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Jesuit Journeys
Fall 2001
Making house calls on the road to good health
By Phil Nero
On a cool spring afternoon, more than 800 miles from her eastern Wisconsin home, Ruth Springob, RN - AKA Dr. Ruth - arrives in Pine Ridge, South Dakota for her final round of house calls at Holy Rosary Mission.
She will conduct routine medical examinations of all the Jesuit missionaries here, recording blood pressure and blood sugar counts and listening to their hearts not only with a stethoscope but also with her own heart. Other stops in the state include Rapid City and St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation.
The checkups are part of a comprehensive Wisconsin Province Health Services Program she was instrumental in developing, which promotes good health among men in active ministries while also providing good health care for the elderly and the infirm. These are her final house calls because she will retire in less than a month and end more than 10 years of collaboration with the Wisconsin Province Jesuits.
"When I meet with the men like this it is a privilege because I am humbled by the information they share," Ruth says. "It wasn't always that way, but it became an experience in building trust and relationships. I treasure it. I so treasure it."
She can't precisely recall the first time a Jesuit called her Dr. Ruth. "I think the guys thought it was funny because of Dr. Ruth Westheimer. It just took hold, and at some point I started answering to it."
The Health Services Program, of which the examinations are but one component, originated when Fr. Greg Lucey, SJ became rector of the Marquette University Jesuit Community in 1989. "One of the first things I noticed was there really wasn't a program for elder care," Fr. Lucey recalls. He surveyed older Jesuits and learned they desired three things in their latter years - to live in a Jesuit community, to be with men from their own province, and to have access to reasonable health care.
"Clearly we needed some advice on how to look at health issues and had heard about Ruth through the Marquette grapevine," Fr. Lucey says. "She agreed to work with us as a consultant. We hit it off well. She had a very positive attitude toward the Jesuits and loved working with the men. Over the years she has been just a wonderful godsend."
Ruth quickly understood that elder care was an issue not only for the University but for other province ministries as well. She also found the province had no organized health program for
any of the men, old or young, and saw the need to explore not only elder care but general health issues too.
Fr. Bert Thelen, SJ was provincial at the time. He agreed there was a void to be filled. With some cajoling, Ruth agreed to join the Province staff on a full-time basis.
All health issues were on the table.
Projecting 20 years ahead, a committee determined a need for about 25 assisted living beds and 10 full-care beds for elder care. At issue too was whether to provide the beds in existing communities or establish a separate care community. They took the latter path and opened the Camillus Jesuit Community. The process took place without a lot of existing health care data. A comprehensive health history form was developed as a tool to gather that kind of information through annual visits. That's when the provincewide health calls started.
The term Wisconsin Province is a misnomer of sorts for a sprawling seven-state region in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains. Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and, oh yes, Wisconsin comprise the province. The majority of province Jesuits live and work in three urban centers around Omaha, Milwaukee, and the Twin Cities. The rest are spread throughout the province at parishes, retreat houses, and on Indian missions in the Dakotas and Wyoming.
No one would be overlooked.
"I wanted to see how they lived. I wanted to see what their living needs were," Ruth says.
Fr. Bill Pauly, SJ recalls the men at Holy Rosary Mission were initially uneasy about the visits. "There was a sense of who is this new person, a woman, and are Jesuits going to be able to open up to her about personal health matters? She broke through that very quickly with her compassion and her competence."
She shared her knowledge of medicine freely. Rather than wait and react to illness, Ruth focused on how to be healthy and stay healthy. She challenged men to give up smoking and promoted healthful diets and regular exercise.
"The guys all looked forward to her visits. The men feel cared for in her presence and valued."
- Fr. Tony Dagelen, assistant superior at Camillus and a resident there since 1997.
"She broke new ground, and I couldn't think of a better person to do it. What was clear from the start was her love for us. Young men or elders, they felt the same way. We looked forward to her coming, and clearly she enjoyed being out here," Fr. Pauly says. Gender became a positive issue. "She was very nurturing. All men need a woman's care, even celibate men. To have a woman come as a representative of the Jesuit order broadens all of us. Besides her compassion and competence, she possessed an understanding of Jesuit life and our mission and wanted to help."
In many places the evolving Health Services Program, with regular visits and queries about general well being, reduced the sense of isolation among the men and made them feel more appreciated. "She empathized with the struggle here and honored it, respected it, and, in her own way, admired it," Fr. Pauly says. "The way she esteemed what we do and took an interest in it helped us to do the same."
Ruth traveled to most reaches of the province herself; Omaha, however, became the domain of Terry Kult, RN.
"Terry had been volunteering her services at Creighton Prep since 1984. As our program expanded, she was willing to come on board full time," Ruth says. That was in June 1994. Terry works out of an office at the Creighton University Jesuit residence, where she operates a walk-in clinic and offers on-site care.
Under Ruth's direction, and with Terry's assistance, the Health Services Program reaches all province Jesuits, and it continues to evolve and improve with outside input from an 11-person committee that includes three doctors, one of them a Jesuit. The two women also worked as members of a nationwide team of experts that helped create the Jesuit Health Care Handbook for the United States Assistancy.
Even with a focus on wellness, health issues and crises arise. When a problem occurs, a network of contacts with specialists and preferred service contracts with health care providers helps cut red tape and reduce the expense of promptly delivering all levels of health services, from simple diagnoses to complex surgeries.
Often the most serious concerns arise at St. Camillus, where the men are older, frailer, and at serious risk due to age. Frequent visits became a part of Ruth's routine.
"The guys all looked forward to her visits," says Fr. Tony Dagelen, assistant superior at Camillus and a resident there since 1997. "There's loneliness out here, and she helps take care of that. The men feel cared for in her presence and valued."
Be it a walker, a new wheelchair, or other piece of equipment, Ruth found a way to procure everything for Camillus residents without making it seem like any bother at all. On one occasion she convinced a doctor to donate $1,500 for special medication for an uninsured eye procedure that made it possible for one resident to continue reading.
Blessed with a gentle style, Ruth would eat meals with the men, listen to stories about their lives, and be always alert for clues to help them live and feel better. And every year the men at Camillus looked forward to a picnic she put on especially for them at her home on Lake Michigan.
Ruth is still making the rounds, but a golf cart and clubs have replaced her stethoscope and medical bag. Regardless of what the golf course holds in store, however, her most renowned shots will always be the figurative and literal ones in the arm she gave for years to the Jesuits of the Wisconsin Province.
Caring about and for the Jesuits at Creighton
It's as clear as the smile on her face is bright that Terry Kult loves her job. A registered nurse, she is hired to do work she once volunteered for out of love - provide home health services to Jesuits.
"I've been involved in health care with the guys for 17 years, including my volunteer time at Creighton Prep," explains Terry. "I was pregnant with our fourth child in 1984 and would go over on Saturdays to see some of the elder guys who needed a few extra things done."
With a background in public health nursing and a clinical specialty in gerontology, her skills were perfect for the task.
"The premise was that I was there for the elderly guys. Then we started having guys travel more, so I would check to see that they had their immunizations. Once they knew I was in the building they started stopping in to ask for Morna for advice" - a nickname crafted for her that stood for Mother RN.
Terry thought it was interesting when the Wisconsin Province Jesuits hired Ruth Springob as director of health services in 1992. Then Ruth approached her in 1993 and said the province was ready to hire someone in the Omaha area full-time to coordinate health care services there.
Terry thought that was intriguing - intriguing enough to leave her position of 12 years as the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Gerontology Division director. "I loved my job," she says. "I told them the only thing that would make me leave is to go take care of the Jesuits," - a job she loves even more.
She set up a clinic on the second floor of the Creighton University Jesuit residence, wondering how she would fill her time. Between updating medical records and seeing patients "I wasn't there more than a couple of weeks when I was always busy.
"Ruth really let me develop the position as I thought it would work in Omaha. Her role in Milwaukee was more administrative. My role is more of a hands-on clinician. The office became kind of a walk-in clinic."
The first time she went into the residential cloister there was measured uneasiness on the part of the Jesuit requiring care. He asked her to announce "woman in the cloister" as she passed through the doors, down the hallway, and a third time outside his room. Times changed quickly.
"Now the men expect if they leave a message that they're not feeling well that I will come to their rooms unannounced. "I'm up and down the hallway all the time now."
Her life and the lives of the Jesuits she treats have been enriched in
surprising ways. Picture a woman in her third trimester of
pregnancy examining a frail, elder priest experiencing foot pain. As she holds his foot in her hands, it presses gently against her stomach. The baby kicks.
"What was that?" asks the priest. Terry explains it is the baby kicking and moving about inside her. "Could I have permission to put my hand on your abdomen and feel the baby move?" the priest asks sheepishly.
"It was a most precious moment," Terry recalls. "Here is this man at maybe the frailest part of his life with his hands on my tummy and my daughter's kicking and moving. And he says to me 'that has to be most blessed moment of your life to know that creation is there.' And I always thought he so reverenced the life I was carrying."
For Terry, the work is all about trust and relationships. "I think it is the greatest privilege to have the men entrust with me things they are concerned about, things they might not want to say out loud to someone else, and to get to know who they are as a person.
"Each one, the young Jesuits, the older guys, any of them - there's no one way to take care of them. They all have such individual personalities. I'm there as their best friend, their best advisor. If they choose something different, it's not because of something I failed to do, it's because they have a choice."
No two days are alike and anything can happen. One day she is taking a routine blood sugar count to update the health data base in Milwaukee, the next she's helping two Jesuits in from Africa battle malaria.
"It truly creates a vocation to be a nurse and then to be able to incorporate that with men who have spirituality in their lives - it's a great match," she says. A labor of ever-deepening love.
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