A message from Father Stephen V. Sundborg, SJ, President of Seattle University

 “Across the Alley”

Upon the occasion of the Breakfast of Hope, May 22, 2008

As the Jesuit president of Seattle University, I live in a house with two dozen other Jesuits on the edge of the Seattle U campus.  There we gather, pray, eat, sleep, talk, share our lives.  We are committed to love of others, service of the poor, education of justice.  That’s what we’re about.  Our life is good.

Almost completely unbeknownst to us, immediately behind our house, across an alley, within 40 feet of the room where I sleep, is another building and it, too, is a home.  It is Northwest Kidney Centers on Broadway, the oldest of the dozen NKC facilities in our region whom we are here to support.  From our Jesuit residence all we see are the ambulances, cabs and vans coming and going all day.

Come inside with me and meet the people who need and are asking for our help this morning, help that they need every single day of their lives just to stay alive.  Meet first a head nurse in the Special Care Unit who, by choice, has worked in this same unit for 21 years, doing so because of her care for the men and women who are brought by ambulance and on rolling gurneys to receive their life-saving dialysis.  These are the most needy of all, many of them amputees from the advance of their disease.  She chooses not just to work there but to stay there for 21 years.  She asks you for help for the patients she loves.

Then come along with me and talk with one man sitting up in his chair, who comes here three times a week for three hours each time for dialysis.  He tells me and you that he is here because of no choice of his own but because of a medication complication some years back.  He says, “Without the Northwest Kidney Centers, I would have no hope.  I worked all my life and was ready to retire; I loved helping others, but now I have had to accept the help of others.  I’ve been coming here for a year and a half and the people here are wonderful; they are like family – this is like home.  You find here people who care for you that you would never find elsewhere; I get to know them all – they know me.”  He tears up when he adds, “I almost died three times, but this center has allowed me to con­tinue in my life and to do the things I’ve wanted to do with my wife and my three sons and daughter.  The family of people here at this center has not only given me life, but also hope, and given me to my own family.”  This man asks for your help today to give him and others hope.

Pass next by the cheerful pharmacy which is the most expert in all the region, consulting with nephrologists to prescribe the right set of complicated medications, actively working to make it possible for the indigent to get the medications they need, writing off so many costs because of your help.

Come finally to the home dialysis training section and meet nurses and social workers who find the right person – active in promoting their own care – for home dialysis, train them for this, visit them at home, and are available to help 24/7.  They boast an almost 100 percent success rate and excellent kidney transplant success.  One man tells you and me that after many years of coming to the Center he is now able to do home dialysis.  I ask him what difference this means.  His answer is quick and stunning, “The difference between home dialysis and coming to the center is freedom!  I can go to dinner with friends, adjust my schedule, live a more normal life.”  He warms to the subject and tells us, “I may sound like I work for the store,” (which gets a laugh), “but the difference between Northwest Kidney Centers and other places is like going for a car wash.  At other places you just get the basic car wash; these people here give you the ‘full-detail’ job!”  This man wants to thank you for your generosity, for giving him the “full-detail job,” for giving him freedom.

This is just one visit inside one center, seeing only some of the things NKC does and who they care for. This disease and this care and this life-saving dialy­sis, and these dedicated nurses, technicians, social workers, educators are hidden from most of us.  It was hidden from me and I lived only 40 feet away from this center.  Is it also hidden from our community and from you?  Well, this morning, you can go inside and help these people, step across the narrow alley sepa­rating you from helping them, pick up an envelope from your table captain, help these people have the home, freedom, life, family and hope you have.  Be as generous as they are grateful.  If that nurse can stay in that unit for 21 years, and keep adding to those years, you can add to your gift an­other zero.  As you do this, I’ll keep talking, don’t let me get in the way of you giving a gift.  While you do so, here is someone else quite familiar to you with Stetson hat and all who has a word for you to add to mine.

(A video featuring  actor Larry Hagman (“J.R. Ewing”) was shown to the Breakfast guests.  To view a copy, click here..)