 iracles don't happen
every day, but Clive Callender, M.D., F.A.C.S., experienced one while
caring for a young man with a severe form of hepatitis, a disease that
can require a liver transplant to secure even a one-in-ten chance
of survival. The patient's poor condition and dim prospect of
improvement precluded a potentially life-saving transplant. Medically,
the case seems hopeless. But before doctors shut off the respirator and
ended the drug treatments that were keeping the patient alive, members
of the religious community anointed him with oil and laid hands upon
him. Shortly thereafter, the young man came out of his coma and, as
rapidly as the disease had set in, his condition improved. Ten days
later, he walked out of the hospital--cured and with his own liver.
Callender, who is the chair of the
Department of Surgery, chief of the Transplant Center at Howard
University Hospital, and a self-described "medical missionary," accepted
the event on faith. "Life and death are not controlled by surgeons and
doctors," he says. "It's as natural for me to see that happen as it is
for me to see other patients recover from what I think I've done. But in
fact, recovery results from any number of things as well as what I've
done." |
|
Related article: A Question of Ethics,
by H. Patrick Swygert.
Howard
Magazine 10(1), Fall 2001.
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