My Visit with Frank

I met Frank at The Epiphany House on Saturday 10/7/06 where he’s been staying for some 3.5 years. I believe I was invited to Baltimore so that I could tell Jon that his dad was thriving encouraging him to visit.

He is very thin and his hair, including mustache and beard, is long. He has a hobbling walk which he says was due to a recent “ back event.” He stood for much of the time we were together with his right arm cocked and the other at his side. Both hands were clenched in fists. This posture is an affectation I remember from earlier years but it is more pronounced now.

He was dressed in shorts and a golf shirt on a 50 degree day.

First he showed me his room which is a 7x20 space with a kitchenette, bed, dresser, two chairs, and a table. He has an adjoining bathroom. It was dank and carpet was stained but the room was clean. There is a radio on the dresser which, I think, is on and tuned to talk radio all the time.

All of the walls and the table are covered with hand written index cards. Some have to do with a teaching method Frank has come up with which he is very excited about. Those cards contain a word and the phonetic spelling of the word i.e. sign = sine. Other cards contain reminders about how to live a healthy life which include proscriptions of umbrellas, mittens, and shampoo. He told me that the very worst thing was medication of any sort.

For the first hour I was there Frank occasionally slurred words. It got better the longer we talked so I think it happens when he’s excited. Our conversation was punctuated by him jumping out of the chair and rummaging through his dresser to show me memorabilia.

He told me that two years ago he had been in his room and suddenly there was blood everywhere. He used the panic button to call for the EMTs and lost consciousness as they were putting him on the gurney. The problem turned out to be a bleeding ulcer and he tells me that during his hospitalization he was transfused with 18 units of blood!

He blames the ulcer on taking Aleve for his back pain, I wonder if the condition could have been exacerbated by bulimia. He told me that he’s served 2 “gourmet meals” a day and that he purges after each.

There are glimmers of the man I knew but he is humorless. I would expect some introspection from someone who lost a family, a job, and ended up in jail but none is evident. There is unspoken sadness but if there is any understanding of what he’s done to land in this predicament it’s deeply buried. Frank’s attitude is that he’s the same old guy but everyone around him has abandoned him. After all, he tells me, he is the greatest homo sapien ever created by God