The Heavenly Physician

I never intended to write a blog every day, but it has been a quite a few days since I last wrote anything. Truth to tell, I haven’t been feeling at all well since Thanksgiving (12 October). After preparing a large turkey feast, I had such a severe back ache that I felt nauseated and had to lie down perfectly still on my bed until the sick feeling and pain had subsided, missing a lot of the family get-together and some of the food.

I don’t often get back aches, but my wife has been a martyr to them and was sympathetic to my plight, bless her. She even shared with me the exercise that always relieved her pain. It involves standing face to the wall, legs at shoulder distance apart, and pressing your belly to said wall while you lean back with your hands on your hips. I think she just wanted me do it so that she could have a laugh when I fell over. Truthfully, it didn’t do much for me. Or maybe it did, because now, a week later, I am able to go about my daily business without much more than the occasional twinge from my lumbar region. So that means I am back to writing my blog for the two or three people who may read it.

Anyway, today was the day for my six-monthly visit to my cardiologist, Dr. Mike. I am blessed indeed to have a doctor called Michael who practises his medicine in a hospital named St Michael’s, for Michael was known as the heavenly physician. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

At Constantinople likewise, Saint Michael was the great heavenly physician. His principal sanctuary, the “Michaelion”, was at Sosthenion, some fifty miles south of Constantinople. He supposedly visited Emperor Constantine the Great at Constantinople, intervened in assorted battles, and appeared, sword in hand, over the mausoleum of Hadrian, in apparent answer to the prayers of Pope St. Gregory I the Great (r. 590-604) that a plague in Rome should cease. In honor of the occasion, the pope took to calling the mausoleum the “Castel Sant’Angelo” (Castle of the Holy Angel), the name by which it is still known. The sick slept in this church at night to wait for a manifestation of St Michael; his feast was kept there June 9.

Over the years, the Michaels (doctor and hospital) have taken good care of me. They helped me recover from my first heart attack 20 years ago, brought me through serious open-heart surgery 10 years ago, and have cared for me through various complications and setbacks since then. And I didn’t have to sleep in Michael’s church for them to manifest themselves — a simple phone call did the job.

Today’s appointment confirmed what I already suspected: I am as healthy as I have any right to be, and certainly in as good shape as I have been in the last 1o years. I don’t have to go back now for a whole year — O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! My weight loss has helped, but so, too, has my commitment to taking care of myself in other ways. This blog is one of those ways.

It started because I watched my wife each evening, just before retiring, sit on the side of the bed and spend a moment reflecting on the day and writing down the good things that had happened to her during its course. That helps her finish her day in a reposeful way, recollecting the best that the day has brought, rather than dwelling on its ills. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” works backwards as well as forwards. Seeing her, I felt the urge to write.

I am fortunate in that I don’t have to leave the house to go to my office, and can therefore start my day in a more balanced way than most. So I thought that I would make a point of taking time to write a blog on whatever came into my mind. I promised myself that it wouldn’t be a whine — that would be too easy for me — but neither would it be all warmth and light, however therapeutic that might be. I wanted to preserve the quiet time I have at the beginning of the day, alone and without distraction, before I turn my mind to what I have to do and set about doing it. So I decided that I would try to write something — anything, really — later in the day. This would oblige me to bring and end to my ‘work day’, so to speak, which was beginning to spread well beyond what was good for me, and, perhaps more important, what I was being paid for.

Today, I was moved to reflect on how fortunate I am to have been given such expert medical care over the years I have lived in Canada. Similarly, when I lived in England (most recently in 2005) I was just as well looked after — both in hospital and as an outpatient. These countries operate, of course, national health systems, along with most of Western Europe and the developed world. So, I find it hard to understand why there is such an outcry in the USA against universal health care. My wife and I went to hear Bill Clinton speak a few weeks ago on “Embracing our Common Humanity“. He had just come from Senator Edward Kennedy’s funeral and spoke of the Senator’s vision of universal health care in the USA, and described the massive forces opposing it. It is mostly about money, of course.

Some years ago, not many months after I had had an operation at St. Mike’s to replace the aortic valve in my heart with a titanium and carbon fibre one, I was in the highlands of Ethiopia, staying in a compound where a group of Christian relief workers were living. I had opted out of the long walk to visit an irrigation project one day because I was getting short of breath walking uphill over 13,000 ft up in the mountains. The camp nurse asked me what was wrong, and when I explained I was quite surprised to see tears in her eyes. She told me her father had tried for years to get an operation similar to mine, but that it wasn’t available in Ethiopia. He died waiting, and was about my age. Sad to say, such stories are all too common in the USA, too. There, it’s not because the operation isn’t available. It’s about having the wherewithal to pay for it. I think it was the University of Bristol, in England, that did a survey a few years ago to find out what most contributed to a long life. Surprisingly, it wasn’t quitting smoking or losing weight. After having long-lived parents it was… being wealthy!

I am not wealthy at all, so is it any wonder that I am grateful for my heavenly physicians?