest man at the shelter and say, leave him alone or you will deal with me, and she had no
\nproblem getting in their face, not one problem at all.
\nShe would also help John take his baths and she would especially help John smoke his cigarettes as well. \u00a0They would carry sometimes as many as five packs of cigarettes smoking and smoking as many as they\u00a0could. They were smoking buddies. Every night around 3 a.m. before Sean and Lois would go to bed,\u00a0they would hear three little knocks on their office\/bedroom door and they knew that the Carol and John\u00a0Alerting System was activated.
\nThis meant, time for a few cigarettes and an ice tea or coffee. They would all sit around Sean\u2019s desk and\u00a0talk for about an hour. Sean and Lois got big kicks out of the both of them. Sean would finally have to\u00a0say, Carol, you need to go cause if you keep me up too long we will get up late and won\u2019t be able to pass
\nout cigarettes in the morning.
\nSean could not go to see Carol because of his meningitis\u2026
\nFor weeks Sean could not see Carol because he was still in the recovery process from meningitis. So Lois\u00a0went up to whisper in Carol\u2019s ear, about Jesus and tell her why Sean could not come. Sean did not want
\nwith this whole experience with Carol? The shelter is more like a family than a shelter. Sean understands\u00a0that he can\u2019t go up to stay with Carol all the time because of the Meningitis. But he and Lois got a very\u00a0nice Christmas present this year.
\nThe gift Sean and Lois got this Christmas was to see how the people reacted to Carol, our little Dancing\u00a0Queen, critical care status. Well they gave her the royalty she deserves. The clients got together and\u00a0wanted to sit with Carol during this crucial touch and go time. They wanted to tell Carol themselves that
\nthey all wanted to see her back at home where she lives at the Queen\u2019s Quarters, that is Cosac Quarters\u00a0where the Dancing Queen resides. We love you Carol and yes, to the people who buy this paper we will
\nexpect your prayers for her recovery.
\nWe also ask that you pray for her stable health until her meeting with her little Tanya.
\nOn behalf of the Homeless Voice, we thank the readers for allowing these two family members to meet\u00a0after being separated for over 15 years. Thanks a million. \u2013COSAC Staff
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Originally Published January 15, 2005: Long Live The Queen! It was a really sad Holiday Season because of our girls who has been featured in our paper several<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,304],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-stories","tag-carol-massed","tag-the-queen"],"yoast_head":"\n