About the ABC Team
Four Decades in The Urban Core
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As you will see on these pages, we made an unsuccessful attempt at retirement from Vancouver Costal Health in 2012 after 32 years as home care nurses, mostly in the Downtown Eastside, the urban core of Vancouver – known as the poorest postal code in Canada.
Pillar 1
In the early days...
Prior to 1996 our referrals were mostly to elderly retired loggers and miners living in SRO hotels in the DTES. They suffered from alcoholism, diabetes, heart disease, head and neck cancers and Chronic wounds related to their poor health.
Pillar 2
The first major epidemic
That all changed in the 1990’s starting with the closure of Riverview Mental hospital. The arrival of cheap cocaine and HIV/AIDS soon followed. We were then getting referrals for much younger folk, often suffering from mental illness and in the end stages of AIDS. There was no HAART meds in those days and virtually everyone suffered and died a lingering death. Harm reduction was unknown at the time.
Pillar 3
Learning from Our Patients
Patients with no immune system started to present with unusual wound presentations. We learned that any small lesion could change overnight into a serious infection that could be life threatening.
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"Two Vancouver street nurses, Evanna Brennan, 74, and Susan Giles, 68, battle the city's deadly opioid crisis while caring for the poverty-stricken, ill and addicted residents of the Downtown Eastside, often referred to as Canada's poorest postal code. " 42 minutes