AMEN 2014: Joined Together

Morning Devotional

Brian Schwartz

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Building Faith in our Patients and Families

Our Father in heaven, just so grateful for the blessings that we've received these past 3 days as we've fellowshiped together.

As we come to the final meeting, there's always a knot in my stomach as we realize that this is coming to a close.

And as we separate from the sweet fellowship that we've enjoyed, I just pray that you would be with each 1.

Each 1 here as they travel, but more so each 1 here As we go back to our daily work as physicians, dentists, health care workers, as spouses and family that supports that work, I just pray that we will be inspired to learn more from the master physician and the master teacher about what true medical missionary work will look like in these last days.

Remove the impediments in my mind this morning that your Holy Spirit may have complete access to speak to each heart today.

Well just as a way of review, on Friday morning we talked a little bit about the faith of Jesus Christ.

In the Greek that is, Pistas Iesu Christos, the faith of Jesus.

Translators have wrestled with the idea that if it's even possible for God who knows everything, the beginning and the end, to have faith.

Because faith is seeing what does not now exist.

And we realized and we studied the fact that Jesus lived every single moment and every single day of his life by faith, by faith in his Father.

And the ultimate demonstration of faith was when Jesus submitted even to the death of the cross.

And as he held out on the cross, feeling forsaken of his father, did his father forsake him?

No, But he felt forsaken because of the weight of sin that was causing the separation that caused him not to be able to feel his father's presence.

He hung on to realizing in his past experience that God had never forsaken him before, and he hung on to the prophecies in God's Word that stood true.

That even though his experience told him that he was not coming through this alive, that he was not gonna see through the portals of the tomb, as Ellen White said in Desire of Ages, page 753.

And there has only been 1 truly just righteous person that has lived in this world, that's Jesus Christ.

And the faith that he wrought out on the cross that day is the only perfect faith.

And He offers that faith to you and to me.

And so we talked, we looked at Romans, and we looked at various places where most of our modern translations interpret that if we have faith in Jesus, we justify God.

No, it's the faith of Jesus that justifies God.

And there's nothing wrong with putting your faith in Jesus, but if we're relying on my faith, it's a shaky faith.

It's not the tested, true faith of Jesus that He gives to each 1 of us.

And so if we can just turn the formula around 180 degrees and claim the faith of Jesus working in my life, that's a powerful faith.

That takes my eyes off of my own weakness and it puts it on who?

Jesus Christ, the source of true faith that was demonstrated on the cross.

All right, if I can put my cards back together here in a little bit of an order, I'm going to tell you a story early in my practice.

Early in my practice, before I came to the first AMEN meeting, I had a patient I'll call Tammy.

Those of us with a little bit of health care knowledge, it's a scary thing sometimes.

Tammy had started off in Cincinnati being convinced that she had a cardiac illness.

Tammy would pass out frequently, just come on her all of a sudden she would just suddenly pass out.

She had convinced somebody that she needed a pacemaker and the pacemaker was placed in Cincinnati and within just a few months of having the pacemaker placed it became infected.

She had a long, prolonged course of antibiotics, ultimately had to have the pacemaker taken out.

She was such an annoying person that she had bounced from practice to practice to practice.

She had been to 3 different practices in Cincinnati and now before she came to see me, she had been in 4 different groups in Dayton.

She had been in between everything between Cincinnati and Dayton.

Finally, again, somebody put a heart monitor on her, and she was passing out, and you can jiggle the monitor in such a way that it looks like you're having ventricular tachycardia.

She'd had 3 heart casts that were all normal.

She'd had multiple echocardiograms that were all normal.

But Through whatever she did, she convinced somebody to put a defibrillator in her.

6 months later, it became completely infected.

While she had the defibrillator in, she never had an arrhythmia, Never had a problem, continued to pass out.

1 of the internists in our town, who's an AMEN member, saw her.

He didn't think it was really a cardiac problem either, but he asked if I'd see her, and so she wound up coming to my practice.

This is like 7 practices in the last 4 years.

She'd been kicked out 1 after another after another after they'd tried and did things, but because she was so annoying.

Within the first day of visiting, I was a little bit skeptical of her story, but I wanted to get all the records and see what exactly had happened.

By the way, she now had a loop recorder that was implanted under the skin.

The loop recorder can stay in for 2 to 3 years.

That had been in for the last 2 years, and it had never, that had never recorded an arrhythmia.

But she still gave a history of, oh yeah, she passes out almost every day.

And I was beginning to think that she probably had psychogenic syncope.

She started calling my nurse 2 to 3 times a day, every single day.

Every 1 of you that's in practice has encountered somebody like this.

My nurse, within just a couple of weeks, said, you've got to get rid of this lady.

It's all little annoying nitpicky things.

And so I got her records, I looked over everything, and I'm usually a fairly patient person, but my nurse was starting to drive me crazy.

And finally, after the third visit back, and I sat down with her, I went through all the records.

We had repeated some tests, they were all completely normal.

And I finally sat down with her and said, Tammy, I think you have psychogenic syncope.

The monitor has never picked up any arrhythmia.

I'm going to dismiss you from my practice.

She reached over and straightened my tie and said, well thank you doctor, and turned around and walked away.

I have regretted this encounter for the last 10 years.

Knowing what I know now, often people that have, whether it's psychological overlay or all this anxiety and they want to be sick to have something to explain what they're feeling, there's often a deep root cause.

And later on, by talking to the physician that referred her to me he told me you know she'd been sexually molested by her father-in-law when she was young.

She bounced in and out of really bad relationships.

She's experimented with other substances and she's just had an extremely troubled life.

And I didn't know what else to give her, so I dismissed her from my practice.

I had nothing more to offer her at that time.

That's something I live with as an absolute failure because I believe that if this was before I knew how to pray with a patient, I was oblivious to the spiritual things behind it and ultimately she's going to continue to bounce and bounce and bounce and bounce until somebody addresses the underlying issues that are not addressed.

And by the way, which most physicians don't want to address, is we're not comfortable with that.

Plenary

Todd Guthrie

From Broken to Blessed

Father in heaven, I pray that you will speak tonight, that your spirit will move upon our hearts.

I pray that your words will be given and received.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look on the earth beneath, for the heavens will vanish away like smoke.

The earth will grow old like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner." There's some morbidity and mortality, huh?

It's a 53-year-old Caucasian female with onset of left lateral hip pain.

Gradual onset over several months or weeks or months with severe pain and antalgia, that's painful gait or walking, developing over the last few days.

She had tenderness over the proximal lateral femur, pain with weight bearing and range of motion.

And if you look carefully at this X-ray, those of you who look at X-rays, you see at the arrow, that's where the pain is.

It's nice when the pain is labeled on an X-ray, which they could design an MRI where there'd actually be a red flag that showed up where the pain was after the scan.

But if you look carefully there, you'll see a little fluffy calcium maybe.

Now, the reading was no osseous abnormality.

The soft tissue calcium in the region of concern, yes, this was concern, it was painful, could represent vascular calcifications, myositis, ossificans, or other soft tissue lesion, consider MRI for further evaluation.

Ultimately, a CT may also be required for complete evaluation.

But if you have pain, do you want to know what the cause of the pain is?

If you have extra calcium there, and it could represent a other soft tissue lesion, would that be of concern to you?

And then you see in the muscle there's this kind of light area of some concern.

What do the radiologists have to say about this?

Abnormal edema and enhancement of the insertion of the vastus lateralis with disrupted tendon fibers and an associated cortical abnormality.

Differential diagnosis, that means what could this be, includes an avulsion injury.

However, a soft tissue mass is not entirely excluded.

Certainly the patient wished it was excluded.

And you can see on the CT scan that was recommended, you still have the same kind of finding.

You see some calcification there next to the bone.

I'm not sure how the pointer on this works.

I'm afraid I'll shut this off if I push the wrong button.

So you can see the calcification, a little cortical erosion.

Well, what's wrong with a little cortical erosion, huh?

A tiny region of left posterior femoral cortex disruption with amorphous calcium in the adjacent muscles, differential diagnosis, there's that word again, includes a cortical lesion in the region of concern, as well as benign and malignant cortical and soft tissue lesions.

Well, Have you ever been faced with a diagnostic dilemma?

I mean, then the pathologist can put it under a microscope and tell you, are these malignant or benign cells, right?

If it's something benign, you can just watch and wait and see if the pain goes away and see if it gets better.

If this was you, what would you, you know, Would you want somebody to wait or would you want to know what's going on?

Well, you could research the experience of others.

Has anyone run into something that looks like this?

Maybe someone else has obtained images of a patient that had similar pain and figured this out or a pathologist looked at it.

Bivens already knows what this is probably.

What would you do and patients often ask you this, well what would you do if this was your mother or what would you do if this was 1 of your family members?

And that's a good question, You know, you think about your family, well, what would you do if this is 1 of your family members?

Well, it just turns out this was 1 of my family members, And it's my wife, and she's sitting here, so you know the story doesn't end too badly.

In fact, When I took the presidency of AMEN, I had a little worry because I'd listened to Mark Ranzinger's story last year.

And when this happened, I thought, oh boy, it's here.

Because for 24 hours or so, I didn't know what this was.

I thought this might be something life-threatening.

You know, I was envisioning, you know, reconstruction of the proximal femur, hip replacement, you know, all of these things.

And we'll get back to this case a little bit later.

Well, our next case is a mass casualty case.

Now, if you were faced with a mass casualty like this, something of large proportions, anybody who wants to tackle this case, anybody, medical doctor?

Okay, there's been a lot of casualties here.

Is there anybody that can step in and help this?

You might say this was a biblical proportions because that's actually where the story comes from.

Ezekiel was taken by the hand of the Lord, says, the hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley, and it was full of bones.

Then he caused me to pass by them all around, And behold, there were very many in the open valley, and indeed they were very dry.

And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live?

So I answered, O Lord God, you know." Now it's interesting that here's this valley of bones and the Lord did not call a physician, who did he bring to show the problem to?

A minister, if you will, minister of the gospel.

So We see the proportions of the problem.

Again, he said to me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.

I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin, and put breath in you and you shall live.

Then you shall know that I am the Lord." So what do we see here?

So I prophesied as I was commanded and as I prophesied there was a noise and suddenly a rattling and the bones came together bone to bone.

Indeed, as I looked the sinews and the flesh came upon them and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them.

Stephen Thorp

Reclaiming the Vision: Mission in the LLU School of Medicine

We're well acquainted, many of us are from Loma Linda, or in some way, shape, or form, connected with Loma Linda.

We're all well acquainted with what the original mission of Loma Linda was.

And It's inspiring also to me to hear the stories of how the institution was founded.

Recently, this past spring actually, during the alumni convention, they installed a new statue up on the top of the hill in Loma Linda by Nicol Hall.

And it's a monument to the the beginnings of Loma Linda and the miraculous story that led to Loma Linda being developed.

Ellen White as she came onto the campus and it's a story we're familiar with, is she said, I've been here before, and her son Willie said, no, mother, you haven't.

And then she said, well, this is the very place that the Lord has shown me.

And that experience really served as a beginning point for Loma Linda.

And the history of Loma Linda, while not perfect, is replete with mission stories.

And oftentimes, it's easy to forget where we've come from.

Alan White in Life Sketches said, we have nothing to fear for the future except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us and is teaching in our past history.

That reminds me of this beautiful monument in the center of campus in Loma Linda.

It's on the pathway connecting the medical center and the new basic science building, Centennial Complex.

And it's a beautiful globe and a monument to all the people that have served from Loma Linda.

And during the doldrums of second year when you start studying pathology at 4.30 in the morning and except for a little bit of a break for pharmacology and pathophys, you'd still be studying at 9.30 at night.

It was inspiring to me personally to take a break every couple hours and go visit this monument, walk around it, and remind myself why I'm here at Loma Linda and what God is calling me to do.

Reminds me of a conversation that was a spiritual turning point in my life with a conversation I had with my dad and he said, son, God does not have grandchildren.

I said, okay dad, you got to explain that 1.

The fact that I'm a pastor and I've raised you boys and have a strong and that I personally have a strong walk with God is not enough for you to be a Christian.

It's something that you have to own yourself.

And in the same way the mission and vision of Loma Linda is not something that is good enough for the previous generation to have.

It's something that each generation has to pick up and own and reclaim for themselves.

Couple weeks ago I was at a conference for global health leadership from around the world in Avenus Health, health care institutions, and it was inspiring to hear stories from so many different places.

Some of the people I hear tonight from Nigeria and India and maybe a few other people that I'm not not aware of.

And it it reminded me again the tremendous history of missions that Loma Linda has.

For the first 50 years of Loma Linda's existence, approximately 2 hospitals were founded every year.

That's actually really incredible when you think about it.

Many of those same hospitals are still alive and functioning today.

Wareham, the International Heart Surgery Service team, Inspiring stories, the stories Dr.

Them owning the mission and the vision and going out and living that vision in their own lives is not enough.

It's something we have to claim for ourselves, to pick up for ourselves and own ourselves.

So I've invited today 7 people to briefly share their stories of what's happening in their lives while they're in medical school.

We'll hear from Brent in a minute, starting out with street medicine, and we'll finish up with Eddie Perry and what's going on in the Congo.

Fantastic stories, stories of God blessing while we're in medical school.

And it's these sort of things that we can get involved in now that help us to reclaim the vision.

So I invite you to enjoy, sit back, we all love mission stories, and you're gonna hear 7 of them this morning.

Well, good afternoon, my name is Brent Sherwin.

I'm a medical student at Loma Linda, fourth year medical student, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about street medicine and how I got involved in it, and how it's really made a big impact on my life during medical school.

So the first couple slides, I'm gonna kind of explain what street medicine is, and then the majority of it I'd like to spend just telling you how it's impacted me, and kind of gave me a vision for the future.

So many of you might be asking, well, what is street medicine?

You might have heard the term before, but basically what we are is kind of a group of students that goes out on a weekly basis.

We go to the San Bernardino County streets and we try and help the people that normally you wouldn't see in your regular medical office or dental office just because of problems with access or they just plain don't have transportation to areas where those clinics are.

So the things we do basically are triage, basic primary care, and then also act as a referral center kind of to give these people ideas of where they could go to get further care that we can't provide at the time.

For example, we don't do labs and we don't do x-rays or imaging or anything of that sort.

So we can check their problems, see what needs to be done, and then refer them on to somebody that can help them further.

So those are the things that we mainly focus on on a rate for street medicine.

So 1 of the reasons we do street medicine at Loma Linda, and this program was just started a few years ago, is 1 of the things I already mentioned.

Many of the homeless people in San Bernardino don't have access to clinics, or if they do, it's very difficult for them to get to the clinic to get health care.

And so what we do is we go to them instead.

Instead of them having to come to us, we either go and meet them on the streets where they are, or we go to several shelters and church clinics that are set up around the community where they come on a regular basis to either get food or clothing.

And so we kind of go and meet them where they are at.

The other reason we do street medicine is kind of fulfilling the ethical principle of justice, with providing health care to everybody, not just the people that can either get to it or have the money to afford it.

And then as Stephen mentioned, there's several statues on the campus of Loma Linda University.

And 1 of the ones that really sticks out in my mind is the Good Samaritan statue.

You can walk by it lots of times every day and kind of forget that that's 1 of the main reasons Loma Linda was founded.

But for us, street medicine is kind of putting the story of the Good Samaritan into practice on a weekly basis.

I'm going to tell you kind of how the street medicine movement started.

And 1 program in Pittsburgh did a study and they actually were saving their emergency room about $300, 000 a year just by going on the streets and helping people, kind of preventing them from having to come into the emergency room to get their primary care, and instead going to them and helping them with their primary care right there on the streets.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Building Faith in our Patients and Families

1h 9m

From Broken to Blessed

1h 26m

Reclaiming the Vision: Mission in the LLU School of Medicine

1h 6m

Wholeness in a Broken World

1h 58m

Ellen White Finally Exposed

51m

AMEN 10th Anniversary Panel Discussion

44m

My Jesus, My King, My Life, My All

1h 3m

D’Sozo, The Theology of Health

1h 4m

Crowded Waiting Rooms

1h 23m

The 6th Competency: Systems-Based (Spiritual) Practice

53m

The Faith of Jesus

1h 2m

Healing Patients for Eternity

1h 22m

Sound Doctrine