How Caregivers and Patients Heal Each Other: 3 Touching Stories

In health care, it is common to think of the physician as the healer and the patient as the one in need of healing. Sometimes, though, those roles may shift in unexpected ways. This is not a rare occurrence at AdventHealth, where the mission of Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ is central to fostering whole-person care that heals body, mind and spirit.

Take, for example, the bond that developed between Russ Weaver, a pastor at Shepherd’s Valley Cowboy Church in Alvarado, Texas, and Jeffrey Lin, MD, a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon. Weaver was tending his horses late one afternoon when he began to experience symptoms of a heart attack. After his open-heart surgery at Texas Health Huguley, a joint venture of AdventHealth and Texas Health Resources, Weaver met with Dr. Lin for his 12-week check-up.

“I’ve got to tell you,” Weaver recalled Dr. Lin sharing with him, “I’m not doing too good. Seven years ago today, we buried my son who was seven years old. He built us a box of memories that we were to open in seven years, and we opened that today.”

Dr. Lin’s youngest son passed away at the age of 7 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, a highly malignant brain cancer. Weaver had also experienced the loss of a son.

“It’s easy, especially in a busy place, to just take care of the specific medical problems,” said Dr. Lin. “But it’s easy to forget that a person is more than just their diagnosis. Whole person care would entail not just addressing their specific diagnosis but showing that you care about them as a person.”

That story is one of the many that exemplifies the profound impact of compassionate, relationship-driven care.

Click on the videos below to hear two additional stories that illustrate how healing is often a two-way street, and how it is that whole-person care is inspired by a true culture of compassion.

The Wounded Healer

“His actions that day had a profound effect on me and my family,” said AdventHealth patient Kevin Keyes. “I can’t say thank you enough to him (Joe Jones, MD) for what he did. He didn’t have to come out to the car. He didn’t have to work for 20 minutes to get a pulse. I'm so thankful that he did.”

Instruments of Healing

“In that rehab situation, I said to myself, ‘What reason do I have to continue to live?’” said AdventHealth patient and singer Joe Adams. “It was to touch someone else. I think touching Louis (another patient) in that way gave me that reason God has me alive today.”

These videos premiered during AdventHealth’s annual Conference on Mission, held recently in Orlando, Florida.