SAY `AAH-MEN': Nun has dual role

"If patients ask me, I tell them to call me `Sister Mary,'" she said, smiling. "But I became a doctor before I became a sister."

The soft-spoken, 38-year-old native of Binghamton recently joined the staff of Seton Health's Family Health Center in Cohoes. A specialist in internal medicine, she spent the past five years at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, Conn., after earning her medical degree from SUNY-Syracuse and completing her residency at the University of Rochester.

New vows

"When I was younger, I always took a lot of dance lessons, so my major my first year of college was in dance," she explained. Though raised a Catholic, "I didn't have a personal relationship with God."

During college, Sister Mary began to realize that life as a dancer wasn't fulfilling. She missed studying and wanted to try something else -- and medicine fit the bill.

"It just brought a sense of fulfillment," she said.

Change in course

She decided she wanted to learn more about her faith -- and, at the same time, took a year off from college to recover from the burnout from her load of pre-med courses.

She volunteered to teach religious education to first-graders at her parish. When a traveling priest came to give a parish mission, she opted to go even though she had no idea what a parish mission was.

"He just impressed me so much," she remembered. Though she's forgotten his name, she recalled that "God was totally the center of his life. Before that, I had always looked at priesthood and becoming a sister as a waste of a life. But when I saw how much in love with God he was, I understood what a religious vocation was all about."

Vocation

"Part of the mission was adoration, so I was praying and thinking about this priest and how much I'd like to have what he had," she told The Evangelist. "It hit me that I was offering God these pieces, but the priest had given Him everything. I thought God wanted me to do the same thing."

Laughing with her friends a few hours later, she thought she must have been crazy to come up with that idea. "The world speaks loudly," she said wryly.

But over the next few months, she found herself battling with the thought, unable to let it go. In time, she said, "it became obvious to me God was inviting me to become a sister, and I had to decide if I was going to accept the invitation."

Two roles

Sister Mary spent the three years of her residency living with the Daughters of Charity in Rochester. Thinking back, she remarked that her friends did think the combination of career and vocation was a bit unusual -- but "it's so much a part of who I am! I'm so used to it being this way, I don't think about it."

While Sister Mary was interested in pediatric medicine and gynecology, she chose to specialize in internal medicine -- general adult medicine -- because of the wide variety of cases she'd see. She hopes to use her skills in a Third World country someday and wants to get more experience in the other fields to prepare for that.

New places

Bridgeport is "quite different from upstate New York," she said politely. "Our [order's] charism is service to the poor, so there's a lot of opportunity for ministry there!

"In Bridgeport, a lot of the patients I saw were elderly with a lot of problems or young and addicted to drugs. Here, the patient base is different. I see the gamut of ages and economic status; things like acne and migraine headaches, I would never see there."

Practice

"I don't know if the `sister' part plays a role," she commented.

Being in religious life definitely affects the doctor herself. On her cluttered desk sit a tiny statue of the Blessed Mother and a plaque of the Sacred Heart that proclaims, "The charity of Jesus crucified presses us."

"I'm definitely not just the scientist," she observed. "Prayer is definitely a part of my day."

Parish work

She was enthusiastic about the group: Two Friday evenings a month, high school- and college-aged teens spend 20 minutes in the church's adoration chapel, then hear a guest speaker, discuss the talk, and have refreshments, prayer and music. Anywhere from five to 12 youth have come to the group so far.

"It's good for them to meet other young people interested in their faith," said Sister Mary.

The doctor also noted that it's nice to put down her stethoscope sometimes: "Everyone needs a place where they can just go and be a person."

To that end, she chuckled about fellow women religious at home who ask for medical advice. Sister Mary said she usually responds, "Call your doctor!"

(The young adult hour of prayer at St. Paul's in Troy is held in the chapel from 7:30-8:30 p.m. the first and third Fridays of every month. For information, call Dan Kehn at 274-3150.)

(12-06-01) [[In-content Ad]]