It was during my semi-annual cardiac exam that my doctor and I started talking about what she and other doctors need. Actually, it was a continuation of a subject that she and I had talked about the year before. I had just been reading a book, Philip Yancey’s Prayer I think – or perhaps it was one of my minister’s sermons – that suggested we ask people what we could pray for that would help them, and had I asked Andrea that question.
“Pray that I don’t miss anything,” she said. “Pray that I pay attention to what I read and what my patients say and don’t say and how they look. It’s too easy to feel rushed and overlook something that could be important.”
And I did so that day, I prayed that she pay attention and keep alert for important details. Then I forgot for a few days, but shortly afterward, I added a generalized version of that prayer to my daily prayers (which I say most days). Based on conversations with nurses about how busy they are, I made it a prayer that all medical people, everywhere, remember that their patients are real people, not just items to check off their to-do list. So during my exam, I told my doctor about this prayer.
“I know”, she said. “It’s so easy to lose sight of the fact we’re dealing with people, real people with individual needs and concerns.”
She went on to relate an extraordinary experience. “I was on service rounds for two weeks last month, and one of my patients in the emergency room was a homeless man. He’d been on the streets a long time and he hadn’t taken his medications. You could tell he had been drinking. And before I went in to see him, I heard a voice say, “Approach with reverence”.
“That brings tears to my eyes,” I said. I was sitting on the end of the examination table.
“Mine too,” she said. She looked up at me, “I knew that when I went in there, I was going to be talking directly to God,” she said. “I knew that Christ was in this person that I was going to examine.”
Her nurse came in just then as a sign the next patient was ready for her, so we never finished or continued that discussion. It’s still there, however, still an open and continuing topic that has been alive in me all that day and the next. Years have passed, and I still say a prayer for the medical profession, but not just them. I’ve added the police, educators, and parents—all of them need to be reminded of the people they are serving. And when I say that prayer, I remind myself of the people I’m serving: everyone I meet, everyone I work with, everyone I talk to. Everyone.