‘Three times a day,” I’m going to visit you, Michael Brescia, M.D., promised Angela, a woman who had been found under the FDR Drive in Manhattan. Dr. Brescia, who died late last month, was the executive medical director and co-founder of Calvary Hospital, a trailblazer in palliative care. Angela was but one example of the beauty of human life, about which he would tell anyone who would listen. He was trying to love — building an institution whose mission is to do the same — and he was looking at a culture that seems to have forgotten love for neighbor and stranger.
Calvary had gotten a call about Angela from another hospital in the city that didn’t want to take Angela because of how bad off she was. “She had no family, she wasn’t speaking. She was filthy,” Dr. Brescia recounted years later. He was leaving for a meeting in Washington, D.C., as she was coming in through the lobby. “She had a big tumor coming out of her back. She had chopped red hair, no teeth, little dentures here that were stuck, couldn’t get them out.” She had AIDS. And hepatitis. She needed a deep clean. The cancer-care technicians loved her back into life, restored her dignity. They even did her nails. Upon his return, Dr. Brescia was amazed by Angela’s transformation.
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