Dr. Clive O. Callender
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live Callender, one of the nation’s foremost specialists in organ transplant medicine recently spoke with the Informer about how medicine and spiritually co-exist and positively impact each other. The Howard University Hospital surgeon has focused much of his career on transplant medicine among minority segments of the population, along with the unique health and social issues relevant to them as potential donors. Born in New York City in 1936, Callender contracted tuberculosis at 15 and was not expected to live beyond the two to five year life expectancy. Crediting God’s grace and mercy with his recovery, Callender went on to graduate from Nashville’s Meharry Medical College, and serve as a missionary doctor in Africa. In Callender’s estimation, every aspect of his life has been impacted by his spirituality and beliefs.
SL-8 /may 2013 /HEALTH WELLNESS & NUTRITION SUPPLEMENt
Everything I’ve done since I was 7 revolved around spirituality and becoming a physician and eventually, I became a medical missionary or surgeon. So there is nothing that I’ve done in my career -- and this year represents 50 years as a physician -- that was not impacted by my spirituality and my belief that Jesus Christ came to the world to save the world. Everything I do as a consequence with all the patients I see, with all of the surgeries I perform with everything, is impacted by that. It’s God who does the healing and I am his instrument and so I am a physician who assists in the healing process. So now I think one of the interesting experiences I’ve had along these lines didn’t necessarily increase my spirituality, but did validate what I live for as a transplant surgeon. I do and did liver and
kidney transplants and we had a patient about 25 or 30 years ago who had end-stage liver disease. This patient had such a severe hepatitis caused by a viral illness that we felt that he was incurable and so we thought about the consequence of a transplant. Unfortunately, the viral disease was so overwhelming and he was a religious person and so the officers of his church came and anointed him and laid hands on him and this is not an uncommon practice at Howard University but we decided that there was nothing else we could do for him. Now you have to keep in mind this patient was on a respirator and a ventilator and we considered him almost brain
See HEALING HANDS on Page SL 9
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