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Brantly’s Message Inspires

April 19, 2015

By Christina Myer (cmyer@newsandsentinel.com) , Parkersburg News and Sentinel

When Dr. Kent Brantly came to the area last week for a visit at Ohio Valley University, I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at one of his other stops for the day. He spoke at the Rotary Club of Parkersburg’s meeting, and held everyone’s attention in a way I have not seen at any other meeting.

Brantly started off by joking that when he talked to groups of medical students he sent them off with a wish that they become famous for some great discovery or incredible medical skill, not for becoming a patient. Brantly, as most people will remember, was the first known American patient to contract ebola and receive treatment in Atlanta. He had been working in a fellowship program for Samaritan’s Purse’s post-residency program, World Medical Mission, at the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia – on the front lines of what became the largest known ebola outbreak in the region.

But Brantly didn’t spend much time talking about being an ebola patient. He talked about following his calling, about serving as a physician in a part of the world so few of us understand, let alone think about long enough to begin to feel compassion for its citizens.

Imagine receiving all the training Western medicine has to offer, and being good enough at your chosen profession to feel confident in using those skills to help others. Imagine knowing exactly how to save the life of a young man in the hospital waiting room – and knowing you would be able to do it rather simply, in a U.S. hospital – and then finding out the hospital did not have the equipment necessary to put that knowledge into practice.

Had his intent in Liberia been only to save lives, Brantly said he would have packed it up right there, when the boy did not pull through. But that was not his calling. He was called to serve. As he explained in a lecture later that day, Brantly said “We’re trying to show compassion to people of great need. We’re trying to bring hope to hopelessness.”

And, so, upon surviving ebola, Brantly and his family have been faced with new decisions about that calling. As he explained it to our group, his survival of a disease so many cannot overcome has given him a powerful platform – an opportunity to spread a message about compassion, hope and service.

“I am alive and I am to use my life in a meaningful way,” he said.

That may mean someday returning to his work as a doctor with Samaritan’s Purse. But I am glad he is, for now, speaking with folks like me – people in comfortable rooms full of food and friendship in a place where we make jokes about “first-world problems” like “My in-flight movie was longer than my flight.”

Brantly’s message is powerful. He can do a lot of good right now, and seems to know that. He will also do a lot of good when he returns to practicing medicine. He asked us all to heed our calling. It has been a long time since I saw someone living as such a shining example to do just that.

Published with permission:  Christina Myer, Parkersburg News & Sentinel