Dr Brescia, Calvary Hospital, Bronx New York

I read almost everything that is mailed to my home and this magazine is one I get periodically from the Sisters of Life, Spring 2017 issue. I was so impressed with this article and so I am sharing it with you. Dr Michael J. Bresicia, is the Executive Medical Director and co-founder of Calvary Hospital. In the article Dr Bresicia indicates that before 1966, people with kidney failure lived from three weeks to three months. He joined the VA hospital in the Bronx because soldiers were returning from Vietnam dying from kidney disease. Dr Bresicia explains how one day feeling “desperate” since he had ten young veterans who were going to die. He was having lunch and there were two french fries lined up side by side on his plate. While taking a bite of his hamburger, a blog of ketchup falls perfectly between the two fries. It looked like a vein and an artery in the wrist. He wondered if ““I connect this vein and artery with a fistula, would this vein, and all the other veins, actually change and become like arteries.”” Dr Brescia realized that he would not only have one artery but 200 arteries and the patients could be kept on blood-cleansing machines indefinitely. He went upstairs, successfully did the fistula and 50 years they are still doing it. Dr Brescia confronted with a drug company interested in the procedure guaranteed financial success. It would be 60 billion today. However, the company wanted him silenced for one year and this would have caused the deaths of many. Dr Brescia who had consulted with his dad, took his advice. This procedure would be free to everyone who needed it. He gave it away. What impresses me most about Dr Bresica is his heart. In the article Dr Bresica speaks that emotional suffering can only be treated with love, by being present, contact by touching, holding and to say “I love you. I promise to never abandon you.” Dr Bresica reveals that 80% of their day at the hospital is spent with families. 6,000 patients a year are treated. No one after being there for 24 hours , asks for assisted suicide. This is a man of incredible faith. He states, ““When I enter a patient’s room, I always stop on the saddle of the door, and I pray…When someone is dying, you think that room is part of this earth? No! You are not in this world. You have entered the vestibule of heaven.” Dr Bresica shared his view of assistant dying. His response, ““ I don’t think we as a society, as a nation, can survive all this killing. You talk about the culture of death; assisted suicide is a slippery slope where it becomes easier and easier to kill. There are plenty of examples where we can cure people who are suffering from diseases that used to be fatal…” Dr Bresica was asked if there is any suffering that cannot be alleviate. His response: “At Calvary we have found that absolutely any pain and any symptom can be alleviated……”You can’t allow someone to lay there in agony.” There is more to read but I don’t want to re-type it all, so if you are interested I suggest you read about this further on your own. Since my first seminar on assistant dying and being barked at by a colleague who was all in favour of assistant dying, this has made me think and think. I remember in an undergrad course (which is somewhere to be read for the blog as I transfer all my notes for you to read) that I believe was during the Roman Empire, assistant killing was authorized. But this changed to becoming illegal when it was found that patients were being killed for their inheritance/money. How much has the culture of greed changed? I was very concerned here at home in Canada when this law came into effect. There has been much concern and debate. As I have worked with people, I have seen people at the brink of suicide who with therapy have later lead happy successful lives. I too believe that the entire person needs to be treated. Their spirituality and emotional needs as well as their physicality is all inter-wined. It is too bad that Cavalry Hospital is so far away because that is one place I would love to work at to learn from Dr Bresica along with a private practice which I love too much to give up. Have you struggled with a terrible physical ailment? Did you at any point want to give up? Would you have opted for assistant dying if it was legal? Do you feel the same now? What do you think?