Nine years ago, Dalton Duffie was trying to fall asleep under a trailer — where he’d temporarily sought refuge from the pouring Austin rain — when he realized he would not live much longer if he stayed on the streets.
Haunted by a constant hunger and the relentless cravings of drug addiction, Duffie was oblivious to the illnesses ravaging his body: the dangerously high blood pressure threatening heart failure and the hepatitis C infecting his liver.
But in that moment, Duffie recalls, he knew he was toying with death. So he went to rehab, where he spent two years before a counselor set him up in an affordable housing project in South Austin. A health care worker there pushed him to see a doctor about his blood pressure, and he eventually got a prescription for the hepatitis. Now, Duffie says, he is fit and healthy, working as an outreach coordinator for a different supportive housing site downtown.
[For more of this story, written by Edgar Walters, go to http://www.valleycentral.com/n...1247292#.VgCGCctVikq]
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