About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 2019)
OUR REGION Nate McCullough News Editor | 770-718-3431 | news@gainesvilletimes.com Srrnes gainesvilletimes com Sunday, September 8, 2019 Groups join to better aid homeless Photos by SCOTT ROGERS I The Times David Carmon continues to recover at his Gainesville home Wednesday, Sept. 4, with wife Jesse. Cameron nearly died from West Nile virus last summer, and is still in a wheelchair, but he is regaining strength and now able to walk a bit. Regaining strength For West Nile virus survivor, every day is a blessed day' David Carmon and his wife Jesse keep a positive outlook on life as David recovers from West Nile virus. BY JEFF GILL jgill@gainesvilletimes.com This may be confounding to some, espe cially given all that he’s been through, but David Carmon longs for the day he can trim bushes in the backyard of his Gaines ville home. “You can’t stop living, and I’m ready to get back to work,” he said. “I want to get out of this (wheelchair). It’s going to hap pen. It’s just being patient. ” Extreme patience, in Carmon’s case, as he’s still recovering from West Nile virus, one year after suffering a mosquito bite while doing yard work during Labor Day 2018. Carmon, 54, was mostly hospital ized, including at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, until Feb. 1, 2019, when he was discharged. “We were very apprehensive about coming home,” said Carmon during an interview last week at his home. “We didn’t know how we would do on our own.” Initially, he was under 24/7 nursing care at home. That level of care has less ened somewhat over the months. And in June, he returned to Shepherd, which treats people with spinal cord and brain injuries, and other such conditions, to be weaned off a ventilator. A 3-day visit turned into 14 days, said David’s wife, Jessie. He’s off the ventilator, but will still have a tracheostomy tube at the base of his throat and diaphragm pacing system, a device that helps stimulate the diaphragm muscles and nerves, until June 2020. Otherwise, David is breathing on his own. “We still have the breathing machine for emergencies,” Jessie said. “Now, it’s basically (physical) therapy,” David said. “I still have very limited use of my arms. My legs... are getting better. ” He also has undergone acupuncture, which “has woken up a lot of stuff,” he said. “That’s been almost a miracle,” she said. “I’m hoping with time to get better,” he said. “They say now about two years (for recovery).” David’s ordeal has been a true nightmare. It began with a simple household chore: trimming the bushes in his backyard. “The next day, I had a rash over my entire upper torso,” he said in a January 2018 interview with The Times. “It was Fight the Nile What: Golf tournament benefiting David Carmon, who has battled West Nile virus When: Sept. 20 Where: Chicopee Woods Golf Course, 2515 Atlanta Highway Noteworthy: The deadline for registration and sponsorship opportunities is Friday, Sept. 13. For more information, call 678-410-0688. like a heat rash. It was on my chest and back.” He went to see a doctor, who prescribed a steroid to treat what appeared to be a simple rash. A couple days later, Jessie found her husband falling to his knees in the bath room, as he was coming out of the shower. “I thought it was a blood pressure attack, because that’s happened before,” Jessie said. They went to the emergency room at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville. Doctors got his blood pressure under control and sent the Carmons home with medication. At home later, David started feeling nauseous. “(He) went white and started sweating like crazy,” said Jessie, who had called a friend over for help getting him to the hospital. “... His legs were starting to give out, so we were having to carry him down the stairs.” At first, doctors thought he had viral meningitis because his neck hurt so badly, she said. A spinal tap was done to test for many things, including West Nile. Before David got the diagnosis of West Nile, he had been treated with antibiotics and other drugs. “But once the diagnosis came, the treat ments stopped,” Jessie said. “There is no treatment for West Nile. It’s just manag ing the symptoms. But it’s like a doctor told me: It doesn’t matter what he has. It only matters that he gets better.” The virus would go on to wreck David’s body, leaving him paralyzed and fighting to breathe — just struggling to survive. During his stay at Shepherd, he had to relearn how to swallow, how to eat. Throughout the ordeal, he also endured tremendous nerve pain. “If I could, I would have chopped off my left calf, it was so painful,” David said. Over the months, David has drawn huge support from family and friends. Cards ■ Please see CARMON, 2C BY NICK WATSON nwatson@gainesvilletimes.com Many of the homeless men Jerry Deyton encounters got caught up in drugs and alcohol in their younger years, and the situation only got worse from there. “When you get on drugs and alcohol, you lose your family ties. You lose your education. You lose your home, and you just end up out here on the street with nothing but what you got on your back,” he said. Deyton, a pastor who runs The Way day cen ter, said old age makes it so “they don’t see no hope in turning it around, and they just keep going.” Tony “Long John” Brown was one of the men Deyton had kept in touch with for six years. Brown, 64, was found behind an abandoned house Aug. 30 on Cooley Drive. Hall County first responders were unable to revive him, and Hall County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Derreck Booth said the man had “underlying medical conditions.” A neighbor who had talked to Brown hours before his death said he seemed OK. The neighbor had described “Long John” as a neighborhood watch for that area of Cooley Drive. With The Way, Deyton said his mission is mostly to direct people where to go, but he sometimes doesn’t know where that is. Ninth District Opportunity housing/program man ager Michael Fisher said he hopes to fix that. Fisher said he spent weeks trying to put all the different entities committed to homeless in the same room for the homeless summit Aug. 19 at WorkSource Georgia Mountains off of Thompson Bridge Road. Deyton, representatives of various shelters, members of the Gainesville and Hall County school systems, representatives of the Depart ment of Community Supervision and Fisher were some of the more than 70 people in atten dance for the event. “A lot of these agencies and community activists that are out there, they don’t know about these partners and these organizations they can work together with to solve some of these issues. A lot of them are out there work ing by themselves, so it really empowered them and made them feel good that they have people that can do this with them, ” Fisher said. Deyton echoed Fisher’s statements, adding he was glad to see so many people working in one room to familiarize themselves. “My biggest thing was we needed to do it more and come together more, because we don’t know one another and we need to be working together. I have a lot of situations that come through down here, and I just say, ‘I don’t know anyone to send you to, because I don’t know anyone who is doing anything in that type of field,”’ Deyton said. For example, Deyton said a majority of the men he sees suffer from some sort of mental ■ Please see HOMELESS, 4C Times file photo A homeless man named Tony “Long John” Brown is seen in this file photo at a Gainesville homeless camp near Cooley Drive. Brown’s body was found recently behind an abandoned house. Local agencies are joining forces to try to do a better job of fighting homelessness. Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival returns to Lake Lanier The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival returned to Lake Lanier Olympic Park Saturday, Sept. 7, for a free, all-day event on the water. “It’s very exciting,” said Tracy Barth, deputy festival director. “This has always been my favorite event for the community, especially at the Lake Lanier Olympic Park.” The festival has been held in Gainesville at the Olympic venue since the early 2000s, bringing a cul tural experience that isn’t normally found in Hall County. The event included presentations and dances from Asian culture, races, music and food. ■ For more photos, see page 3C \M.\ [ r u L.I 1 TRENTON TALBOT I For the Times The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival returned to Lake Lanier Olympic Park in Gainesville on Saturday, Sept. 7, for a free, all-day event on the water that included presentations and dances from Asian culture, races, music and food.
