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Ask Me Why I Hurt

The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them

ebook
2 of 3 copies available
2 of 3 copies available
An unforgettable and inspiring memoir of an extraordinary doctor who is saving lives in a most unconventional way.
Ask Me Why I Hurt is the touching and revealing first-person account of the remarkable work of Dr. Randy Christensen. Trained as a pediatrician, he works not in a typical hospital setting but, rather, in a 38-foot Winnebago that has been refitted as a doctor’s office on wheels. His patients are the city’s homeless adolescents and children.
In the shadow of an affluent American city, Dr. Christensen has dedicated his life to caring for society's throwaway kids—the often-abused, unloved children who live on the streets without access to proper health care, all the while fending off constant threats from thugs, gangs, pimps, and other predators. With the Winnebago as his moveable medical center, Christensen and his team travel around the outskirts of Phoenix, attending to the children and teens who need him most.
With tenderness and humor, Dr. Christensen chronicles everything from the struggles of the van’s early beginnings, to the support system it became for the kids, and the ultimate recognition it has achieved over the years. Along with his immense professional challenges, he also describes the trials and joys he faces while raising a growing family with his wife Amy. By turns poignant, heartbreaking, and charming, Dr. Christensen's story is a gripping and rich memoir of his work and family, one of those rare books that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 14, 2011
      Phoenix pediatrician Christensen recounts the past decade spent treating Arizona's homeless youth in his "Big Blue" van in this inspiring account of a doctor who truly puts his patients' needs first. Always drawn to community health care, Christensen—a doctor at the prestigious Phoenix Children's Hospital—jumped at the chance to head a mobile unit that would bring basic medical needs to the area's large population of homeless teenagers. Initial funding came through the Children's Hospital and generous private grants, and Christensen, along with a no-nonsense nurse and cabinets full of basic medication, crammed into a converted Winnebago and drove off to abandoned parking lots to find patients. Nothing prepared him for the onslaught of misery and poverty, as homeless kids came with complaints ranging from infected insect bites to STDs acquired from prostitution. Christensen became not only an advocate within the community by helping the youths find beds in shelters but also offers his expertise in mobile health care to other crisis areas, volunteering in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. With just the right blend of personal history, patient anecdotes, and relevant suggestions for health care improvement, Christensen's memoir is an uplifting yet sobering read.

    • Kirkus

      February 1, 2011

      A physician's memoir of his years working with homeless youth.

      In 2000, while working at Arizona's Phoenix Children's Hospital, Christensen asked to be assigned a daunting task—leading a mobile health-care unit aimed at serving homeless children. In the world of modern medicine, this was not the obvious way to climb the career ladder toward regular hours and a hefty salary. With a small group of passionately committed providers, Christensen turned this small community-service unit into an integral part of the urban medical landscape. Along the way, he struggled to balance the emotional and psychological demands of treating vulnerable children with the pressures placed on his marriage and family life. Ultimately, the children he encountered on the streets of Phoenix become the real subjects of his memoir, co-authored with journalist Denfield (Kill the Body, the Head Will Fall: A Closer Look at Women, Violence, and Aggression, 1997, etc.). Christensen's many subjects include: Sugar, the pregnant young prostitute who found her way to new life; the abused and neglected young man who discovered love in a community home; and a mentally ill young woman whose tragic murder resulted in part from the bureaucratic tangles that prevented anyone from truly helping her. The title of the book comes from the bracelet worn by one patient who was unable to tell the story of the systematic abuse that left her homeless. The author provides numerous heart-rending stories, yet, for such a serious subject, the narrative is written with obvious joy and an impassioned optimism for what health-care providers and communities can achieve.

      Refreshingly free of moralistic lectures about the collective failure of the American health-care system, Christensen's book is a wry, sincere story that makes the need for change inescapably obvious.

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2010

      He's been declared a "CNN Hero" and a "Hero Among Us" by People magazine. Why? Phoenix pediatrician Christensen roams the streets in his Crews'n Healthmobile, providing free mobile health care to thousands of the city's homeless and at-risk adolescents each year. Not just inspiration but a wake-up call for our entire health system; expect some buzz.

      Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      April 15, 2011
      As a casualty of high unemployment rates and home foreclosures, the recent blight of homelessness has been devastating to Americas children. By some estimates, close to 1.5 million children and teens now live on the streets, most without adequate nutrition or medical care. For those afflicted with everything from ear infections to STDs, Phoenix-area pediatrician Christensen has been a godsend, providing antibiotics and immunizations from a converted Winnebago dubbed the Crewsn Healthmobile. In this alternately heartwarming and heartrending memoir, Christensen recounts the tribulations involved in keeping his clinic-on-wheels funded and rolling while treating thousands of physically and psychologically wounded adolescents. Among the refugees of broken homes the reader will encounter and care about as they recover are Mary, raped by her stepfather; Sugar, a bubbly teen forced into prostitution at 12; and Daniel, an Alabama transplant suffering from abuse-inflicted brain damage. Together, with Christensens touching side account of his own family challenges, these stories should encourage other large communities to follow the Healthmobiles inspiring lead.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

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