Well, I've got another one, although it's a bit of a story and it made me a bit sad. This is also going to be a bit graphic.
I was walking back to work on my lunch break here in the city, and I found this guy sitting on some stairs. He had a big, loaded trolley with him, older fella and in all honesty, he looked like he was a homeless man. The thing that made me stop though, were his legs.
His legs had some very nasty, open wounds. No blood, but it looked as if the wounds were rotting. It didn't look nice at all, to say the least.
He dropped some paper as he began to move. I picked up the paper, returned it to him. I asked him, "Are you alright?" and his response was a quick "Yeah.", I then said to him "Your legs don't look very good sir. Maybe you should see a doctor?" and his reply, another quick one, was "Fuck the doctors!"
I just said "Okay, fair enough." and he says "I know what I'm doing, mate. I'm an army vet." and then he walked away with his trolley.
As I was walking back to work, I stopped nearby the local police station, went inside and spoke to one of the officers. Apparently the man I saw is a resident alcoholic and the police are very aware of him. Once a week, a nurse from the hospital drives out into the city, looks for him and treats the wounds. Sometimes the police will call an ambulance on his behalf to come treat him if he's in pain. At the end of the day, no one is allowed to force the man to go to hospital, it's entirely up to him.
I did learn that he did go to the hospital at some stage and he was supposed to have surgery, but he did a runner on them and never came back.
Not good. :/
