FOR THE WANT OF $2,500
 

         One morning, early, I journeyed from my home in a North Carolina border county across the state line into a rural South Carolina area to provide transportation for family members to visit their mother some forty to fifty miles away in a regional hospital.  Upon stopping at the family home, I noticed a man with an open wound at his left eye on the porch of the old farm house.  Soon another vehicle stopped, and the man got in to travel to a nearby town to work at a tire sales garage.

         When the son and his girlfriend got into my car to travel to the hospital to see their mom, I began to ask questions about the man on the porch.  He was the uncle of the son, and the wound was caused by a malignant tumor forcing the displacement of the eye and blindness.  Further, he believed that he needed $2,500 up front for the necessary surgery, and without the surgery he would die within two years.  He was well into the first year of that count-down when I became aware of this.  I also learned that the uncle was an alcoholic.    

         Immediately after the hospital visit that day, the church outreach worker and I went to see the uncle where he worked and invited him to meet with us and the tribal chief at his office so we could discuss his medical condition.  After he completed his work day, we took him to the office.  We learned about his many visits to premier medical facilities and the urgency to operate on the terminal tumor before it was too late.  But for the want of $2,500 it had not been done! 

         Unfortunately, the real cost of the surgery turned out to be much more; $2,500 was a woefully inaccurate estimate.  We advocated for the uncle and got a university medical center to agree to provide the surgery for $5,500.  That hospital and medical team performed the successful surgery in 2006, removing the eye and tumor and planting metal studs for the placement of the prosthesis.  The hospital is using a foundation to cover expenses as well as assistance from newly acquired Social Security Disability coverage or SSI Medicaid coverage.  The hospital social work department has given leadership in networking systems for benefits.

         The church discovered a man dying, working for $20 per day with no benefits, no health insurance, no Social Security being withheld, a man without hope.  To him, $2,500—much less $5,500—was like a million dollars, and he gave up.  He had not followed through with paperwork to seek assistance and was handling the despair with alcohol.  What if God’s people from the church and tribe had not been there to care and to put “love into action”?

         After the church had committed itself to find the thousands of dollars needed for the surgery, a man who attended the church monthly, unaware of the decision to proceed with the surgery, put $5,000 undesignated in the offering one fourth Sunday morning.  “To God be the glory, great things He hath done!”  The total cost to the emergency aid fund of the church for surgery and follow-up trips to the distant hospital is about $8,000.

         The uncle is the tragic story of the millions of people in the United States without medical insurance, without adequate education or employment, without friends and advocates, and whose medical, social, and spiritual problems are often compounded by addiction.  God’s people must not only care, but act in love for individual healings and systemic health justice.  “For the want of $2,500” a man almost died, but he did not because God’s people demonstrated “love in action.”

BY REV. ROBERT L. MANGUM, HICKORY GROVE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, PEMBROKE