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Excerpt
Hands wet with dishwater, I reached to answer the phone. “Hi, Carolyn, this is John Seaman.” “John Seaman! O my goodness!” I exclaimed, setting down the dishrag. John had been a medical student when he attended our church, Philadelphia’s Living Word Community, in the 70’s. My husband and I had been close to John and his wife Karen, and were sad to see them move to Buffalo at the end of his pediatric residency. But things hadn’t gone as they anticipated. Now, early in January 1982, I heard John saying, “We will move back to Philadelphia if you can find us a group of Christian doctors that I can practice with.” What could be simpler? How wonderful it would be to have John and Karen back in town! As soon as I finished the dishes, I hunted up the telephone number of the regional director of the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Dr. Lew Bird. I had not attended meetings for years. My life was more focused on being a mommy and a pastor’s wife than on being a physician. However, Lew remembered me from the days of my own internal medicine residency, and he promised to send the full mailing list for CMDS members in the Philadelphia area. When the list arrived, I got out a map and began plotting the locations of Christian doctors. To my surprise, I found no group of Christian pediatricians anywhere in the greater Philadelphia area. In fact, I found no medical practice in Philadelphia that was identifiably and overtly Christian. Many Philadelphia hospitals started out Christian, but they had long since drifted from their Christian moorings. A few doctors on the list worked in the city, but they were mostly hidden in large secular institutions. Perhaps John could join one of them? That wasn’t John’s and Karen’s cup of tea. They remained in Buffalo. Eventually they developed wonderful ministries that served some of Buffalo’s neediest people and sponsored medical mission trips all over the world. A week after John’s call I learned that some Philadelphia churches were getting together to study the city’s needs and share resources toward meeting those needs. One workshop would focus on medical ministries. Fascinated to think that perhaps other churches had found ways to combine medical and spiritual care, I called to sign up. The cheery voice on the phone told me about talks scheduled on Hospital Christian Fellowship, on Nurses Christian Fellowship, on a broadly ecumenical health center that was just starting, and on opportunities in the public health department. But no church, it appeared, had a health ministry. I put down the receiver scratching my head, having heard myself volunteer to make a presentation on the medical needs of Philadelphia. What had possessed me? I had no idea what they were or how churches could get involved. Over the next couple of weeks, I visited the Philadelphia Health Department and the public library. I learned that Philadelphia had more medical schools than any other city in the U.S. Yet 31% of our city was classified as “medically underserved.” This designation came from health statistics, poverty rates, and the number of physicians present. The infant mortality rates in these areas, especially among non-whites, were up to three times higher than the U.S. average. A baby of color in North Philadelphia had no better chance of surviving than babies in some third world countries. Furthermore, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases were three to five times as common there as in the rest of Philadelphia. I also discovered that many poor people did not qualify for Medicaid. According to one study, those who did qualify had to overcome many barriers in the health care system to get appropriate care. Why had I not learned about these things in medical school? I had grown up believing that poor people in our country could always get adequate medical care through hospital clinics or public health centers. Vaguely uneasy, I got out the map again. It already had revealed that Philadelphia’s medical community lacked a Christian witness. Now I began to see that Christian doctors had distributed themselves in the same donut-shaped pattern as secular health care resources: in a ring around the city with a big hole in the middle. Didn’t they know about the huge health needs in the inner city? Scripture seemed to indicate that Christ focused most of His energies on poor people. Why did most Christians I know seek to avoid them? Why didn’t I have any genuine relationships with needy people? I thought back on the two years I practiced internal medicine while our daughter Melody was little. I had been pleased to land a job with a prestigious and enlightened group of professionals. Ahead of their time, committed to top-of-the-line whole-person care, these doctors hired a social worker and psychiatrist to work part time in our office with patients who had complicated problems. A surprising number of our patients had needed their services. But I winced as I recalled patients that all we professionals together couldn’t help. There was Antonia, whose tension headaches debilitated her. Alone, without relatives or friends in Philadelphia, she didn’t need painkillers and Valium so much as she needed a babysitter for her three children under four so she could get a few hours to herself now and then. And Benjamin, whose high blood pressure was nearly impossible to control. He had been laid off, and despite great effort, he had not been able to find another job. He was frantically worried about providing for his family. And thirteen-year-old Tanya, who came in to request her third abortion. Our social worker had spent a lot of time with her, with not a bit of change in Tanya’s behavior. And James, whose severe bronchitis responded so poorly to antibiotics. We treated him for weeks before we learned his furnace was broken and the temperature inside his tiny house was in the forties. Effective medical care for the poor clearly had to go beyond what we had provided. It would require caring neighbors and friends who were willing to share their time, money, and spiritual strength. Wasn’t the Church was supposed to do that? *****
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