Survivor brings hope to the less fortunate
For Shey Still, life after trauma, job burnout, substance abuse and recovery is much more than the cliche saying “been there; done that; don’t want to do it again.” The Vernon resident, now president of the board of directors for H.O.P.E Outreach (Helping Out People Exploited), is loving her new life in the Okanagan based on her “lived experience” – serving on the front line in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and surviving her own life-and-death battle against substance abuse. “I am somebody who has overdosed, who has ended up in ICU, who was in a coma for seven days. “I had to re-learn how to do certain tasks in my life. That was the low point. That was about seven years ago. So I have lived that life, come out of that life and now I give back, breathe back into that life again, in a positive way,” she said in an emotional interview. “I survived. I don’t know why when there’s tens of thousands of people in Canada who haven’t. Why I was one of the blessed ones who was saved. But I’m ever so grateful for those strangers, the paramedics, all of the doctors, the physicians and the specialists, who were there to help me in my moment of crisis. Because if they didn’t do their job the way that they know how to do their job, I don’t know if I would be here today,” she said. “Now, it’s my time to pay it forward. To save someone else’s life. Every one is a victory. Every person is a victory. I believe that every person deserves life, regardless of what that person’s life looks like, whether it’s something that I agree with or disagree with. It’s still their life, their freedom of choice, to make those decisions in their life and to have that autonomy. “What we do at H.O.P.E. Outreach is try and support them in their autonomy. But also give them as safe a passage as possible through that autonomy and their decision of whether they are going to use substances. Where there is a heartbeat, there is life. And that’s a fundamental baseline that I operate from.”
volunteer. UBC Okanagan has been so great to us in the collaboration with our outreach volunteers. And the research programs and the projects that they have done for us which has translated into us being able to offer more programs to the community in a sector that we really care about,” she said. Still has personally responded to more than 100 overdoses without a single fatality “with a lot of help from others,” she says. “Each overdose really impacts me in a different way. Depending on the situation, some of them come out of it really quickly and some are a lot harder. My hardest overdose that I responded to I actually tore the tendons in my arm giving CPR and had to give them quite a few different shots of Naloxone before they came to and before an ambulance arrived,” she said. “It’s in those moments that you start to see life leave somebody, where things can get really hairy-scary for a little bit.” That practice and the work that she did on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside served to prepare her for the opioid crisis. “I remember toward the beginning of the opioid crisis as a front-line worker not being able to access Naloxone by myself. It was only available to substance users, to parents of youth who were substance users, to nurses and to someone who could administer medications. So it was really hard at the beginning to see the amount of people who were dying on a regular basis. And it’s still really hard to see,” she said. “I’ve definitely had to take breaks throughout my career. It’s been necessary because of the trauma that comes along with it and the complex PTSD. I have a therapist on-call,” she added. she explained. “You just need a small amount of fentanyl to overdose. People who are dealing drugs could be packaging one type of substance, then switch to another type of substance, and maybe they haven’t cleaned off their weigh scales or they haven’t cleaned off their hands or they haven’t cleaned off the table that they are using. That cross-contamination can happen.” Many times, the individuals selling on the street are users themselves, she said, and selling to make ends meet or to feed their own habit, and often they don’t know what they are selling. Still would love to see what she calls ethical drug dealing where drug dealers will hand out Naloxone kits to their customers, regardless what that they sell. “If somebody is going to come to me and ask for 30 Naloxone kits, I’m not going to question why,” she said. “If it’s getting out into the community, no matter which way it is getting out, whether it’s through a drug dealer or a fellow substance user or through outreach community workers like ourselves or volunteerbased organizations like H.O.P.E. Outreach. The more, the better.” Naloxone kits are handed out by H.O.P.E.’s “Ladies Team” – nighttime outreach workers – to women experiencing homelessness, living in addiction, exploited or at risk of being exploited by others and working in the sex trade. Kits are also handed out by the specialized Narcan Men’s Outreach Team. The goal is coverage seven days a week, yearround in two-hour shifts during cold weather and the evening hours up to 10 p.m. April through August. H.O.P.E. has lined up a total of 200 volunteers in Kelowna and Vernon, she noted. “We have a lot of nursing students who Still served on the board for 18 months before becoming president in November. She spoke before an instructional workshop for 10 volunteers with John’s Angels, an informal group of Kelowna residents who bring food, beverages, clothing, blankets and tarps to the homeless in Kelowna’s North End. “As we know, substance use does not discriminate. It can be a doctor; it can be a lawyer; it can be your neighbour; it can be your friend; it can be someone that is experiencing homelessness on the street. Really anybody. In 89 per cent of the overdoses that people experience, they are usually alone,” she said. “The other place that we experience a lot of overdoses is recreational substance users who are just using every once in a while, maybe not getting drugs from the same drug dealer, maybe not using on a regular basis so their tolerance is not good. “They don’t consider themselves as substance users so they may be less likely to go and get their substances tested to make sure that they are actually using what they want to use.” Only the smallest amount is needed for testing to ensure the substance is safe, she emphasized. “You can get your drugs tested at UBCO and at Living Positive in Kelowna. But sometimes, the hours are a little bit more restricted and you might not be able to get your results back right away. Watching that testing grow and expand has been really beautiful to see,” she said. Sometimes, overdoses can occur as the result of the packaging process,