In the hands of God: Strong connection of faith and medicine evident in the ministry of many doctors
Dr. Malcolm Herring performs a surgery at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis while being helped by Vicki Christian, a certified first assistant. A physician for 37 years, Herring believes that God is at the heart of the healing process. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
From a baby struggling to live to an older person suffering a heart attack, Dr. Ryan Venis has experienced numerous life-and-death situations while working in emergency medicine at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.
The 32-year-old physician has also felt and seen the presence of God in many of those moments.
“You see it in the nurses. You see it in the chaplains. Sometimes you see it in the patients’ families who thank you for what you’ve done,” said Venis, a member of St. Bernard Parish in Crawfordsville, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese. “You wonder how they are able to do it. A lot of times, it’s because they are strong in their faith. You can see in their eyes that they believe their loved ones are in the hands of God.”
That strong connection of faith and medicine marks the lives of many health care professionals who dedicate their efforts to caring for others.
Realizing that connection, The Criterion asked several health care professionals to share their stories of how “the hands of God” have touched and guided their work.
Here are their stories:
Renewing the soul
Dr. Malcolm Herring is a vascular surgeon who also serves as a liaison for mission services at the Seton Cove Spirituality Center at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis. In that role, Herring often hears stories from other doctors about God being part of the healing process.
“I talk to physicians about stories like that,” said Herring, a member of Zionsville United Methodist Church. “I remember one physician telling me about a patient he cared for who was under the age of 2. The patient wasn’t doing well. As he was taking care of the patient, he saw the vision of Christ over the cradle. And this was a Jewish physician. It had a powerful effect on him. A lot of people I deal with find meaning and purpose in those moments. They feel their soul renewed.”
Herring has had that same feeling during operations.
“Being a surgeon, I’ve had situations where things looked hopeless,” he said. “You look at the scientific parameters during the operation, and you say this patient isn’t going to make it. In those moments, we would just stop the operation and pray for the patient and the situation. Then it turns around surprisingly or miraculously and you say, ‘Where did that come from?’ It didn’t come from the surgeon. It’s pretty clear to me that God is working in those situations.
“One of the joys of the practice is that I get this deluge of gratitude from relatives of patients. I feel compelled to tell them, ‘I do the cutting and the sewing, but God does the knitting.’ It’s a good example of how God’s work is at hand in the healing of the patient. God is very much in the healing process. In my opinion, the gratitude belongs to God.”
Wrestling with faith
Since 1997, Dr. Chuck Dietzen has been the founder and president of the Timmy Foundation, an Indianapolis-based organization that helps provide community-based medical care to children around the world. The organization reflects the reality that Dietzen has dedicated most of his medical career to caring for children.
One of his favorite stories connecting faith and medicine involves a 12-year-old boy named Joey, a child Dietzen met when he practiced rehabilitation medicine in Ashland, Ky. Dietzen learned about Joey while attending Mass one week at the local parish.
“After attending Mass, the priest asked me if I would stop to see one of the parishioners in the hospital, a young boy named Joey,” recalled Dietzen, now a member of St. Alphonsus Liguori Parish in Zionsville, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese. “Joey had muscular dystrophy, a disease that caused him significant difficulties breathing. The thought was he wouldn’t live much longer. The priest asked if I would talk to him about his impending death.”
In the days that followed, Dietzen visited Joey several times. During those visits, the doctor learned that Joey loved professional wrestling. So Dietzen arranged for a group of pro wrestlers who were in town for a show to visit Joey in the hospital.
“Joey couldn’t believe it,” Dietzen recalled. “He loved every minute of it. One week later, I had to leave the city to do consulting work in another state. Joey was still in the hospital. As I sat on the plane, I asked God to send an angel to Joey, to make him feel comfortable, especially if the time came for him to die.
“When I returned from my trip, there was a note on my office desk saying that Joey had passed away. Although it was two in the morning, I called his mother. She told me that Joey had passed away peacefully.
“After Mass the following day, I talked to the priest who had first asked me to visit Joey. I told him I had a long, beautiful conversation with Joey’s mother. The priest said, ‘It was interesting what Joey’s father had to say, wasn’t it?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get to talk to Joey’s father. What did he say?’ The priest told me that Joey’s father had spent the last 24 hours at Joey’s bedside. Joey kept asking who the person standing in the corner was while his father kept saying no one else was in the room.
“I believe God had sent Joey an angel.”
In the hands of God
Dr. Ryan Venis has felt the presence of God in many life-and-death situations in the emergency room at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, but the most poignant incident for him occurred while he was doing mission work in Haiti.
“We go as part of a group called Medical Mission South Haiti,” Venis recalled. “We go to a Catholic orphanage called Project Espwa. Espwa means hope.
“It happened last March, and it was a sad situation. We saw a mother with twins. They were about a month old. One looked healthy, the other looked very sick. The baby’s skin was yellow, and the baby had a very high fever.
“We thought the baby had some kind of infection—pneumonia or meningitis. The only antibiotic we had to treat a child with a serious infection was called Rocephin. But one of the reasons not to give that drug is that for babies with jaundice, it can make the jaundice worse. Everyone who was involved in the case was torn by the decision.
“Me and a couple of nurses stopped and prayed for guidance about what would be best for the baby. After the prayer, I felt a sense of calm. We all felt there was a divine presence in the situation. We gave the baby the antibiotic. We spent some time with the mother and the baby. I recommended that the baby go to a hospital in the city to have some blood work done. The family left, and we didn’t hear anything until the next morning.
“In the early morning, I went to the clinic. I saw the mother and I could tell she had been crying. She told me that late the previous evening the baby had died. She said she wasn’t upset. She was at peace. She felt that by bringing the baby to the clinic, she had given the baby the best chance to live. She felt the medicine gave her extra time with her baby. She came back to thank us.
“I thought that maybe we weren’t meant to save the baby. Maybe we were just supposed to give the baby more time with her.”
An indescribable peace
When Dr. Peter Cooney examines patients in his family practice, he often asks God for help in treating them. Still, the moment when he most clearly felt God’s presence came when an accident threatened his own life.
“It was on September 11 of 2003,” recalled Cooney, a physician in the St. Francis Hospital Group who often attends Mass at St. Francis Hospital in Beech Grove. “It was a gorgeous day. I was riding my bicycle out in the country. I rode out to Crawfordsville. I flipped over the bike and broke my neck. I was literally paralyzed. I couldn’t move and I was by myself on a rural road. I was in such excruciating pain. I knew I was going to die.
“I went into prayer, a prayer I say a lot. ‘My Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.’ My brain went into that and I felt an indescribable peace.
“It all turned out great. Someone found me. It was a volunteer fireman who knew what to do. They put me in a brace, and I got better. People found it miraculous. After that experience, I don’t have any real fear of death because I felt this indescribable peace.
“My faith was reassured that day because I feel we’re cared for by God.” †