Chapter 18: The Open-Door Mission for Rehabilitation and Recovery; Awards

Chapter 18: The Open-Door Mission for Rehabilitation and Recovery; Awards

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Description

In this chapter, Dr. Hill talks about his involvement with the Open Door Mission for Rehabilitation and Recovery, where volunteers his time now that he is retired. He talks about his various awards, hoping that they bring attention to issues that need further attention and funding. He speculates that his interest in relief of pain came from his upbringing.

Identifier

HillCS_03_20120220_C018

Publication Date

2-20-2012

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Post-Retirement Activities; Contributions; Activities Outside Institution; Career and Accomplishments; Post Retirement Activities; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Patients

Transcript

I just continued to do that, and about five years ago, a friend of mine who runs a mission for homeless men with alcohol and drug problems asked me if I would take a look at—they had a convalescent care center, and they had beds for people who were coming out of the hospital.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

And this is the Open Door Mission.

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Yeah, right, and so there was a good guy who was head of Urology over at Baylor. Russell Scott was helping with them out there, but he got sick, and he couldn’t do very much, and he finally died. After he died, my friend asked me if I would look at it. So I looked at it, and I could tell he needed some help, so I decided that I would help. I’ve been doing that. We have 35 beds, and I organized a social service department because they didn’t have one. I was lecturing out there at the Graduate College of Social Work, University of Houston, and I knew the social workers out there. I asked them to help me write a job description. They did, and we got some grant money, and so I have three master-level social workers out there now that do most of the work. We don’t actually do the medical care. We just facilitate it. I’ve taught them now, the social workers, the criteria of what to ask for about whom we can take care of and what they need to ask somebody when they call up. They were dumping people out there too. They’d put them in a taxi from the hospital and just send them out there with an IV going. We couldn’t take care of people like that. When I first went out there, they were having a 911 call every day because nobody was keeping up with whether the guys took their medicine or not. It was just they let them keep the medicine at their bedside. So we instituted that, and that’s been running now for several years. That’s what I’m doing. It takes less of my time than it used to.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Because it’s up and running?

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Yeah, it’s up and running and so—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, is this the activity that garnered you the Mayor’s Volunteer Houston Award in 2010?

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Yeah, right.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

That was nice. That was presented by Annise Parker, the mayor.

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Yeah, the grant writer turned my name in for that. Yeah, that was very nice.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What does it mean to be awarded something like that or the humanitarian award from the Cancer Society?

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Well, it’s certainly some recognition that you’ve done something that somebody thinks is worth something. I don’t know how much people pay attention to anything like that. It means more in the circles that— When I got appointed to the Cancer Council, I got calls from all kinds of politicians about how great this was and all that kind of stuff, and I thought, “Well, okay, that’s fine.” It doesn’t pay anything, so you don’t get any money, but then they do pay your expenses, and you do get recognition from different places for one reason or the other. But it doesn’t— It’s just personal satisfaction is the main thing as I see it. I’m glad that it’s recognized, and hopefully it will lead to further things, that you’re able to do more for the people that you’re doing things for. I had a pretty good example of that with a woman that was very much interested in the pain part of things. She’s a great philanthropist. She owns Exxon, among other things. The Blaffer’s—you may have heard of the Blaffer Gallery. Jane Blaffer Owen, she restored New Harmony, Indiana. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that or not. That was one of the early commune communities in the US, and she was married to an Owens. We actually visited up there with her. It’s nice to fly up there on her plane, too. The Owenses were a very, very interesting family. One of the Owenses was the first president of Purdue University, and they did the first geological survey of the United States. They were all geologists. Well, I took her out to the mission one time, and she said, “You know, these guys need a garden to work in.” And I said, “Yeah, that’d be a good idea, but we don’t have any land.” And I said, “That would be a problem.” She said, “I’m going to give you some money, and you getting the land is going to be your problem.” She wrote us a check to get some land, and just out of the blue, and so long story, politicians were involved. They’re building a light rail out in Harrisburg where this mission is, and the politicians knew that that raised the land value. Nobody wants a mission in their backyard, so they were trying to get rid of us. So the city had a program where if they tore down a house, you could rent that lot for a garden, but you had to have the permission of the representative from that area. They wouldn’t give us permission to use any of their land because they wanted us out. They weren’t going to let us sink down any more roots anywhere. We finally found a place and got the thing built, but then we had a shakeup in the mission hierarchy, and that thing is just sitting there. The best laid plans can go awry. I’m hoping that when we straighten out about the—get a new executive director, that we can start up. Jane was 93 years old when she died, and she was just as spry as she could be. She spent her summers up in New Harmony, and we went up there several times with her. The Harmonites was the group that came in there first. It was around 1815 or something like that. They were German, and they settled in that area. They stayed there about 20 years. And then her husband’s family, the Owenses, bought it, but that didn’t last but a couple of years. It was going to be another commune, and a lot of the buildings had fallen down. I mean, the roof had fallen and dilapidated. She built it all back, just like it was, and then she also built what she called a roofless church. She had Philip Johnson as the architect, and she fired him. But the roofless church, it’s a church building without a roof. It’s got an altar, and there’s just grass in there. While we were there, some girl had a wedding in there. And she had a pieta there and sculptures and several other famous sculptures. A big theologian that was a friend of hers is buried there. The name is right on the tip of my tongue. It was Paul Tillich. She had a garden designed for him, and there’s a big bust, and he’s buried there. It was all pine trees. Now the pine trees are real high, so it’s a very nice garden. [REDACTED]

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I don’t think so.

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

Sam was a neurosurgeon that we recruited here because of his interest in pain. He was a prince of a guy. I worked a lot with him. We did patients together, and we were doing studies on different things like a drug called Klonopin. We had one patient that was a very big success. We put a pump in her and treated her for about a year, maybe two years, three years. And we wore out a pump. We had to put another pump in there.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

The patient did okay?

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

The patient did great. [REDACTED] He told me, and I called him up. I said, “Hey, this lady said that she doesn’t have any more appointments with you, and she’s got all these problems and so forth.” He started giving her some medication, but there were too many side effects and everything. So he comes over one day, and he says, “You’ve got to take her.” I said, “Look, I think maybe she might fit one of our protocols with Sam Hassenbusch, but she’ll have to come over to Anderson.” He said, “That’s okay.” We got her over there, and I got Sam to see her, and sure enough, she fit that protocol. They were about to operate on her over there at Methodist on something, and I thought, “Man, you’re stretching it if you think that’s causing her pain.” And so he decided— That neurosurgeon got cold feet and said, “No, I’m not going to operate.” Anyway, we brought her over and put that pump in there. She did fine. She told everybody in town that we were great.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I just had one more question I wanted to ask you, and it’s kind of linked to the fact that you’ve received this humanitarian award from the American Cancer Society. I got the impression that when you started working with pain you didn’t necessarily think of it as a humanitarian activity. You just kind of dove in and did it because it was necessary. I’m wondering now that you can step back and sort of reflect on things, what is the humanitarian dimension to that?

C. Stratton Hill, MD:

I think that kind of becomes— I think that probably reflects my upbringing that my parents instilled a value system that— I don’t know whether you could say it’s innate, but you just think that this is the way it ought to be. You ought to have relief of your pain. That reminds me of the time that I had a debate with Ivan Illich. You’ve probably heard of The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Well, this is another Ivan Illich that was a real character. He was a Catholic priest. (end of audio session 3)

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Chapter 18: The Open-Door Mission for Rehabilitation and Recovery; Awards

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