"Where Can I Stay?"

The elderly Negro woman who was referred to Houston's M.D. Anderson Hos pital for Cancer Research posed a tougher problem for the social workers than for the doctors. She had cancer of the cervix. She was hundreds of miles from home, and needed a place near by to live for three months while she took regular X-ray treatments as an outpatient. Mrs. Edna Wagner, tireless and efficient director of social service at Anderson Hospital, shook her head: there was no suitable housing for such a patient in segregated Houston. But the woman had a son living in the city. Against her own better judgment, Mrs. Wagner told the patient to stay with her son's family of four in a one-room apartment.

Within six weeks, the patient was back and told Mrs. Wagner: "I'm going home. I'm causing trouble, crowding my son and daughter-in-law, and I'd rather die than cause trouble." A few months later the neglected cancer had spread uncontrollably, and she died. Says Mrs. Edna Wagner: "I told myself that this couldn't happen any more."

Profit from Song. It does not happen any more now, because Mrs. Wagner organized an all-out effort by the Negro community to set up a 25-bed convalescent home where Anderson Hospital's Negro outpatients can stay at little or no cost. Last weekend a thousand rich Negro voices welled up in the Sam Houston Coliseum in the half-resigned, half-hopeful words of favorite spirituals and hymns. Children pantomimed angels and devils, flowers and animals, while a narrator boomed James Weldon Johnson's words in The Creation and Listen, Lord. With an audience of 4,000 and a big advance ticket sale, there was a tidy profit of almost $12,000 to underwrite the convalescent home for the next two years. There are separate and similar accommodations for English-speaking whites and still others for those of Mexican extraction. Last year more than one-fourth of Anderson's 4,098 cancer patients were housed in the facilities organized by Edna Wagner.

Though housing is often the most critical, it is by no means the only problem that patients lay before Mrs. Wagner, a stocky, pink-faced woman of 42, and members of her staff. Since 90% of the tax-supported cancer hospital's patients are charity cases, drawn from all over Texas, most are grievously ill when they arrive and are far from home or relatives. They face long and perhaps uncomfortable treatment. They do not know what to expect.

Courage on the Plains. "We have to make the patient feel that the staff is interested in him as a person," says Edna Wagner. "We explain that he may have several days of tests before the doctors decide on the treatment for his case. We may remind a wind-tanned cowpoke from Lubbock, who's telling of the rugged old days on the plains, that he may need some of that same courage here. We have to reassure some, like the old Negro who said: 'I ain't afraid of dying--I'm just afraid of suffering.' "

Patients who speak Spanish but no English and cannot get used to American food posed a special problem. Now, each of them is allowed to have one bilingual member of his family stay in the home and accompany him to the hospital as interpreter, and cook Mexican-style dishes to the patient's taste.

A patient may face other crises: when the doctors decide on drastic surgery, when prolonged treatment breeds despair, or when the time comes to go home after a disfiguring amputation. On all such occasions, Mrs. Wagner's staff is busy with explanations and encouragement.

When Mrs. Wagner was organizing the concert to support the Negro Convalescent Home, a community leader asked her: "Isn't this perpetuating segregation?" Louisiana-born Edna Wagner retorted: "I'm not trying to settle the race problem of the South--I'm not smart enough for that. I'm trying to help sick people."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.