Often the Divine Physician is the Only One Who Can Heal Us

     As a foot doctor, I have the opportunity to speak with my patients about a wide range of topics. I have found that with a few simple statements or questions, those who are willing can easily be steered into a conversation about faith.

     One summer several years ago, I had an experience that illustrates this point well. A patient came to my office with an ingrown toenail. I routinely asked her if she had any other health problems. She began crying, saying that I wouldn't believe her, that nobody ever believes her. Apparently about five years before she began to experience terrible pains in many seemingly unrelated areas of her body. For many months she underwent hospitalizations and a battery of exams and tests.

     No pathology was found. Eventually, her family doctor, exasperated, told her, "You're nuts! You need a shrink!" She sought the care of other physicians, with similar results.

     She related to me that these insults and lack of a definitive diagnosis caused her health and mental status to continue to decline over the ensuing years to the point that presently she was constantly depressed and in pain.

     When I see patients in this type of situation I often suspect an underlying spiritual problem, so I asked her if she believed in God and attended church regularly. She began another long story about her daughter who had divorced and remarried. The patient related that due to her daughter's divorce and remarriage, her daughter had left her church and gone to a Baptist church. To support her daughter during this difficult time, her mother had also left her church and joined the Baptist church.

     It wasn't difficult to deduce that she and her daughter had previously been Catholic, and with some gentle questioning the patient confirmed this fact. She also made a feeble attempt to justify her move with some superficial anti-Catholic remarks she had learned in her new church.

     However, it also dawned on her, with some subtle prodding, that her health problems first arose shortly after leaving the Catholic Church. I asked her if it was possible that, while not denying the very real nature of her physical afflictions, the root of her problem was a basic fear of death, knowing in her heart that she wasn't where she knew she should be. This seemed a revelation to her, and she began crying again. She did indeed have a strong fear of death, and ached for the sacraments of reconciliation and Eucharist for an assurance that she truly was "right" with God and was being fed with His Presence.

     I recommended a good priest in her neighborhood and strongly encouraged her to go to confession and return to the mass and the sacraments that very weekend. I also gave her one of the copies of "Surprised By Truth" that I keep in my office for just such an opportunity, to dispel the doubts about the Faith that had been instilled in her by her new church. She was very thankful and visibly relieved.

     I didn't hear from her for many months until I walked into my treatment room one day to care for a patient. I was pre-occupied that day and didn't even recognize her until she handed me my book back. Her whole demeanor had changed; she was happy and enthusiastic. Her "heath problems" had completely resolved since she last saw me. She had indeed returned to the Church that very weekend after I treated her.

     I hold this event as one of my greatest "treatment" successes of my career as a foot doctor. It only occurred because I took the time to listen to her "health" history and recognized that not all health problems are physical. Often the Divine Physician is the only one who can heal us.

     Epilogue, 6/25/00:

     I sent this story to Envoy Magazine for their Random Access section in 1998. Paging through some of the archived issues on their web site, I was pleasantly surprised to see my letter published in the Random Access section of the March/April '98 issue.

     The patient is still an active Catholic going to Mass weekly.

     More importantly, her daughter, who left the Church because of a divorce and remarriage, and whose mother's story I related in this letter, is now one of my part time receptionists, and we've had long discussions about the Faith the last several weeks when the office is slow. She is starting to come around too.

     I showed her that letter I wrote several years ago about her mom, and she was mystified that I could have figured out, in a brief office visit for an ingrown toenail, that her mom was so afraid to die.

     She also confirmed that, come to think of it, her mom had stopped worrying about dying after she returned to the Church!

     Please keep her daughter (Debbie) in your prayers, that she may also come home.