Growing up in a world of two extremes. It feels like a long time ago for Michelle, but she still remembers the contrast between people well. “Where you were born is so decisive. If part of my background wasn’t so rich, I probably never would have become a doctor.”
In her increasingly full schedule, she was able to make time for the interview between appointments. Especially after her performance in the television program Buitenhof, many people wanted to talk to her. Yet she rejects most requests, especially from talk shows: “My goal in life is not to become a celebrity.”
Helping patients
More importantly, she wants to help patients and publicize their problems. She writes about it almost daily on her LinkedIn page, with the necessary impact. Like about her ‘dear and undocumented patient’ Simonwho died unexpectedly and young last month.
‘I can hardly count the moments he was furious in front of me. We argued dozens of times and rightly so. Because he wanted something perfectly normal that I couldn’t provide: shelter. So he slept and walked on the street, round after round, path after path, until his hip was so damaged that the femoral head literally broke off in the hip socket.’
Then he underwent surgery. And then fired back to the street. He got sicker and sicker. Developed epilepsy, fell on the street and broke his neck. His vertebrae were secured with a few plates and then he was released back to the street after a temporary bed. So he was always mad at me, rightfully so. Because how could I, as his doctor, not see that this life would be his death?
He was right.’
office hours
Michelle is a street doctor one day a week in the Pauluskerk, a place for people in Rotterdam who cannot manage without help, such as the homeless or people without valid residence papers. The rest of the days she works as a general practitioner in South Rotterdam. She also writes about her experiences as a doctor for the journalistic platform De Correspondent and gives lectures.
In the crystal-shaped church in the center of Rotterdam it is apparently quieter than usual. The sunlight falls through the triangular windows on about twenty people, who are divided at the tables. With rain you can safely count on the triple number. Upstairs people can get coffee for 10 cents.
If you go through the corridor, you will come to the consultation room of the street doctor. At the desk is a man, he is the last patient this morning. “You have to do it three times a day,” Michelle tells him, pressing the recipe into his hand. “Yes, three times a day.”
Addicted boy with leg wound
Now it was a patient sitting opposite her, but an hour before that there were two doctors from Erasmus MC. Michelle spoke at the hospital about one of her patients, an addicted boy with a deep leg wound.
He was found unconscious two months ago, having overdosed on strong painkillers for the pain of his leg wound. Michelle knew: this boy needs a bed now, because this wound is rapidly getting so bad that he will lose his leg or die.
But the hospital decided otherwise: his problems were not serious enough. He was put back on the street.
As Michelle often does, she cranked up the story on LinkedIn. “I was angry and so was my patient. Without consultation, he was simply put outside again in the evening.”
She prefers not to do it this way. “But at some point I just got fed up,” she says fiercely. “Then I just tag people from certain agencies by name and surname and suddenly it works.”
Two worlds
If you ask her mother about her spicy character, she will recognize it. As a young girl, Michelle preferred to be with her, in the Dukenburg district of Nijmegen, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Her father – her parents separated when she was born – lived in a residential area on the other side of the city.
There, among the ‘rich’, (mainly) men were presented on the basis of their position. “It always gave me a very unpleasant feeling. What does someone’s job say about who they are?”
With her mother, however, the conversations felt. “It was less about your nice car or painting, and more about how you were doing.”
Two worlds, from which two completely different people emerged. One with opportunities, the other with few or none. “I always saw status and money as something fake, something that can also make people unhappy, because it can keep them stuck in a certain role.”
At the same time, she also saw how it can determine your life in a positive way. “If my parents hadn’t pushed me to the gymnasium, yes, that was still possible then, I probably never would have become a doctor. Because I received a secondary school diploma. Then I would not have been able to live in the house where I live now and I would have I had no money for my children so that they can go to college later.”
Michelle is therefore not strongly against status or money. “I especially think that money has become too important in our society,” she says.
‘Inspiration for medicine came later’
Michelle herself studied medicine in Nijmegen, just like her father, who is also a doctor. “I had to do something that would earn me a good living. I could also have become a lawyer or an economist, but then medicine seemed a bit more fun to me.”
Did it feel like a calling? Only later. At first she found the art academy more interesting, just like the pub. “I wasn’t a model student,” she laughs. “I don’t think many people at the time would say: well, Michelle, she really stood head and shoulders above it.”
She glances at Esther, the street nurse sitting to her left. “The inspiration came later,” she says.
For example, after her medical studies, she was very sure that she wanted to become a doctor. She was also very sure that she didn’t want to do anything else: work in the hospital. During her residencies, a doctor once told her to get up and get coffee. “Oh, I’d like some coffee too. I like sugar in it,’ Michelle would say.
“The hierarchy there didn’t help my rebellion.”
Plus, as a general practitioner, she could give it a more personal twist and follow people through time. “I thought that was very nice.”
Feeling to Rotterdam
She left Nijmegen and went to live in her beloved Rotterdam. There she started her GP training and a few years later she was asked for the role of street doctor. “That was not a dream of mine. I usually play a role in the things I do. I wanted to do more with disadvantage problems and a fellow doctor knew that I had an affinity with the target group.”
And, she says with a wink: “Then Rotterdam is the only real city in the Netherlands.”
But living and working in Rotterdam was also an emotional choice. The elusiveness, the space and the people in the city: it suited Michelle, she felt at home there. “I can’t explain it very well. It has to do with the mentality and diversity of the people. The city has so many challenges. I feel that I can make contact with the people here more easily and can actually do something for them. “
“In addition, Rotterdam is a very beautiful city. When I cycle on the street here, I always get inspired.”
‘Is the person homeless?’
Until recently, she lived with her family – husband, four-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son – close to the busy center of Rotterdam. But something more green and quiet was welcome and they moved east, towards a forest and river.
Her children, they are lucky. “That’s also something I want to make very clear to them,” she says. “That they were born on the right side, but that the world also has a completely different side. Although that goes quite naturally. Because when I walk with them on the street, we often talk to homeless people. My children now sometimes ask : is that person homeless?”
Someone knocks on the door of the consulting room. Street nurse Esther walks towards it. ‘That was (patient’s name), you know him’. Michelle thinks for a moment and then laughs. ‘Oh yes, that one’.
The Pauluskerk also feels a bit like coming home for Michelle and Esther. They know the patients and the patients know them. “I feel so honored and blessed that they entrust me with so much,” says Michelle. “I find that really unique and means a lot to me. That means that I never find my life boring and that I always enjoy going to work.”
When we go outside a little later to take the pictures, Esther just smokes a cigarette among the homeless.
‘Money and rules over people’
Talking, that is perhaps what they do most in their work. With patients in the first place, in Dutch, English, Polish (with the help of a translator) or all possible non-verbal language to convey the message. But also with doctors, healthcare institutions, policymakers and entrepreneurs.
With one goal: better cooperation and a change of the current system. “A system in which money and rules are put before people,” says Michelle. “Agencies really want to provide good care, but it is often not possible. But they feel powerless.”
“Over the past 15 years, we’ve come into a society in which the spirit is circulating that you have to be strong, take care of yourself and, above all, pursue your own thing. But it is precisely in this system that people, who are expensive and complex, are left out. the boat.”
A reality in which hard choices are increasingly being made, such as putting an addicted boy on the street with a festering leg wound. “The most vulnerable person becomes the victim of the rock-hard and rigid system.”
Failing housing policy
She also looks at it with regret in her Rotterdam. The vulnerable people change from heroin addicts, to undocumented migrants, to migrant workers, to ordinary Rotterdammers with an addiction to normal people who can no longer make it after a few setbacks.
According to Michelle, the failing housing policy in the city plays a major role in this. “In my general practice, I increasingly see ‘normal’ people who are at risk of becoming homeless due to a lack of affordable housing. This causes the entire system to crash. If this does not change, the problems will be unsolvable.”
“You have to come from an increasingly better family,” she continues. “The safety net is becoming less and more and more and more people around you are being called upon.”
Arranging donations, hotel room and care
Yes, Michelle has dystopian thoughts about where the world is headed. She knows she is trapped in a system of money and rules. But, the activist and stubborn girl in her never gives up.
She wants to be the safety net for the people who don’t have a safety net. Like for the boy with the leg wound. With the help of countless donations, she arranged a hotel room and wound care. Then he was admitted to a clinic.
What Michelle did informally at first, namely supporting her patients with money and resources, eventually took off so much that she set up a foundation: Hoe Kan Ik Je Helpen. With this foundation she gives help to people in need.
To help her patients even better, she also occasionally appears in a television program such as Buitenhof. She impresses with her fierce and self-assured demeanor, but with that, the fame of her as a person also increases. “And that’s something I struggle with,” she says. “I want publicity for the problem, but not for myself. That doesn’t get me at all.”
Popularity is increasing
But she is already popular. At a lecture, people line up for her afterwards, for a photo and sometimes even an autograph. “That makes me crazy in my head.”
Being seen because of your status. It’s happening to her now too. “The vicious circle of karma and misery.”
Sunday interview
Every Sunday we publish an interview in text and photos of someone who does or has experienced something special. That can be a major event that the person handles admirably. The Sunday interviews have in common that the story has a major influence on the life of the interviewee.
Are you or do you know someone who would be suitable for a Sunday interview? Let us know via this email address: [email protected]
Read the previous Sunday interviews here.
2023-06-11 06:24:37
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