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It is my privilege to introduce to you our speaker
Dr. E. Wesley Ely
Dr. Ely is a professor of medicine and a subspecialist
in pulmonary and critical care
medicine
at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Dr. Ely graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa *** laude from Tulane University
and earned his medical degrees from Tulane University School of Medicine
and a master's degree in public health
from the Tulane School of Public Health
and Tropical Medicine
Dr. Ely's research is focused on improving the care and outcomes
of critically ill patients
with severe sepsis
and respiratory failure
with special emphasis on the problems facing older patients in the ICU
Dr. Ely serves as the Associate Director of Aging Research
for the VA in Tennessee Valley
as the founder of the Vanderbilt ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group
he currently serves as the principal investigator
for the coordinating center ongoing clinical trials
in sedation and delirium and post-ICU cognitive impairment
Dr. Ely has written
or co-authored more than 250
articles, book chapters,
and editorials.
On a personal note,
Dr. Ely is married to Dr. Kim Ely,
Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Biology and Immunology
at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
The Elys have three daughters and reside right here in Nashville.
We are honored to have Dr. Ely address the class of 2013,
along with their families, and their guests today. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Ely...
Thank you.
Too long of an introduction, though, Sister...
It's my privilege to be here. Graduates,
you have such bright faces today, and it's been fun watching you line up outside,
and getting ready for such
a huge day in your life.
By the way, I'm not usually speaking before Catholic audiences. Most of the time I'm speaking before
medical audiences.
While just recently I was giving a convocation at Jesuit Tampa,
where there are about 750 students.
and word got out because Tim Tebow had been
training recently in Tampa
and that the speaker of the day was gonna be Tebow.
So I showed up
instead I think there was great disappointment.
I hope not any of you hoped Tim Tebow was showing up today.
In the movie
Fog of War
which is about Robert McNamara. He was the Secretary of Defense for JFK
after having been president of
Ford Motorcar in the '50s.
McNamara tells
of the observation after considering egg packaging
how he derived the thought of the need for safety belts in cars. You know,
when you get eggs home from the grocery store they're pretty much intact,
very infrequently are they broken.
Well, in the 1950s, humans were being packaged in cars in a way that was not nearly
so safe
And so people were being transported,
unlike the safe eggs,
in a very dangerous, precarious fashion
And,
through observing this egg carton,
McNamara said we need seatbelts.
Like it or not, you and I,
we need
seatbelts in life.
graduates you're moving from one phase of your life out into
so many different directions in the world
which will indeed
be precarious,
prone to professional
and personal injury.
In praying about today, I kept coming back to the notion that maybe I could,
in some way,
give you some tips
for better packaging,
so that you can transport yourself from this momentous day forward
in a safer way,
preserving your talents and knowledge
for service of others.
In the final analysis, of course, if you
aren't able to do that, all of this education will have been for nought.
So here are my
five tips...
The first one
is
not knowing.
Getting comfortable with
and embracing the concept of not knowing.
Tao Te Ching, Number 65... famous quote...
The ancient masters
didn't try to educate the people,
but taught them
to not know.
When people think they know the answer,
they are very difficult to guide.
When they know that they don't
know the answer,
then they can find their way.
One of my favorite truths is that I don't know what I'm gonna do next.
I don't know what God is going to do next.
But I know that God knows what he's gonna do next.
And that's all that matters.
So an example is that I have a recent mentee
who went to go get her Ph.D. after she finished this day.
Many of you might have
some goals in mind of what you think the next step is.
And everything went terribly awry for this woman.
Beautiful person, inside and out, had a great plan...
went to this other institution, and everything completely fell apart
because of a mentor/mentee mismatch.
So she's been writing me the last couple of weeks, and I... and i
after having her little bit, received an e-mail just this morning
from her, as I was preparing for the talk,
and I thought that my answer to her
might have some relevance. I wrote her back,
"You're so special,
and will help many others.
Right now your path is unclear.
It should be.
That breeds trust,
faith,
and love of Him.
Without these,
we are lost.
With them,
We are always at home."
Graduates, you have to till your garden.
And you need a tool in order to till your garden,
in the presence of not knowing,
and I'm asking you
to get comfortable with this position,
your tools will be those offered up by a
famous Teresa,
over five hundred years ago,
St. Teresa of Avila.
Three tools she offers: Prayer,
solitude,
and detachment.
I've been following these bits of advice from this mystic
for quite some time
in learning and finding my own way.
The eggs have their carton.
Prayer, solitude, and detachment
can be your carton,
a way to get you safely,
physically and spiritually,
from one phase in your life
into another
whether it's a job, a family circumstance, or any other
of the inevitable
car wrecks
of life that you will have to experience.
Number two...
Our purpose.
Purpose...
if carefully crafted,
will be your compass.
We all have to have this compass.
To direct your compass, you first have to know why
are you here.
and whenever a child or anyone asks me, "Why are we here?" I always give them an answer
straight from St. Ignatius.
In Ignatius' Principle and Foundation, he wrote,
"We are here to praise,
reverence,
and serve God,
our Lord.
The other things on the face of the earth
are created for human beings to help them
in the pursuit
of that end."
So act on that truth.
Grab ahold
of this truth.
Everything can be directed towards that purpose.
To praise,
reverence, and serve
God.
I'll tell you a story of how I lost sight of that one day.
I had a patient come to my clinic.
His name was Marcus Cobb,
from the famous "Cobb Hollow" in North Carolina.
Marcus came to me. He had a congenital heart defect,
and he walked around his whole life blue.
Marcus was as blue as a Smurf.
Rather than having oxygen saturations in his body,
like you do right now, of 90% or greater,
his oxygen saturations were in the 50s.
And he was as blue as my shirt.
When I saw him there that day, there in his early 30s, he had been told that he would never
live to be a double-digit.
They thought he would die before ten,
and now in his 30s, in my clinic,
with his wife,
and six children,
wanting to get a heart-lung transplant.
I am a lung transplant physician, as well as an ICU doctor,
and so I began to think about all that I didn't know
about how to navigate him through
this medical course.
And the more I thought about myself
the less and less sure I got of why I was even in the room to begin with.
And some of the older folks in the room have
probably seen this movie called "Broadcast News."
Hilarious movie. In it, one of the actors, as he's supposed to be the newscaster,
gets really nervous and he starts sweating. Never before,
and ever since, has this ever happened to me
I started sweating in this room,
in such an absurd fashion,
that it is absolutely comical. I mean, I was
pouring water.
My shirt turned from a light blue to a dark blue,
and it was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever done in front of a patient.
At one point I had to actually get up and excuse myself and leave, go try and
dry off and come back into the room.
What had gone wrong,
I was making this visit about me.
and what I thought I knew or didn't know
when in truth, I was really there to serve him.
To praise, reverence, and serve God
by serving
another human.
I was off course there.
I'll come back at the end of the story to tell you what happens with Marcus Cobb, and if I forget,
remind me.
So if you're not being escorted by Him, God,
in the service of others, you're very likely to be climbing a ladder
that's up against the wrong wall,
to borrow a quote
from Stephen Covey.
This light of yours, this lamp,
this diploma that you're getting today,
you're plugged in,
but the light's not on yet.
And in order to turn it on, you have to really shine.
You have to have
an adequate compass.
Service of others,
which is service of Him,
This is the purpose
which will guide your compass.
Number three:
The how-to
manual.
We have to have
a moment
to moment guide,
that in the thick and in the heat of the moment of life,
to get us to stay centered,
and calibrated.
We all know it on paper
how do act, don't we?
We've read it, have been taught it by our parents, et cetera.
But it's at the stop light,
or in the store,
or,
with Marcus Cobb in the clinic room, that we get off kilter.
So I'd like to offer you a how-to manual
that comes straight from
Mother Teresa,
the second Teresa that I'll mention today.
The first one was St. Teresa of Avila, those 500 year old
bits of advice
about prayer, solitude, and detachment,
this one from Mother Teresa herself, the modern day Teresa.
It is said that she was asked many times, "Mother,
how you do it?
How do you find someone,
destitute,
covered in vomit,
flies on their wounds,
and pick them up,
out of the gutter, over
and over again?"
And Mother said, "I just look them in the eyes, and I say...
'This
is Jesus Christ.
This is God.'
I will pick them up. And that made it so easy for her.
I learned this or read this in medical school ever since a student on the wards of Charity
Hospital in New Orleans.
I've been trying
to carry this with me,
as I go down into the hospital rooms,
into Starbucks,
into any place that I encounter another human, and try and remind myself, peering at me
through those eyes,
is God.
So that is your how-to manual. It's something you can keep in your RAM
on the forefront of your mind,
in the thick and in the heat of the moment
of each day.
Number Four:
Your energy.
After you have first
packaged your soul
to prevent injury and to travel safely (step one),
reminded yourself of your purpose,
to serve Him,
through others (step two),
and then remind yourself of who
you are serving,
by looking into anothers' eyes,
and reminding yourself that that is God.
Then it is important for Number Four.
From where do your talents derive?
The Holy Spirit,
whom we going to celebrate soon
in the feast of Pentecost,
the perfect embodiment
between the love of the Father and the Son,
it is that Spirit that provides you
these talents,
these gifts
and never in your life
should you think YOU earned those talents,
that YOU created those talents,
or that even you honed them.
Through your persistence and your devotion to the Holy Spirit,
you use the talents, yes,
and for that we commend you,
and we are proud of you,
and that's why you have a gown on,
and a fancy hat,
which I chose not to wear because I was sure it would probably
fall off and distract
from the talk.
But this spiritual aspect
of our faith and of our guide has to remain at the forefront of our mind as well.
Since we're talking about spiritual values,
I also want to make this point. Many of you are nursing
graduates, and will go into health care,
but for those of you also going in business,
and for everybody else in the room who has to have interactions with your families, et cetera,
we have to remember to seek
an understanding of other people's spiritual values.
In medicine, when I'm with
a patient, this morning, in fact
at the VA hospital here in Nashville, I was with a dying
cancer patient that I had just met this morning for the first time.
And I said to him, "Sir,
we can't cure your problem.
This cancer will take your life,
and it won't be surprising if it happens in the next days or weeks.
Do you have any spiritual values,
that you want me to know,
that would affect
your medical decisions? This question,
this key question, which I was never taught in medical school,
is now something that we do teach to Vanderbilt medical students.
And it is something which I think is incumbent upon us as humans,
to respect everyone's spiritual values.
And so often they will differ from your own, and that
deserves no less respect.
In fact, even a greater insistence on respecting their values
when they do differ
from your own.
So Number Five:
The Law of the Gift.
This is perhaps my favorite of the five.
The most important lesson
taught frequently JP II,
and by Father Robert Barron
on his website
Word on Fire,
which if you haven't plugged into that yet, you should.
wordonfire.org
wordonfire.org, I think, is the website.
The Law of the Gift.
Let's talk about the River Jordan.
The River Jordan, in its course, travels to
two seas.
The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea.
One of those seas gives back
to the River Jordan,
and that is the Sea of Galilee.
And in the Sea of Galilee, life is abundant.
Flora, animals, et cetera,
living
with extreme success.
In the Dead Sea, which only receives, but does not give back
to the River Jordan, there is no life.
And so you have to remember,
that your gifts
were freely given to you.
Your education,
your family,
your upbringing,
your talents.
All
that you have to offer,
none of these talents were earned, and yet you still possess them,
but in order for them to grow,
and remain your possessions,
you must
being willing to give them back.
And I don't mean just share them. I mean
to deliberately attempt
to instill the gifts so that others can actually have them, too.
There's a difference
between those two circumstances.
These people at your bedside, as a nurse,
or your partner in a business operation,
they have to learn from your strengths and draw on them,
whether it be a patient, a family, or anymore in your life, life
this is your enduring gift to them.
This human touch,
as we placed our hand on the shoulder of a patient,
as I did this morning,
and look that patient in the eyes and remind myself, this is God,
this connection is our true north.
And this is what you have to embody as you push forward in whatever it is
that you choose a career.
So let's review the five steps.
Number One:
Set the foundation
on learning to not know.
Embrace this and follow St. Teresa's
advice.
St. Teresa of Avila. Prayer,
solitude,
and detachment,
as tools for your egg carton.
Number Two:
Remember your purpose.
What is the foundation?
To praise,
reverence,
and serve God.
Number Three:
Your how-to manual,
looking at another in the eyes,
this is God whom I'm here to serve.
Number Four:
Your energy.
This energy,
as Cantalamessa would say--he was one of the papal preachers
for JP II and Benedict, I think--we have to become Copernican.
The Sun is the center.
The planets revolve around the Sun,
not the other way around.
Remember the center.
And Number Five:
The Law
of the Gift.
You must give
to possess,
or you will lose what you have.
Be like the Sea of Galilee,
not like the Dead Sea.
And of Marcus Cobb?
I thought that day we were done.
Why would he ever trust a doctor
who would sweat like that in the middle of a clinic,
and have so much insecurity?
I moved to Vanderbilt several years later. My wife got a job as a
cancer pathologist.
cancer pathologist.
And one day,
I walked into clinic,
about six years later,
and Marcus Cobb and his wife were sitting in the clinic here in Nashville.
They had found me.
I told them that day in North Carolina I wasn't sure how long it should be
before he gets a transplant.
And you never want to receive a transplant until you're on death's door, because your days
are numbered after the transplant as well,
so you always want to time it at the latest possible time to receive a transplant.
So he showed up now, with legs about three or four times as thick with edema
fluid as they had been previously,
and said, "Dr. Wes,
I think it's time."
About a year and a half later,
we gave Marcus a triple organ transplant:
Two lungs and a heart.
He lived a phenomenal life.
He parachuted.
He saw his kids graduate,
and he lived a life he never expect to have... all a gift.
One day, I was on the podium
at a talk in San Diego.
And Marcus by that time had gotten some of the major complications of transplantation
of another malignancy. When you suppress your immune system,
another malignancy
can come forward, usually a lymphoma.
And so he was dying, and we knew that, but on this day I was at the podium, just like this,
and my phone rang.
And normally, I wouldn't answer it, but for some reason I did on this occasion,
and it was Denita, his wife.
She said, "Wes, we need you."
I asked to be excused. I left in the middle of the talk,
ran to the airport, caught an early flight,
said prayers as I traveled over Arizona,
Texas,
Louisiana, back here to Nashville,
landed not knowing, of
course, with no cell phone service along the way,
immediately jumped into a cab,
got them to take me to Vanderbilt.
I knew what floor he was on,
and I went to the 9th floor, found his room.
At that point there was a circle of people,
about nine of them.
His kids, his wife, and others.
And they had a hole, right in the front,
near the door.
They all had their arms around one another, but not in that space.
And I went and filled that hole
they put their arms around me. Marcus looked at me, and said,
"Doc...
I knew you'd make it."
And died within the next three minutes.
It was a great privilege.
He let me into the circle of his life,
something I didn't deserve,
something that none of us deserve,
and yet we all have this opportunity.
God allows us that,
if we will give our gifts back to Him
in great number.
Recently I was in Calcutta
working with Mother Teresa,
well, the Missionaries of Charity that she started.
On the wall,
they have pictures of her quotes.
This one I took with my iPhone, and it read,
something she always said,
"Yesterday is gone.
Tomorrow
has not yet come.
We have only today.
Let us begin." Thank you.
I'll have to thank Dr. Ely
as he's leaving for his,
not only his excellence as a physician, but his witness to faith, his witness
to his love for Jesus Christ. He had many things happening today, so he's not able
to stay with us for the rest of the
Commencement ceremony. We are very grateful.