St. Luke's Saved My Life

by Vivian Hain/PNN

Why our neighborhood hospital? Why is St. Luke's Hospital, one of the most desperately needed hospitals in San Francisco's Mission District being threatened with closure? Why? Is it because it is located in a community of color, where many working-class poor, low and no income people like me and my family live? Are we not equally valued as human beings? What is going on San Francisco?

Well... I can say this. If it wasn't for St. Luke's being where it is, I wouldn't be alive today. In 1968, at the tender age of two, I had a near fatal accident which almost killed me. I fell from a second-story back porch of a flat where we lived on Valencia Street. On that day, I was told by my dad, who had just started a new labor job at $3.25 an hour, after coming home tired, that he went out the back door of the flat down to a small concrete space in the backyard to empty the garbage. That was when my older brother who was 3 1/2 years old and myself 2 years old, both followed behind my dad as he struggled out of the backdoor, carrying a large trash bag. As I walked out on to the back porch area, I lost my balance, rolled underneath the bannister and fell two stories head first on to that small concrete space below.

My poor father had only seconds to spare, as he turned around while emptying the garbage just to helplessly see me fall, as the right side of my head smashed into the concrete, where I lay unconscious like a little broken doll. Frantically, my dad ran over to me, wrapped his flannel shirt around my small broken head while simultaneously swooping up my older brother in his other arm and ran back up the stairs to fetch my mom, who at the time was downstairs in the laundromat below our flat. I remember my dad telling me that he ran into the laundromat, grabbed my mom by her arm, then they ran to their car, an older model blue Ford wagon, driving me in less than five minutes through the Valencia Street traffic and several red lights to St. Luke's Hospital in a vain effort to save my life. I was unconscious and I was dying...

When they arrived at St. Luke's, the hospital staff immediately took me to the back for emergency surgery. I was in critical condition and still unconscious. The doctors were not sure if they could save my life, because by this time, my brain had began to swell, causing fluid build up, which became life threatening. I also remember my mom telling me that my Grandma Rosaria came to the hospital with her sister, my Aunt Mona, who brought with her a Preist to give me my death rites, as things were looking very grim. It was the 1960s and surgical technology had not been developed like today, so St. Luke's Hospital could only guarantee their best efforts to save my life, which they did in every way possible. My dad also told me that the hospital staff told him that had they not arrived to the hospital within the short time that they did with me, I would of surely not had survived.

I think about this today and how the distance factor was the thin line between whether I had lived that day or not. I think about all of the countless people in the Mission District of San Francisco, many who are somewhat isolated by their economic circumstance and/or their disability. I think about all of the lives that had been saved at St. Luke's, because it is located in a strategic location which is truly a lifeline for many in the Mission. And here, Sutter wants to close a historical hospital that plays such an important role to a community in much need, like it did for me. St. Luke's saved my life... How could the continual gentrification of corporate wealth and real estate in San Franciso hold more value than human life? What have we come to? Sutter, how dare you threaten the closure of St. Luke's Hospital!