Charles Leonard Wical 

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Life began at St. Helena Hospital in St. Helena, California, on July 27, 1934, followed in 1938 with a move to Orange Grove Street in Loma Linda, about half a block north of the town's railroad tracks. In my young, early summer days in Loma Linda, many pleasurable hours were spent at the College of Medical Evangelist swimming pool with friends. Thus we associated with many aspiring doctors. Grades 1-12 took place on the Loma Linda Academy campus with graduation in 1952.

Growing up, I was exposed to weekly "mission stories" and frequent "live missionary" presentations, which planted a desire in me to become a foreign missionary. My uncle, Alfred Wical '41, practicing in Banning, California, asked my dad and me to help him castrate their bull calf under local anesthesia. I was quite intrigued with the painless procedure, careful aseptic technique and especially with the instrument ties used to close the incision. This surgical “exposure” was probably the trigger that turned my thoughts toward a medical career.

At the beginning of my senior year, as a pre-med student at PUC, while assisting the incoming freshmen during their orientation and registration, I was attracted to Crystal, a pre-nursing student who had committed herself to mission service at age 11. We seemed to connect. Both of us were accepted to Loma Linda, she to the nursing school and I to the medical school. Before starting our first year at Loma Linda, however, we received permission from the nursing school to get married during Christmas break in 1956. She was a city girl who wanted to be a country girl. This became a reality during our first summer after marriage, which we spent camping in the woods while I earned school fees. During school year, I milked cows at the Loma Linda dairy to supplement our income. Two years at Loma Linda then two in Los Angeles were followed with College of Medical Evangelist graduation in 1960.

Anticipating mission service, we took advantage of the Deferred Mission Appointment plan, receiving a tuition grant of $1,000 and $1,250 respectively (essentially covering our full tuition) for our last two years of medical school. Moonlighting at one or more jobs, a common practice during our years in Los Angeles, paid our bills. We never went hungry and we left medical school with a vehicle, some furniture and no debt.

Charlie Morgan and I were recruited to join some medical alumni (Ron Laing '54 and Tom Brown '53) practicing in Willowdale (Toronto area), Canada, where Branson Hospital had recently opened. Growing up in Loma Linda, I had always wanted to see what winter was like, and this was my chance. Both Charlie and I took a rotating internship in Toronto. But internship stipends in Canada were so meager that Dr. Laing bankrolled me with $1,000 monthly which I repaid during the following year of practice with him.

This was agreeable to the General Conference since they didn't need us in the mission field yet and wanted me to get more medical experience. During internship I completed the third part of National Boards and the Canadian LMCC exam, opening the possibility of medical reciprocity with many foreign medical licensing boards.

During that first year of practice with Dr. Laing, the GC sent us the invitation to go to Africa, as relief workers, to free tired missionaries for furlough or study leave, etc. They said we would be able to visit several institutions during that first five-year term, then, on our second term, we would be able to choose which institution we would like to settle down at.

In the fall of 1962 we embarked by freighter from New York with our two children, about $100 leftover cash in our pockets, and no debt (except our obligation of seven years of mission service to the GC). This freighter had no luxuries and the only possible pleasurable feature, the food service, was, in general, horrible (the crew often pitched their meals overboard then retreated to their quarters for a meal of crackers and spirits). Many times we elected to eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches. After six weeks of sailing, we disembarked at Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika (which subsequently became Tanzania), then traveled west for three days by slow train to Kigoma, the end of the rail line, on Lake Tanganyika (just five miles from Ujiji, where Stanley met Dr. Livingstone). From there we were picked up by Dr. Walter Birkenstock (the South Africa graduate whom I was relieving), and transported up to Heri Mission Hospital, a two-hour drive up the mountains.

Of course I was completely green as a hospital administrator and the only physician of an institution. But one has to start somewhere and I was anxious to dig in. Medically, I learned that one must become a jack of all trades, managing a variety of cases. Dr. Birkenstock had saved several typical surgical cases to initiate me: a thyroidectomy, a suprapubic prostatectomy, a cataract, VVF (vesical-vaginal fistula), and others (spinal anesthetic for all major surgeries located below the diaphragm, and, with all other cases, local anesthesia). An emergency bowel perforation (typhoid) and a couple C-sections were icing on the cake during the 10 days before I was alone. (“See one, do one.") During medical school and internship, I had, under close supervision done one T & A, one B-K amputation, and one appy. Of course, during training and my one year of practice, I had held retractors and assisted on a numerous variety of surgeries. Still, I was pretty inexperienced to be holding the knife. I really experienced that “alone” feeling during my first inguinal hernia repair. (Embarrassingly, my first thyroidectomy took 6 hours.)

Being the administrator, out-patient physician, satellite clinic supervisor, surgeon, accountant, ambulance (Land Rover pick-up truck) driver, transport supply officer and driver, mechanic, occasional preacher, and other titles was an excellent learning and training experience. I enjoyed it, and with God's help, supported by my wife, two expatriate nurses, two trained African workers (a midwife and a medical assistant) and a staff of indigenous workers, we functioned well while Dr. Birkenstock was away on his 18-month study leave. It was during this time that I delivered our third child (at home, although we had planned a hospital delivery).

Our next relief assignment was at Yuka Mission Hospital in neighboring Northern Rhodesia. After that move we discovered that moving a family in Africa is a difficult exercise, so we requested to remain in Yuka to finish out our first five year term. Our fourth child was born at Yuka a few days after Northern Rhodesia became Zambia. Dr. Gordon Marsa (South Africa graduate and 1980 Loma Linda resident) joined us, easing the medical load. Like Heri Hospital, Yuka Hospital provided an excellent opportunity to gain experience, with an enjoyable surgical practice which balanced all the other responsibilities of a 75-bed hospital. We appreciated God's ever-constant presence. By the end of our five-year term, however, we were tired, and eagerly anticipating our furlough. We stretched our furlough into a two-year anesthesia residency at Loma Linda. During that time I was able to critique my surgical techniques by observing the experts at work. There was essentially no difference. Crystal had been home-schooling the children in Africa and it pleased us that the kids adjusted well at a school in Loma Linda.

Following the anesthesia residency, the GC, although they had promised to give us a choice, asked us to return to Yuka Hospital. (If we had been given our choice, Yuka would have been at the end of the list). Dr. John Werner (South African graduate and 1976 Loma Linda resident) had recently arrived (having just completed his internship) and was holding Yuka Hospital together when we joined him. Two years later, we were asked to transfer to Kanye Hospital in Botswana (200 beds and two physicians), to be the medical director and pilot of the Kalahari Flying Doctor Service. (As a side-note, it took more than a year, with significant rain destruction and damage, for our household goods to transfer from Yuka to Kanye—an example of why a move is distained!)

Kanye Hospital responsibilities were exhausting, including the fun part, flying. We would be airborne (a crew of two nurses) every other week for three or four days, flying out 300-400 miles into the vast Kalahari Desert, setting up and taking down our consulting room-and-pharmacy mobile clinic under the aircraft wings or in a small shelter or school room 2-3 times a day, averaging 100 patients. These were challenging and interesting days. The government graded out and fenced landing strips for us at many locations, or we would land on a pan (dry lake bed) near village populations.

My most difficult day was at a Namibia border post, wading through 120 patients in six-hour (that’s an average of three minutes for each) assembly-line style, deciding on and writing a treatment plan for each, a truly unacceptable quality of medical practice, but a necessary adaptation for that circumstance. Treatment options were simple and limited to what we carried in the aircraft: anticipated medicines, a minor surgery pack (circumcision, lipoma excision, foreign body removal, etc.), and a set of dental instruments for extractions. Near the end of our six-year service term we were able to recruit a student missionary pilot, Dan Clifford, from Pacific Union College. He had his private pilot’s license, could fly commercial, instrument, and multi-engine, and had flying instructor ratings, all before the age of 19. He could relieve me and would fly my colleague, Dr. Harold Frank (Mexico graduate), for the fun desert clinics. Subsequently, we rotated the flying responsibilities.

When furlough was due, we requested a permanent return status so we could educate our children in the United States. We settled in Turlock, California, where I practiced anesthesia (with Leon Allen '54) for 10 years. California’s medical politics bothered me, so we decided on a move to Juneau, Alaska, where I practiced anesthesia for an additional four years, at which time our youngest child (Yuka Hospital delivery) had graduated from physical therapy school at Loma Linda. During the previous year we decided to make ourselves available to go where we could do some good. Thus, in 1987, we accepted an invitation to serve at Mwami Hospital in Zambia, Africa, associated with Don Ashley '77-A, medical director, his wife, Shirley ’78-A, and Oliver Pogue, ’53-B (doing short-term relief). After about 18 months at Mwami, we were asked to return as medical director of Yuka Hospital (another move—but this time we and our belongings traveled together) where we had worked 18 years earlier.

During furlough in 1990, I was diagnosed with a spinal cord tumor (an AVM) at T7-T9 level. In Loma Linda this was surgically teased out (along with a few adherent spinal cord tracts) creating considerable sensory and motor deficits in my lower extremities, leaving me partially crippled. I received first-class care, was fitted with a lower leg brace, and received about six weeks of rehabilitation. Then we returned to Yuka Hospital. A year later we were asked to establish a general practice facility in Zambia's capital, Lusaka (another move—but again we went with our belongings).

In 1993 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and voted another permanent return from the mission field. For treatment I chose the new proton radiation therapy at Loma Linda. After treatment, I took a job with the California prison system in Susanville until I retired in Prescott, Arizona, in 2002. During the next three years we returned to Africa for 3-5 months of relief service on four occasions.

In 2004, eleven years post proton therapy, I was diagnosed with an aggressive recurrence of the prostate cancer with extension into the bladder (but no detectable metastases). Recommended salvage surgery at Loma Linda removed the prostate and bladder, and was followed by chemotherapy. Now, five and a half years post surgery/chemo, I have no detectable recurrence, for which I praise God.

Crystal and I celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary and we are active in the Prescott Seventh-day Adventist Church, currently facilitating our 5th CHIP (lifestyle change) program for the community. We are so blessed and thank God daily for the ability to serve in some capacity, doing what we can, with what we have left.