Bed-Stuy Nurse Helps Those Who Need It Most

I arrive at my first stop in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn about half an hour early. I am meeting Kensy Joseph, a nurse with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, who has agreed to let me accompany him on some of his Charitable Care visits.

Waiting for him outside of the Stuyvesant Gardens Senior Citizens Building on Malcolm X Avenue, I am not the only person loitering in the sun. For decades, Bedford Stuyvesant has been the poorest neighborhood in the borough, and the abundance of people who are not at work at 10:30am is a testament to the current economic conditions.

There’s a smashed melon on the curb, and the small crowd around me quietly watches the flies feast. When Kensy arrives and we go inside, he tells me “Things are tough now. And we’re not here to take over completely; we can’t. But we are here to help.”

Kensy’s first patient is 89-year-old Marie Daniels, who has been living in Brooklyn since she was 18.

“I came from North Carolina because I had a sister here,” she tells me. “I did housework. I did anything to survive.” An old Aretha Franklin concert is playing on the TV in Marie’s very neat apartment as we walk through her door.

Today, Marie is having trouble with her wheelchair. There is a problem with one of the wheels, and she can no longer get herself around. Her aide has been helping her, but she’ll need a new chair. And, as Kensy places an order, Marie makes light of the situation.

“I need a chair that I can roll my hips in, tap and zoom away,” she says, giggling. Proud of her joke, she looks at me and continues, “I’m not a comic, but I keep in good spirits.”

Before VNSNY identified Marie as eligible for Charitable Care during one of her hospital stays, she was paying more than she could afford for a health care plan that barely covered her basic needs.

“Before, she had a HIP that was denying her everything,” Kensy says. “She is eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, so our social worker has gotten them active for her, and soon we’re switching her to VNSNY CHOICE.”

All of that, however, took some time, and, as Marie’s family couldn’t afford to keep her at home on their own, “VNSNY approached her in the hospital and gave her free care,” Kensy says. “Otherwise, she would not have been able to come home. She would have probably ended up in a nursing home. That’s why I love this job—imagine if I was an accountant.” Marie interrupts him, “VNSNY has such a wonderful staff. Everyone is so wonderful.

As we’re leaving to go on to Kensy’s next appointment, Marie scribbles a note to herself in her calendar. “My handwriting is not too bad,” she says, smiling. “The way I write, that’s the way I feel. Good.”

Kensy’s second patient is only a couple of blocks away, in a building that is typical of Bed Stuy. Grand in the old sense, its original crown moldings stand out against the chipping paint and bars more recently affixed to the windows and doors.

We climb a couple flights of stairs and arrive at Sarah’s place. “This is a tough case,” Kensy says to me, before we ring the doorbell. “I hope there’s a way out for her.”

The heat in Sarah’s building is still on from the winter, making her apartment very hot. Sarah is in bed, tired and weak from the chemo-therapy she’s going through to battle uterine cancer. “Today, I’m tired,” she says to Kensy, as we come into her bedroom.” Then, looking at me, she says, “I’m going through a lot.”

Sarah, whose name has been changed for the purposes of this article, came to the Unites States from Jamaica ten years ago, and is one of the many people in this country who immigrated illegally in hopes of a better life.

Now, she is 43, sick, and has no one to turn to for help. She is receiving VNSNY Charitable Care to make sure she is safe on her own after a recent hospital stay. “At the beginning,” Kensy says, “I was teaching her how to change her colostomy bag and other things like that. Now, she’s pretty much independent.”

Since his last visit, Sarah has lost a lot of weight. Kensy gently scolds her about not eating enough or taking her Ensure supplements. And Sarah, who is surrounded in bed by books about cancer, a bible, and handfuls of pill bottles, looks particularly tiny as she listens.

Her eyes flit back and forth between me and the seven or eight small photographs taped to the otherwise blank walls as she talks about the life she had hoped for. “I wanted to do modeling once,” she says. “Now look at me. I missed my calling. I’m a completely different person than I was.”

Kensy discovers that Sarah has been taking too much blood pressure medicine and goes through her different medications with her to make sure there are no other problems. As our visit winds down, he tells her he’ll get her a scale so she can monitor her weight. Sarah sighs, trying to force herself to drink some Ensure, which she thinks is disgusting.

“It just tastes so bad,” she says. “Look at me. I don’t know if it’s the big boss testing me, but right now I have no life. I just have to know I’m going to be healed.”

“Charitable Care is so important,” Kensy says, “because, without it, patients like Marie and Sarah would be stuck in the hospital or nursing homes for long periods of time, unable to afford the care they need to be able to go home.” It’s a few days later, and I am talking to Kensy on the phone.

He is telling me how many of his patients in Bed Stuy need more services than what their insurance covers, and how, often, they are treated unfairly or fall through the cracks. “With VNSNY—with Charitable Care—I am able to go into their homes and giving them the best. I am advocating for them, and I am making sure they get the care that they deserve.”