My mother and grandmother talked a lot about their remarkable country doctor, Dr. Lonny Hayes. It was the great Flu Epidemic of 1918, the epidemic that claimed 100 million lives around the world, penetrating even the Arctic and the islands of the South Pacific. This was before the time of the automobile, the telephone. The rural community in which my parents (their grandparents and great grandparents before them) were reared was probably about 30 miles in diameter. When Dr. Hayes came on the scene (by horse and buggy) there were entire families dying from the dreaded disease.
This physician, the only hope of these country people, used my ancient family home at the crossroads for his hospital. This house, having survived the Civil War, still stands at the crossroads, strong and elegant. My grandmother said, “when the coughing started, the men in the community, those not sick or buried, would began building another coffin, because the person with the cough would soon be in a grave.” These gallant country people knew nothing about isolation/quarantine or sanitation. From forebearers who had faced sickness before, they did the best they could with what they had. The news was out in the county/state about the desolation in this community, and people stayed away because they could not afford to be contaminated. Dr. Hayes retired to his home in a nearby town...to die of the disease which he had so valiantly fought.
When I visited Guadalcanal in the South Pacific (where American ships still stick out of the water from the great sea battles there) I could not help but think of my uncle, my mother's brother, a combat veteran there. He never stopped talking about these great south sea battles against the Japanese. Always at the top of his memory was the army medical officer who, with assistance from the native nurses, worked night and day without sleep attempting to save the wounded, military and civilian.
From sea to shining sea, America has a romantic devotion to the healthcare practitioner. Next to the pastor, the family doctor is honored in life and death as an American family heritage. Since the time of Hippocrates (the father of western medicine), in every area of the world, grateful patients have gladly paid with their money as well as with their hearts for the altruistic doctor-patient relationship. They loved their doctor and felt their doctor deserved a good standard of living, a better lifestyle than the average worker.
In my lifetime, I have seen the doctor-patient relationship change completely. It is not just welfare programs, Obamacare, “getting a second opinion”, the drug advertisements via television, and the fact that health-care has become a business, and not a calling. Assembly line healthcare started in my lifetime...cubicles up and down a long hallway, the first stop: weight; second stop: blood pressure. Small rooms, all the same, a desk and chair for the doctor, chair and examining table for the patient, the procedures always the same in any facility, always the same questions, always more time spent obtaining financial information than examining the patient.
You hear the talking heads, the physician-hosted television shows say over and over, “talk with your doctor about this-or-that”, but by the time you go through the menu of buttons on the telephone just to get an appointment, jumping through the hoops of paperwork, maligning by technicians, you are fortunate if the doctor even looks at you, and doubly blessed if he ever touches you. It all a matter of counting seconds on the pay clock. Every figure, word, instrument, paying the great cost of 21st century care. Never an industrial assembly line so well greased as the 21st century practitioner's clinic.
The patient is glad to see modern medicine, modern equipment and ideas, glad to see the doctor and his staff living better than most of us. But, one thing never changes, the patient has a sixth sense that recognizes the difference between Hippocratic care and hypocritical care. We know when we are just being run through the mill, having our pocketbooks massaged.
The doctor and his staff have forgotten that the patient needs their care at a time of distress, not only on their well-oiled appointment schedule...a time of “check-up”. God tells us, even if the clinic staff does not understand, that it is the sick that need the physician, not the healthy. (Matthew 9:12) Exercising every rudiment of prevention, utilizing every supplement, being careful in everything you do, the human body will still get sick, always unexpectedly, always at a bad time for both patient and doctor. Would it not be wonderful if we could carefully plan or sickness? Would it not be wonderful if the doctor could carefully plan every day of his or her life, stick to his routine/schedule, so that sick people would not interfere with his or her golf games, his or her family trips, his or her seminars?
There is not a patient on earth any more cognizant of health problems than this writer (exercising, taking supplements). In this day of weird healthcare practices and practitioners, I try to stay away from them as much as possible. I want any practitioner to know that if he sees me it is not because I want him to see me, I am there because I need to be there.
One week ago I became very ill, never so much pain. During good times, on pleasant occasions, both of my doctors had made the same statement, “you are about the age of my father and I treat you exactly like my father.” Strange, but both were out of the office and I couldn't get an emergency contact with either! With the internist, and the totally unconcerned office help, I received the response, “if you come in, a nurse or an assistant (PA) will see you.” Adding to my physical pain: the psychological trauma of technicians calling me, talking with me about the result of tests about which they had no earthly idea, one actually told me that my cancer had reoccurred, that I would probably have trouble walking, and that I should seek pain management! Until I obtained written reports, they had me in a state of shock.
After suffering with the physical and psychological trauma of this new illness, I went to this clinic of over 60 doctors, a hubbub of pathology and paperwork. My driver got me in to see the receptionist, totally unconcerned about patients, and I told her I was there to see a doctor. She said, “they are all busy, we have told you that on the phone.” I said to her, “I am sitting here in this office until I am seen, and I will call the local television station so they can film me sitting here. I want the entire world to see how you treat a decorated veteran, a long-time patient who has always paid his bill in this clinic.” Then, things began to happen.
Barry Goldwater said, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” The healthcare professions have not realized that many wounds are soaked in prayer, that there are many doctors, nurses, technicians who will pay a big price for their indifference (payday, some day). Many external bruises finally appear from internal bruising. The bruising of unconcern which many patients experience from the unprofessional alchemy visited on the wayfarer , the stranger/neighbor in a land of opportunity and responsibility. Servitude is an unknown credit in the souls of the fortunate.
Historically, ancient doctors were slaves. The disciple Luke was a slave before he became a companion to God. Hanged from an olive tree in Greece, he like his fellow disciples, like all those who knew discipleship, desired integrity. In the Obama healthcare plan, spies will be sent into professional healthcare offices to determine how patients are treated. Much like the 2006 German film, The Lives of Others, about the 1984 espionage activities in Germany, it will not take Wikileaks or Homeland Security to disclose how those who receive most of their money from tax dollars are treating the public.
More rapidly than we can imagine, the zeal of Islam, the ideology and doctrine of Muslims has been accepted. Behind the curtain, beyond the screen, the Sharia law against abortion, homosexuality, use of tobacco, use of alcohol (illegal recreational drugs), diet restrictions, sports restrictions, modesty, racial and religious courage, is enforcing the public's acceptance of Islam...the fear of expressing a racial or Islamic bias, even in professional healthcare.
The time has come for a complete evaluation of American healthcare. With the attacks on Obamacare, it may very well be that the opposition to the present ideals of the profession's take-it-or-leave-it approach may bring on the Hippocratic sleuths of discontent. Lets face it, Hippocrates, Joseph Lister, William Mayo, Michael DeBakey would never recognize today's healthcare/public-relations office practices.
Dr. Walter Reece Berryhill, the Dean of the School of Medicine UNC-CH while I was there, said to me, “scripture tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. (1 Timothy 6:10)” ...government largess, welfare programs and insurance policies were a new thing back then...“ the doctor will not be satisfied with a country ham or basket of potatoes. The years he spent preparing makes him believe that he should be as well-paid as the banker or the industrialist. His family likes nice things too. Money will zap the zeal for zealotry.”
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