There are few things more personal or intimate than a person’s home.
Its state and how it’s decorated speak to the type of person who lives there. Angela Mitchell’s home suits her. The roughly 100-year-old house — in a neighborhood of Bethlehem that she said the city has forgotten — is well cared for and decorated with signs containing affirmations of faith and lighthearted statements.
Who is allowed to enter a home, and who is allowed to stay, also says something about the inhabitants. Three months ago, Mitchell welcomed Alcides Duran — a stranger from the Dominican Republic with nowhere else to turn — into hers.
Duran had come to the U.S. as a tourist several months prior, only to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer that had metastasized to his liver. He needed somewhere to stay while he received what doctors said was emergency treatment. Mitchell chose to open her home to Duran, even though she was experiencing hardship of her own: kidney failure.
For the last several months they have lived side-by-side. Neither speaks the other’s language fluently, but Mitchell and Duran have connected through faith and by supporting each other through their illnesses. They go to church together, pray together, listen to Christian music together, cook together. They even tease and joke with each other like family, their personalities playing off each other.
“He’ll be talking a lot of stuff and I just come right back at him, I just come back with it being smart,” Mitchell said. “He tries to act like my husband. He says ‘You eat like a little girl’ and I look at him like, ‘I’m older than you. I eat like a little girl because of my situation.’”
Despite his illness and the chemotherapy he is undergoing, Duran is animated and lively — he gets so caught up in what he’s talking about that he’ll knock over a glass of water.
“He breaks things,” Mitchell clarifies.
When he has the energy, he walks three hours a day to clear his head. Unprompted, he’ll go into a passionate speech defending the way he waters plants.
“If it’s really hot out, you’ve got to water them twice a day,” said Duran, whose words were interpreted into English by local attorney and community activist Fred Rooney. “A plant is something that you’ve got to love, give it tenderness, or else it’s not going to flower, it’s not going to flourish. It’s the same with someone you love. Look at everything that’s green around here.”
Coming to America
Duran, 49, of Santo Domingo, came to the U.S. for vacation. It was an opportunity to stay with and spend time with cousins and friends in New York City and the Lehigh Valley whom he had not seen in years. No stranger to foreign travel, Duran has spent about two-fifths of his life living and working in Italy, and he has an Italian passport. It’s where he met the mother of his youngest daughter, and where his adult son lives. He was only supposed to stay about three months.
However, Duran has not left the Lehigh Valley in nearly a year.
On New Year’s Day, he noticed blood in his stool. After the third time it happened, he was taken to the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital-Sacred Heart.
“I’ll tell you the truth, I was really worried,” Duran said. “ … I felt like death was around the corner.”
Duran felt weak and tired. He was so cold that even after being given three warmed blankets, he shivered. He said his face was that of a dead man. A doctor told him his organs would be irreparably damaged if something was not done immediately.
“He said, ‘You could die, we’ve got to figure this out immediately. You got here at the right place and at the right time.’ I said ‘After God, I believe I am in your hands,’ ” Duran said.
He spent hours convinced of his impending death, but then in one moment in his head he heard the Bible passage Isaiah 41:10: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
He said that while he had studied the Bible before, that verse had never made much sense or resonated with him before. The next day, a gray, sunless day, he said he saw a vision — rays of light flowed into his room through a window.
“I kept looking at it and I said ‘God, that’s you, right?’ And when I said that, the light became even brighter and then once it was over it started to snow,” Duran said. “A nurse who spoke Spanish said to me, ‘Did you see what was going on?’ And I said, ‘That was Christ.’ That is when I knew God would never abandon me and to this moment he had not abandoned me.”
He was told by doctors he needed chemotherapy, then surgery to remove any remaining cancer. They also said treatment needed to begin immediately or else he would die, and that the best thing for him was to stay in the area and continue receiving care. However, that would mean Duran would have to stay in the U.S., where he had nothing; his accumulated hospital bills were already $70,000.
“Here I am in a foreign country. I came here as a tourist. The money I had with me I spent paying for the room I was staying and food. Now what am I going to do? I have no insurance. My family in the United States was not really there for me,” Duran said. “I remember thinking after I got out of the hospital I would end up going to prison because I would not be able to pay.”
He explained to a social worker at the hospital that he never expected his current situation and that as a tourist, he had no means to pay for the care he was receiving. The social worker suggested he write a letter to Lehigh County for assistance.
Duran recalled at the time he had no idea what a county was, but he wrote the letter and was given emergency Medicaid, which covered $68,000 of his bills. Rooney said the coverage was provided because it was a matter of life and death and it only applies to his cancer treatment; any other care is out of pocket.
Duran said it was a tremendous help. But the next hurdle was finding a place to stay and finding a way to pay for food. He said he begged God to continue helping him, to find another person who could help him so he could stay long enough to get better and return to his 10-year-old daughter, who remains in the Dominican Republic with relatives.
He was fortunate enough to never become homeless but faced difficulty finding long-term housing — a situation that would have left him on the street if no one intervened in June. That is when he was put in touch with Rooney.
An unlikely pair
Rooney said as he went through his contacts, looking for a way to help, Anna Smith, who is now director of Community Action Development Bethlehem, told him to call Mitchell. Rooney knew Mitchell had been active in the community for years. She attends Bethlehem City Council meetings advocating for people in the Indian Hills neighborhood on the South Side; she’s also a part of the community garden and the public greenspace committee of Community Action Development Bethlehem.
While Duran and Rooney searched for housing, Mitchell, 59, was facing trials of her own. She survived a spinal tumor diagnosis 10 years ago but has type 2 diabetes and stage 5 renal failure, meaning her kidneys only perform about 15% of the work of normal functioning kidneys. She said her options are limited. She would be a poor recipient for a kidney transplant because she is allergic to steroids, which she would need to take for the rest of her life. She said she would also need to start taking insulin again, which her body does not respond well to. She’s been looking for alternative treatments and support.
She said Rooney’s call felt like divine intervention.
“On Thursday, I was praying because I wanted to go down to Houston, Texas, because I have kidney disease and there is an integrated doctor there. Thursday night he called me and told me my insurance was not going to cover me. I’m like, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? I need to start raising money or something.’ The next thing you know, here they come calling on Tuesday. I was like, ‘OK let me see,’ ” Mitchell said.
Mitchell without hesitation opened her home to Duran, knowing little to nothing about the man besides his situation. Duran said that Mitchell told him that God brought him into her life and that she was waiting for him.
“Then she said, ‘We’ve got to lay some stuff down — you can’t go in the kitchen.’ I said ‘OK, no problem, I won’t go in the kitchen,’ ” Duran said. “The second day the two of us were cooking together.”
He said Mitchell has a marvelous heart and is very humble — she’s a truly special person. Her help hasn’t stopped at providing housing, she takes him grocery shopping, drives him to medical appointments and helps him with other small things he needs. Her faith has helped him grow closer to God, and when he comes back from chemotherapy feeling destroyed, barely able to speak, there will be a warm bowl of soup waiting for him.
“Despite what she’s going through, all her problems. Despite all of that — someone who is sick can also cure someone else,” Duran said. “We help each other out, give each other a hand. Her spirit drives me.”
Mitchell said the companionship from someone who is going through something similar to her and the emotional support he provides allows her to keep going when things are difficult.
“He gives me strength. Like on a Sunday, I’ll be very, very tired and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to church today — if he don’t get up, I’m not going.’ The next thing you know he’s up, moving, taking a shower — I can hear him. Then the next thing you know I can smell food cooking, breakfast cooking,” Mitchell said.
She added that she hopes that her home can continue to be used to help people after she dies.
“I want to put it in a trust to help people like myself and Alcides. There are some treatments you can’t get unless you have a home to stay in,” Mitchell said.
Duran said he often wishes he could do more to help her because he knows she needs help too. He thanks her 1,000 times for everything she has done for him. His time with Mitchell and everyone else who has helped him has been an honor and a privilege, he said.
“I’d heard that Americans are racist and don’t want to help other people. It’s a lie. If there is a nation that really wants to help other people, a country that wants to help, it’s the Americans,” Duran said.
What comes next
Their time together and Duran’s time in America must end at some point. Because his wife works in Italy as the primary breadwinner for their family, he was the one taking care of their 10-year-old daughter in the Dominican Republic. His daughter is still in Santo Domingo living with her half-sister. They have not seen each other in person since Oct. 29, and she does not know her father is sick.
“Sometimes it’s really tough when I talk to her. She doesn’t understand why I am not there,” Duran said. “She’ll say, ‘Daddy, when are you coming back? You told me you were going to come back.’ I can’t really tell her that I’m sick.”
But Duran said that as of Sept. 13, he had received 10 out of 12 chemotherapy treatments and has been told that he may not need surgery if the remaining chemo treatments go well. He said once he is healthy enough, he will to return to his country.
However, that will leave Mitchell alone. She said though she was born and raised in Bethlehem, most of her family no longer lives here. Many of her closest friends have died.
She added the programs and supports that have helped Duran with his cancer are not there to help her with her renal failure. Mitchell said she is preparing for surgery so she can receive home dialysis but is skeptical of how effective this treatment path will be for her.
“I have family members, my uncle was on there — 20-some-odd years on dialysis. I had a friend who had three kidneys and one day she just didn’t wake up. I had another friend who wanted to get a transplant but she wasn’t a candidate. I had a cousin who was doing home treatments and she was having seizures,” Mitchell said.
She hopes to receive treatment through Montgomery Heart and Wellness in Houston, Texas, which her insurance will not pay for, and she does not have the money herself to pay for it. What she has given to help Duran has taken from her. Through a grant, Mitchell receives a monthly stipend of about $600 for opening her home to Duran, but she said it doesn’t even cover the basic costs of him living with her, let alone the costs she incurs from everything else she does to help him and additional utility costs.
To raise money to help cover the costs of supporting herself and Duran, and hopefully raise money for Mitchell’s treatment, Rooney and others have started a GoFundMe campaign .
“He’s [Duran] become my support system, but he gets well, he goes, and I’m here by myself and I really do need help,” Mitchell said.
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