Amputation or Healing? The Untold Story of Wound Care on Philadelphia’s Streets
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we delved deep into Kensington’s Opioid crisis and a silent contaminant that’s been circulating the drug supply there for five years. What we’ve learned through speaking with harm reduction and recovery professionals is that the poison is scientifically referred to as Xylazine, a horse tranquilizer, and is known on the street as tranq.
Homeless people suffering from substance use disorder might find the drug they are using to be laced with tranq, which presents very differently in humans than in horses, causing people to wander senselessly down the streets in a zombie-like fashion as their bodies begin to exhibit tiny lesions resembling pimples. Those lesions eventually turn purple, creating grotesque gaping wounds that can expose the bone and spread the infection to nearby tissue. According to Harm reductionist Kelsey León, formerly of Prevention Point Wound Care Clinic , the spots can be malodorous, and seeking treatment for them can be a daunting, humiliating, even life-altering task.
“When folks do come into the hospital, many surgical teams who have not been treating these wounds street-side or in the community look at a wound like that and immediately think that it’s necrotic,” León explained in an exclusive interview with Invisible People. “If there’s osteomyelitis, infection of the bone, or inhibited blood supply, their knee-jerk reaction has been ‘We need to amputate it.’”…