Alex Yeo (BSVM 2015-2016) served in Baltimore, MD and was placed in the Emergency Department during his BSVM year. In a reflection first published in The Companion Issue 20 in Summer 2016, Alex recalls his healing journey that he experienced through relationships with patients he encountered during his ministry. Read below to hear a story about a specific patient who taught Alex patience and love in the face of difficulty and pain.
Moving Towards God’s Justice
By Alex Yeo, BSVM 2015-2016
A graduate of the College of the Holy Cross
As I serve in the Emergency Room in the Bon Secours Baltimore Hospital, I practice a ministry of presence. It is a role in which a reassuring smile and conversation skills are far more important than knowledge of medications and medical procedures. I offer patients my time and a willingness to listen to their concerns. I enter into conversations out of a genuine concern for the patient’s wellbeing, not a desire to fix his or her problems. What I take away from my interactions with patients are stories, moments of their lives that they choose to share with me. They may be lighthearted anecdotes or accounts of personal hardship and adversity. Each story I hear helps me perceive the community around me in a new way. These intimate interactions provide the catalyst for new insights to emerge and for new questions to form.
The comfort I feel around patients and my ability to converse with them did not come easily. Actually, it was a gift I received from my patients. On my first day of work in the ER as a volunteer with Bon Secours Volunteer Ministry, my only true emotions were fear and anxiety. I was afraid that I would not be able to connect with patients whose life experiences were so different from my own. I could not imagine what common language I would draw on to create relationships. Now, as I reflect on how I felt, my apprehension in the beginning of the year reminds me of God’s Justice. This year, we have learned that the main focus of God’s Justice is building relationships. There needs to be harmony in the relationships between you, other individuals, God, and the outside environment. Love is what exists when all relationships are right, and when one is broken, an outcome can be fear or anger.
I came into this year very aware of the brokenness that exists within West Baltimore. The dangers of living in the community are easy to see: poverty, gun violence, and drug addiction. These risks are reported on the news and captured in statistics. Less easy to identify are the hazards posed from living in an affluent community. In the book, Not All of Us Are Saints, David Hilfiker writes, “Though rarely stated, the hazards of the affluent neighborhood, while certainly different, are equally real: a covetous sense of entitlement, blindness to one’s privilege, numbness to the pain of the poor, and estrangement from one’s own vulnerability.” I share Hilfiker’s words not to minimize the life of the poor, but because it explains the source of my own brokenness. Because the dangers posed by living in an oppressed community are so visual, growing up, I was blind to the ways in which I was negatively impacted by a life of privilege.
When I reflect on my experiences in the beginning of the year within the context of God’s Justice, I see how there was a broken relationship between myself and the patients. During this year of service, I have begun to witness and to come to terms with my own brokenness. Although I was initially afraid of interacting with patients, they were the ones, in the end, that helped me begin to heal.
One patient in particular stands out in my mind. When I first met James, I could not have felt more uncomfortable. Walking into his room for the first time, I remember standing awkwardly in the door frame while James, hunched over in pain in his bed, told me he needed more pain medication. When I went to the ER physician, I was told that they could not give him any more medication until a specialized IV line was placed. I felt helpless going back to his room. I so badly wanted to be able to give him good news, to give him the medication myself, to do something to alleviate his suffering. When coming back to deliver the bad news, I expected the worst from him. However, instead of berating me or using me to vent his frustrations, he politely told me ‘thank you’ and fell silent.
In that moment, I realized how my fears had almost prevented me from creating a connection with him. I had been so afraid of his reaction, anticipating that it would be negative, that I had not considered an alternative possibility. From the moment I entered into the room I already had a plan for how to exit if the conversation turned hostile. So when James responded lovingly, I did the only thing I could do, sit in silence with him at his bedside. I ended up seeing James in the ER several times after our first meeting. We didn’t always have a conversation. Sometimes we chatted about our lives, but mostly I sat silently by his bed. James passed away last December after a long battle with cancer. As I mourn his death, I also greatly appreciate the gift he gave me. The patience and love he showed me gave me the courage to reach out and form relationships with many other patients. Through the power of his love and kindness, my own brokenness began to heal. This healing is a lifelong journey to wholeness.
Alex outside the ER in Baltimore
Alex with his BSVM community at Thanksgiving