The long awaited second entry..

It has been quite some time since I last wrote and that is because of several reasons. One being I am extremely busy. These past few weeks there are days we work 10 hours.. so some weeks have been close to 50 hours. Also every time I would go to blog I felt like I didn't have time to sit down and write anything significant.. so I recently decided I would just blog in bits and pieces otherwise I will never get anywhere in doing this. So here we go.
It has been almost a month in to our fitness and wellness program. We had 17 women who received fitness assessments by interns at the wellness center at the hospital. 12 of those women have remained pretty active thus far. Some come and go and others are pretty consistent. I think the main thing I am happy about is that the women who are participating in this program are definitely excited and getting more and more motivated. Even more exciting - some have actually begun to lose weight, which is HUGE! That means they are actually working out not just once or twice a week with the group, but on their own, and they're starting to eat healthier!
I am into my second week of doing one-on-one sessions with the diabetics at the health center. It is very.. interesting to say the least. So far I have seen 17 people. I have had to lecture some about how they need to start caring about their diabetes and believing it is a big deal because they will die from it.. sounds brutal, but when someone's blood sugar is 400+ on a daily basis... that's not brutal. I have been shocked that some people have been diabetics for years and don't know simple things. Things that any other diabetic with health insurance or who have been provided with the resources to learn about diabetes would know. Therefore, I am starting with the basics with everyone and trying to see what everyone's knowledge about diabetes is. I am starting to see I am definitely going to have my work cut out for me.
Working at the health center.. is such a huge learning experience for me. Most days I leave the health center and head to the community center to prepare for our fitness program or to get other work done, so I frequently stop and chat with Sr. Pat about how things are going. I had a long conversation with Sr. Pat today about giving people the benefit of the doubt. I never thought until now how much "mercy" would actually be a part of my year here. I guess that's pretty appropriate seeing as I am a "Mercy Volunteer". Hahaha. Anyway, I am a person who almost always trusts people. Sometimes too much so. But, when I sit down one-on-one with someone who is a 53 year old man and he is telling me for 45 minutes about how he can't find a job, he's about to lose his house, and he is going to have to go begging to his parents - so clearly his diabetes has not been the first thing on his list or even the one of his top ten priorities.. well to me it's very hard not to just trust what that person is telling me. I say this because when I go to express how sad someone's situation is or how I am not sure how we can help them, but let's sit and think of what we can come up with to someone in the health center... some people are like - "Mary! Wake up! He is bs-ing you. He can find a job. He just only wants to do something that is good enough for him...." It goes on... Not saying the people I work with do not have mercy for people because they definitely do, but some of the people I work with have been poorer than some of these people. So they know what it means to be in this situation. So for me I find myself in a sort of rut. Wanting to have mercy.. not knowing when people are lying to me.. I expressed a lot of my frustration and confusion today to Sr. Pat (and believe me this is only one of the frustrations and confusions I have encountered thus far).. and she said to me "Mary, give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove to you otherwise. People deserve to be trusted and to be given the benefit of the doubt." And I believe she is right... so regardless of my confusion and whatnot... I think I just have to trust people.. That is my lesson for the day.