Serving in the Most Vulnerable Hour
United Church of Christ
Stillspeaking Magazine
Debra Jarvis is no slacker. An underachiever she is not. But a less-than-exemplary performance review she received early in her career blesses her to this day.
Employed as a cardio technician and phlebotomist at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, Calif, Debra was in her early 20s when her supervisor looked at her and said, “You know, Jarvis, you’re a really good tech, but your productivity is so low. You need to spend less time listening to the patients. Just go in, do the test, and get out.”
One problem: Listening to the patients was everything to Debra. When she inquired about other options, she found hospital chaplaincy was not part of the program at Alta Bates, so a friend suggested an internship at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
“Oh, my God, this is what I came to the planet to do!” Debra recalls saying at the time. “It was just that realization that my whole life was in preparation for that moment.”
A hospital chaplain since 1985, Debra began her work with oncology outpatients at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) in 2002. She’s also served disabled patients, hospice patients and people living with AIDS, having written two books on AIDS. Now a per diem chaplain at SCCA, Debra has added a public-speaking circuit to her resume.
Debra has help doling out inspiration — her buoyant, bounding 9-year-old Cairn terrier, Max. “We do therapy work with hospice patients and pediatric patients at a hospital in Seattle,” Debra says, leaving no doubt that this is a team thing. “We are working on a book called ‘Enter Wagging: Advice from a Therapy Dog.’”
Max, Debra explains, always enters a room — even the vet’s office — wagging his tail, alert and open. “My question is, what if we could be that way ourselves?” she says. “When your doctor calls and wants you to come in to talk about your biopsy, instead of walking in totally contracted and paralyzed with fear, could we enter wagging? Open, alert and curious? What’s going to happen here? How am I going to react? How is this going to affect my family?”
That approach has worked with Debra and her patients alike, she says. “And that I’ve learned from my dog.”
Speaking from experience
Debra herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in late April 2005 — five days after her mother had received a similar diagnosis. Debra had a mastectomy, followed by weekly chemotherapy for six months. Her mother had a lumpectomy. Both have been cancer-free since.
Through the dark days, Debra lets light shine. “Like having your car break down when you work at an auto repair shop, I thought if you had to have cancer, it was pretty convenient to work at a place that treats it.”
Debra recalls the amusement she felt at fielding quizzical reactions that some people had to her diagnosis.
“‘But you’re the chaplain! You should be immune!’ I heard this from a lot of outraged people, as if I had some special spiritual protection,” she says.
Debra laughs a subtly incredulous laugh.
“So what if I’m the chaplain? I’m a Christian, the faith that’s all about the crucifixion of the guy who is considered the Son of God. I mean if the Son of God can’t get a break, why should I? I’m only the chaplain.”
Debra had her surgery and chemotherapy at the University of Washington, the medical center affiliated with SCCA.
“During my first appointment with my oncologist, she made it clear she completely understood if I wanted to go elsewhere if I felt uncomfortable or for reasons of privacy.
“Why, I asked, would I not want to be treated at a place that is filled with people I know and love? And why would I not want to be treated at a place where l have witnessed the finest care given in my 20 years as a hospital chaplain?”
Injecting a dose of humor, she adds, “And above all, why would I not want to be treated at a place where I know the location of every single restroom?”
‘Medicine is such a small part of it.’
While cancer patients tend to concentrate on researching the “right” medicine and the “right” cure, Debra views a more vivid, more comprehensive bottom line. Though careful not to completely disregard the conventional concerns and questions that naturally emanate in reaction to a cancer diagnosis, Debra enthusiastically encourages a more holistic focus.
“Everybody always concentrates on ‘Well, where should I go for treatment?’ and ‘What are they going to give me?’ But you know what — that part takes up very little energy.
“Medicine is such a small part of it,” she says. “It’s really the whole question of ‘How am I dealing with this?’ and ‘What does it mean for me?’ ‘Can I make it mean something exciting and positive and wonderful?’ “
“Really, what you spend most of your time and energy dealing with is … ‘Who am I now? Am I going to take on the identity of being this cancer survivor, or is it simply an experience chat I’m having right now?’ “
Debra and her doctors were confident that her cancer was curable — but that didn’t mean a compelling lesson wasn’t learned.
“I think it’s a good thing that having cancer makes you face your mortality,” she says. “We so blithely go through our world, all lah-dee-dah, and we say there’s always tomorrow, and we waste our time and energy on stupid emotions, being angry about small things.”
“If you knew how limited your time was, why spend time doing that? Get it, people,” she says, passion pouring forth. “This staying-alive thing is a temporary condition. We are such a death-denying culture, it’s so shocking.”
In the week following her diagnosis, Debra was amazed at the number of times she fielded one particular question.
“I kept hearing, ‘Oh, my gosh, are you going to lose your hair?’ After about the fifth phone call like that, I turned to my husband and said, ‘You know what, it’s NOT about the hair!’ I was so angry that that was all people could think about.”
But the feeling subsided, and Debra wrote a book. She titled it “It’s Not About the Hair.”
“You know, it’s a huge deal for women to lose their hair,” she says with a laugh. “Years later, friends told me that what they were really thinking when they asked me about my hair was, ‘Are you going to lose your life?’ But they couldn’t ask me that. They wondered whether I would be getting the harshest doses of chemo and things like that.”
Next up for Debra is a screenplay. Still a work-in-progress, she is currently calling it “The Death of Me.”
“It’s about a woman raising funds for cancer research who finds that her own diagnosis is leading to greater donations,” she says. “It deals with death, but also contains humor.”
Always one to lend a hand in a family whose mother suffered chronically poor health, the Rev. Beth Meirath says the turning point in discernment about her own life’s calling to chaplaincy came in 1992 when her 31-year-old sister died of cervical cancer.
“I’ve lost my sister, my mother and a lot of close friends,” says Beth, whose mother was 64 when she died of congestive heart failure in 2002.
Beth has served the past 10 years as a hospital chaplain on the Clinical Pastoral Education staff at St. Louis University, including the past seven in cardiothoracic and orthopedic care. “It’s primarily surgical patients,” she says, “although some of the orthopedic patients have had things like knee replacements and hip replacements.”
Of never-ending fascination and fulfillment to Beth is the steady stream of life-altering events she witnesses. “People admitted to a hospital have a life-changing event no matter what,” she says. “Whether it’s heart attacks or broken bones, after rehab, they can go back to the life they knew. But it’s still different because of the experience they had.”
Born and raised Catholic, Beth left the Catholic church 20 years ago. In 1997 she enrolled at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, earning her M. Div. degree in 2000. “Catholic women don’t aspire to be ministers,” says the Kansas City native, adding with a gentle laugh, “and I wasn’t going to the convent.”
Beth says her initial discernment centered on missionary work — but when the pull to chaplaincy came, it came strongly.
“The thing about chaplaincy is that you are with people during their most vulnerable time,” she says. “Being able to be a support and presence for them in both spiritual and helpful ways keeps me in chaplaincy.”
That said, Beth has been known to lend a hand at St. Louis University’s Level 1 trauma center, which takes in a substantial share of victims who have been shot, stabbed, or hurt in a weather-related accident. On a late February day, Beth helped administer aid in the emergency room. “We had an ice storm and a 26-car pileup, and we had a dozen people come in,” she says.
As for her immediate future, Beth is focused on the blessings of chaplaincy that stoke her spiritual fires. “l could get my doctorate, but … it’s probably not going to help my chaplaincy.”
For more informnation on the Rev. Debra Jarvis, the Rev. Beth Meirath and their chaplaincies, please visit <debrajarvis.com> and <slu.edu/x27720.xml>.