Last week he was a dead man walking, but tonight we have good news to report about the man we met coiled up on the riverside behind the Marine Terminal. 76-year-old Oswald Cadogan was given a clean bill of health on Tuesday and doctors gave him the okay to go home. But tonight Cadogan is still on a bed in the KHMH and today Keith Swift found out why.
Keith Swift Reporting, [keithkswift@gmail.com]
We all saw him there last week, decrepit, near death and beneath the dignity that this proud seafaring man had worked his whole life to cultivate. But th at's behind him now. Today still at the hospital, Oswald Cadogan was better, visibly improved, stronger, cogent and getting by on his own. But with all that why is he still in the hospital? Well, he has nowhere else to go.
Oswald Cadogan: I feel good. I feel good.
KS: You're ready to go home?
Oswald Cadogan: Well if they say to go home, I will have to go home.
KS: You have anywhere to go?
Oswald Cadogan: Well at present I don't have anywhere to go but I will have to go. I have my mother.
KS: Where is she at?
Oswald Cadogan: She is somewhere around Belize, but what part of Belize, I could never tell you.
KS: You want to appeal to any of your family members?
Oswald Cadogan: No it doesn't make sense.
KS: Why not?
Oswald Cadogan: Because I am not going there. I would never go there.
Sandra Moguel, Social Worker - KHMH
"Mr. Ozzie is perfectly in good health and wants to live more and he really needs his family. Eventhough he's not saying that, I know that he really does need his family around him, especially given the time he is in right now."
And while he's living off the kind graces of the KHMH, he can't say here forever. In fact everyday that he continues to use this hospital bed, is another day that he's depriving someone else, a genuinely sick person, of a needed space.
Sandra Moguel,
"Right now we have three patients at the Emergency Ward for admissions and we have no beds. So we have to find a way to get the beds and this is one of the ways. For this same reason we call for the family to please show up and come and pick up Mr. Ozzie."
And while with his offhanded charm Ozzie seems to have become an affectionate favorite of the hospital staffers, this kind of problem: sickly, older persons with families who don't want them is an all too common problem.
Sandra Moguel,
"The problem is that its not that the families can't take care of their relatives, its that they don't want to take the responsibility to do. That is the problem and it is their loved ones. They will be that way some day."
And all that isn't loss on Ozzie. Though he sits back coolly, he's aware that he's here on borrowed time in borrowed space:
KS: Do you know you were on TV last week?
Oswald Cadogan: Well I only heard about it. Yeah man I just got tangled up in life, that's all."
And now that life's barnacles have wrapped themselves around this old man of the sea, it's left to be seen how he'll ride this little storm out.
The hospital is appealing to Ozzie's family in southern Belize to contact Sandra Moguel at the KHMH. If no family member comes forward the hospital, will eventually forced to contact the Human Services Department, which will admit him to a homeless shelter.
