My thoughts on Amazing Grace

 I really enjoyed reading Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace article, although it made my heart ache thinking of the children in that situation. After reading this article I was reminded of one of my senior high school classes (urban sociology) where we spent an entire quarter discussing the poverty in parts of New York. Although I have prior knowledge abour the statistics of crime and poverty in New York, I can't helop but be amazed once again everytime I read them again. This article in particular discusses in a little bit of detail the health care issues people living in poverty face which is something that hits home to me because I am in the medical field. I could never imagne what it is like having to go into a hopital exam room and having to clean up the mess of another patient (Pg 15) like David's mother had to. I couldnt help but cringe as I read that passage in particular where it is being described how you must first wait hours in the waiting room, then walk into the ecxamination room and clean the room yourself picking up used bandages from the previous patient and wipping up the bed then finally settling in. After that if you call for a nurse to come help you it will be hours before a nurse comes over to you and helps you. This just blew my mind to think that people can be treated this way as if they were unimportant. David's mother however is well aware of what to expect and is not upset at the nursing staff at all, she actually is understanding of the fact that they have to wait so long because the nurses are overworked and working double shifts end to end. One thing that really shocked me was reading about how she was rejected SSI when she applied due to cancer and they said she "wasn't sick enough" to collect. How can a cancer patient not be "sick enough"? Who decides how "sick" she really is to reject her from those benefits? One of her friends was denied SSI untill after she died, now the checks were being sent however she was no longer alive to cash them. Now her boyfriend is cashing therm and susing the money that was rightfully his girlfriends for her medical expenses on other insignificant things.