Recently my grandson who is studying in New Zealand started a blog about his visit there. it is like a travelogue, but is more than that. He includes his personal responses to the sights, an people he is meeting. So far it sounds as if he is having a ball.
Years ago I started a blog but quickly lost interest in it and it faded into oblivion. But now that I am handicapped and not as mobile as I used to be I decided to start another. The subject I chose had been used before by several others, so all I am going to do is to record my experiences in integrating my faith over the last 45 years. Mine may be different because I was not taught how to integrate it, I was led by the Holy Spirit to prepare myself, and energized by him to teach others after I learned about it myself.
I am physician, a psychiatrist, and a medical school and seminary professor. I am married, have 5 children 17 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. I have had a rewarding career because I have had compassion for those who are in conflict, and those who are mentally ill. I had unusual training since I was trained in child psychiatry, adult psychiatry, neurology and neuroscience. This took up seven years of training, after my internship. I was blessed in it because I interned at Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. There I was exposed to the third world, tropical diseases, and unbelievable poverty.
From the time I started to medical school I loved every minute of the time spent, and still do today. There is nothing more rewarding than to see messed up people cleansed and made whole again. It is also rewarding to see people lifted from the pits of despair into joyous living again. Also there is nothing more tragic than to see people who have an incurable mental disease that is like living death. But that is the way medicine is, we cannot cure them all. I learned this early in my internship when a young woman was admitted to the isolation unit of our hospital. She had symptoms of poliomyelitis and was very frightened. She did indeed have polio., and I did all I could to cure her, I even put her in an iron lung, but we had no treatment for polio in those days, so I could only watch as she became progressively paralyzed, and in ten days died. I was devastated. She had so much life to live and so much love to give, and her life was snuffed out like a candle. I learned that in spite of the advances in medicine at that time many diseases are not treatable. It still true today that there are many disease that we can do little about except try to comfort them. Unfortunately they do not teach you how to comfort people in Medical school. Oliver Wendell Holmes said once, "That it is the physicians right to cure seldom, help often and comfort always.
After I became a Christian I did learn to comfort people. God taught me how to do it and I have practiced it ever since then. But he also gave me the power to heal, in ways that medicine had not taught me to heal. It has been a exciting journey, for he has been with me all the way and continues to be faithful. I hope you will enjoy this trip with me.
William P. Wilson MD, DD (Hon)
Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Duke University Medical Center
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Counseling Carolina Graduate School of Divinity
williamwilson622@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment