Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them

Hi!

My name is Randy Christensen and I am a pediatrician. I work for Phoenix Children’s Hospital and I think I have the best job in the world. I get to go out to the community everyday and take care of homeless children and adolescents. Like my job, my “office” is a little unusual as well. My team and I travel around in a 38-foot mobile medical unit known locally as the Crews’n Healthmobile.

A few years ago I started writing a book about some of the kids we have seen. The end result is Ask Me Why I Hurt. Throughout the book you get a chance to meet some of the homeless adolescents that came to the Big Blue van for help. You get a chance to share in some of their tragedies but more importantly you get a chance to see them succeed. Hopefully you can relate to them as fellow human beings and perhaps some of the myths can be wiped away.

We built this website so that you could dig a little deeper into the book and the program. Perhaps you want to see some pictures of the staff or some of the sites we go to on a regular basis. Maybe you want to leave a question you had or tell a personal story about being homeless or helping someone that was homeless.

In the end I hope that the book can be a call to action. It may mean different things to different people. Maybe some parents will sit down and spend some time with their kids discussing difficult topics like homelessness and poverty. Maybe others might decide to volunteer in a program in their community. Some may even want to donate to worthy organizations if they have the means. I applaud you for all of these things and I thank you for interest in Ask Me Why I Hurt.

Thanks again for stopping by,

Dr Randy