Lepers

I have been reading a lot about St. Francis lately. He had a special devotion to helping lepers. He even had a little encampment of them and there is a story of him embracing a leper – which initially utterly disgusted him. He is not the only one to do such things, though. St. Francis’s brothers also helped the lepers and St. Clare, with Francis’s help ran a little hospital. St. Damien of Molokai started a colony in Hawaii. Catherine of Siena is said to have drank a bowl of a woman’s wound drainage to allow herself to be less disgusted. Mother Teresa helped all sorts of ill; lepers, no doubt made up some of her group of sick and outcast. When reading the gospels, or even other books of the bible, there are stories such as the ten lepers, the man with the withered hand, Job getting blots on his skin; Naaman was told by the slave girl how to be healed, and Elisha encouraged him to wash in the river. All across our faith – before, during, and after Christ, are lepers or others with skin ailments that are healed.

Before I was a nurse there were people that would speak of these stories; they would soon follow with questions? What happened to these people? Why don’t we hear of this anymore? Some might answer that it is advanced medicine. Others might say leprosy is dying out. Still, there are more people who will say that these issues are of the third world, or of the past. None of these answers are true.

First of all, despite medical advancements, many people have skin ailments; even if not always leprosy, per se, the ailments exist. Some ailments have better treatments than others. Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, still exists. It is true that this is generally not found in advanced societies, but it is in our world (and it is carried by Armadillo’s). Though it is a fact that most true lepers are in the third world, not all are. There are ‘lepers’ of another sort that are not in the third world, but right here in Western society and the modern day.

As a nurse, I see many people with wounds. Some are from pressure. Some are from infection. Some are surgical wounds that won’t heal. Sometimes poor circulation is to blame while in other situations diabetes is at fault. Immobility causes wounds, especially to the sacral/coccyx areas (the butt). All types of wounds can get infected or infection from inside the body can come out in an abscess. We also cannot forget malignant wounds. This is where cancer protrudes through the skin. While technically not a wound, many people have colostomies (or other ostomies) where there is a hole on the abdomen and poop comes out into a bag.

All sorts of wounds are found in society. As a hospice nurse, I see these wounds almost every day I go to work. However, these wounds are almost never true leprosy. While not factually lepers, people with these wounds are often lepers nonetheless. Some people, even those that are not confined to a bed, or even hospice patients, will not head out into society. I have heard people say things like “I stopped going out years ago because I was embarrassed by this”. I have heard, “I didn’t know what a doctor would think so I never went”. I have heard, “The smell is too humiliating. I can’t be seen in public like this.” Does one have to actually have the disease of leprosy to be a leper? Can leprosy be a social status? I think it is one in our world, and it is not just the third world. It is not just the poor countries. Even people with lots of money and advanced medicine face these issues.

Lepers are everywhere. Even where people don’t have a skin disease, people are often outcasts for some reason. Who is a leper in your community? How can you reach out to them? Let us all pray for the social lepers of our world.