For six years, Dr. Komi Folly was able to deliver lifesaving medical supplies and surgical treatment to those in need in his native Togo, West Africa, in large part because of the shared altruism of one colleague he met in Tulsa.
The endeavor evolved into a full-fledged nonprofit Folly called “Light in the World Development Foundation.”
But now his world has been plunged into darkness.
He is haunted by one of their final conversations.
Haunted by how many more lives his friend and mentor, Dr. Preston Phillips, could have saved had his own life not been cut short by a madman with a gun.
Everything changed on Wednesday evening.
Folly had just finished with his last patient in the emergency room when an active shooter alert rippled across the massive campus surrounding Saint Francis Hospital.
In his office, his phone rang — first it was his daughter calling to check on him. Then it was a representative from the local company that provides free prosthetics for joint repair surgeries on their medical mission trips, frantic because he could not get ahold of Phillips.
People are also reading…
Folly hung up and tried dialing.
“Usually when I call him, the phone does not ring three times before he answers,” Folly said. “I call him. It rings like five times — nothing. I call, and I call.”
Within a few minutes, the signal came that people could move about, so Folly darted back to the emergency room.
The phone rang once more, but this time it was one of the surgical technicians for whom Phillips always covered airfare costs for mission trips to Togo.
She was crying hysterically.
“‘Dr. Folly, Dr. Phillips did not make it.’ My world, everything became dark for me,” Folly said, recounting the dreadful moment without prompting. “It’s not that I lost a coworker. I lost a father, I lost a mentor. I never in my life have somebody like Dr. Phillips — so talented, so humble, so passionate, Christian.
“His peace is contagious. His love is contagious. His smile is imbued with understanding.”
Colleagues first, the two men became bonded as friends in 2016 when they took on a particularly complicated medical case that was bleak from the onset.
The patient, Folly recalled, came in with a septic infection in his knee and was extremely hypotensive.
But Phillips took the man into the operating room and then Folly oversaw his long, hard-won recovery in the hospital.
“I called him and said, `We are sending him home,” Folly said. “That was the first time he called me son. He said, ‘Son, I will be there.’ From that moment, he never called me Komi, he never called me Dr. Folly. He called me son and I called him father.
“Every time after that I call him, I say `I just sent the patient home.’ He would come and shake my hand and say `We did it!’”
Meeting a fellow physician who was driven not by paychecks, but by purpose and the satisfaction that comes from helping others prompted Folly to share with his friend about stark differences between the medical resources and care available in America and his native Togo.
There, he had once witnessed a hemorrhaging woman die because of a lack of access to protective medical examination gloves — something he would never encounter working in Tulsa.
He also told Phillips, who specialized in orthopedics, how it is commonplace for women in Togo to earn a household’s primary income by carrying heavy merchandise, sometimes atop their heads, to market.
“By the age of 40 or 50, they have completely turned their knees and they become disabled. Poverty ramps up and it affects the entire family,” Folly recalled telling his friend over lunch one day.
Phillips’ response was simple.
“He said, `This is not normal. We can fix it.’”
Light in the World was founded, complete with 501(c)(3) tax exemption for charitable organizations and eventually, diplomatic status in Togo to allow for easier mission travel from the U.S., sometimes three or four times a year.
They secured extensive support for their work from a medical equipment and supplies program of the Rotary Club District 6110, OMNI life science Inc. and Saint Francis Health System.
In fact, Phillips’ longtime favorite surgical table from Tulsa was donated and shipped all the way to Togo, where it is still used today.
Folly’s smile was practically audible as he recalled how donating the old table was actually a ploy by Saint Francis executives to get Phillips to give it up so a new, more technologically advanced one could be brought into the operating room he and other surgeons use.
“This is his table, he liked it, he want to keep it,” Folly said. “Saint Francis come to him and say, ‘What if we donate that table to Light in the World?’ He said, you got me. Donate that one.”
People from all over Togo and even neighboring countries including Ghana and Burkina Faso come for treatment during Light in the World’s mission trips.
Folly fondly recalls one early mission trip when a woman woke up from joint replacement surgery overjoyed for the help she had received.
“She woke up laughing and laughing, she was so happy. So Dr. Phillips was laughing,” Folly said. “This is a guy who bought his own ticket to come far and give life to people. He was so happy not because someone was going to pay him, but because of the life-changing happiness his work brought to people.”
Their next mission trip was scheduled for June 23. They were scheduled to operate on 25 people over five days.
Folly got emotional when he recounted how Phillips brought up the subject of the future during one of their very last conversations, held over lunch in the physicians lounge at Saint Francis.
“Last Friday, we were eating. He said ‘Listen to this, Son: You know I am older than you. If nature were to take somebody first, it might be me. In case something happened to me, you are to continue this project,’” said Folly, nearly a decade Phillips' junior.
He said he responded by joking that they should continue their mission work together until they both are so old that their patients in Togo have to meet them at their airplane to help them off with their walkers.
“I did not know that was the last instruction of my father, my friend, my mentor,” he said, beginning to weep. “I didn’t know that was the last time. I didn't have the chance to say goodbye to him.”
To carry on, Folly must not only find a surgeon to take Phillips’ place, he must also find two things that seem even more elusive to him at the moment — enough hope and enough will to move forward.
“If this project stops, it’s like I betray him,” Folly said. “I am praying that I can go on for the people and that we continue his legacy to keep him alive.”
One legacy Phillips left behind in good stead for his friend and colleague is inspiration.
“When I heard that he was taking care of patients and died in his lab coat — because of who he represents for me — I don’t think I will ever be able to retire,” Folly said. “I will continue working until my last moment, so one day when we meet, I will say, 'Father, I continued the call of what you asked me to do.'”
But Folly must also contend with the legacy of a gunman, a disgruntled patient apparently enraged by post-operative pain from a surgery Phillips conducted only two weeks earlier.
That legacy is not only one of profound loss, but of devastation from seeing a life needlessly cut short — and the knowledge that Phillips should have had many more years of life-saving work ahead of him.
“This guy, he kill a lot of people — not just one person,” Folly said of the gunman.
Then he asked to share one final statement about his friend with the world.
“I have no words to describe Dr. Phillips and our relationship. I do not have that vocabulary — maybe somebody can borrow me some. I do not, I do not,” Folly said, crying. “I don’t know why God send him, why I had to meet him, why we are so close. Why? I don’t know why.
“I prefer not to know him than to suffer this way. But it is God’s way — and I accept it. I had a brief moment with him. And I know we are called to have faith.”
Featured video:
"colleague" - Google News
June 05, 2022 at 07:30AM
https://ift.tt/QItsk2m
Saint Francis doctor recalls fallen colleague: "He called me Son and I called him Father" - Tulsa World
"colleague" - Google News
https://ift.tt/FxJm7is
https://ift.tt/gOAYD9F
No comments:
Post a Comment