The last days are upon us

In light of recent events which have led to some people leaving the church, I wish to warn my grandchildren of things that will surely come to pass. 

A number of years ago a member of a stake presidency embezzled millions of dollars from some good friends and members of his ward. He was convicted and served 7 years in prison and has yet to repay the money that he stole.

The news is replete with episodes of a similar nature. In addition, the church will be mis-characterized as allowing and condoning inappropriate behavior as a recent article from the Associated Press which made headlines across the nation. I wrote this letter to my friends. It contains some points that you might consider in evaluating situations that may occur.

"My Dear Friends,

I have heard of your trials from afar.  If it were possible, I would remove them from you.  After some thought and contemplation I offer the following in hopes that it will in some way be a soothing balm and let you know that I still regard you as my friends and fellow travelers on the road to Christ.

There is adequate historical evidence that leaders in the church can go astray and cause pain to the flock of Christ.  I have been recently rereading the New Testament and Jesus the Christ. Although Jesus personally chose his apostles, one closely associated with him, betrayed him, and it was over money.

In the time of Joseph Smith, Warren Parrish, Joseph's secretary misappropriated money entrusted to him and caused the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society and a great apostasy from the church in Kirtland and it was over money.

There are a few church members who do now and will in the future take advantage of their membership in the church and their positions of leadership to deceive and steal money, property, and possessions from unsuspecting fellow saints.  Even the very elect may be led astray. 

I recently heard of a family that came to America from a Scandinavian country to Utah in the early days. They sold all that they had and came to Ellis Island with some missionaries. When they disembarked the missionaries offered to exchange their money for them.  The missionaries never returned and absconded with the family's money, their entire savings. Because of this many descendants left the church.

There are many trials to come to individual members of the church.  Each and every member of the church will be tried and tested to see if they will stand firm in spite of all things that they will have thrown their way.

Christ said that the servant was no greater than the master.  Thus we can expect to be betrayed and misunderstood from both within and without the church.  Hopefully that will not happen often in our lives.  We will be given individualized and customized challenges to bring us to Christ.  For those like me we have to learn to rely solely upon the Lord and not on our own strength.

We must be like Job and say, “The Lord giveth and taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The promise to the faithful is that what we lose will be restored to us many fold if we maintain our integrity.

If we believe in the promise, we can go on with our life.

What do we do with those people who have wronged us?  We forgive them. This is probably the most difficult thing to do.  We would like to see justice done in this life.  When we feel betrayed and taken advantage of, we want to see our sense of justice exercised.  The hardest thing to do is leave things in the hand of the eternal lawgiver.

There are two scriptures that we need to remember.  “I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”  The other is, “Let the Lord judge between thee and me and reward thee according to thy works.”  We thus leave everything to the Lord and it takes the burden from our shoulders.  He will judge righteous judgment.  We want Him to be fair with us not only in our case, but he also will avenge us of our wrongs.  You can be assured of that.  I find that this is the most difficult test of our integrity.  We cannot let the actions of others determine our eternal salvation.   

I hope that you will not let the actions of one individual jeopardize your eternal salvation.

Sincerely,

Your friend in the gospel of Christ."

 

With my love,

Grandpa 

 

Introduction to Dr. Laurence Gee

 

Introduction to Dr. Laurence Gee

I received my medical school training at the University of Utah.  During my senior year of medical school, the obstetrical department of the LDS hospital employed me.  That year the hospital did not have enough interns to staff the labor and delivery department so they hired senior medical students to cover from 7:00 pm to 7:00am.  I worked every third night and delivered over 500 babies and assisted on numerous other deliveries during that time. 

I completed a rotating internship at the Dee Memorial Hospital in Ogden and completed two years of pediatric residency at the University of Utah Affiliated Hospitals.  During my first year of pediatric residency the hospital in Ogden did not have enough interns to staff the emergency room, so I worked one night a week in the emergency room in Ogden.

Once I completed my training in pediatrics, I opened a private practice for the diseases of Infants, Children and Adolescents in the town of Lander, Wyoming.  The population at that time was approximately 7,000.  There were about 30,000 people in the surrounding county area.  When I went into practice in 1965, I was the fifth pediatrician in the State of Wyoming and the only one in the western half of the state.

Wyoming is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States.  The area is 97,814 sq mi
(253,348 km2)  - 

Width 280 miles (450 km)  - 

Length 360 miles (581 km)

Inasmuch as there were a number of people that did not want to go to the other doctors in the town, I took care of all ages of patients and also delivered babies.  Not long after I arrived, the veterinarians had a convention in Jackson, Wyoming and there were none in town.  A patient of mine had a horse that ran into a barbed wire fence and cut her shoulder.  She was a prize racehorse and so I was asked to sew up the horse’s shoulder.  I joked that it was ok, because the horse was only 3 years old.

I had been trained to take out tonsils and adenoids and put tubes in ears.  None of the doctors in Lander were trained to put tubes in ears, so that was something new to them.  No one had ever done an exchange transfusion for hypebilirubinemia of the newborn due to erythroblastosis fetalis,  so I did the first one in that hospital.  I had a patient with Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and wanted to do a bone marrow aspiration, but there was no bone marrow needle in the hospital, so I had to improvise.

We had a small 40 bed hospital when I first came to Lander.  They later built a 100-bed hospital.

I was drafted into the Navy as served as the base pediatrician at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California and took call in the obstetrical department at night and delivered babies and assisted at c-sections. 

I was a founding member of the Wyoming Pediatric Society. 

I trained residents, interns and child health associates and physicians assistants in my office in Lander, Wyoming.

Appointments

Pediatric Consultant to Wyoming Children’s Health Services, 1965 to 1996

Alternate Chapter Chairman Wyoming Chapter, American Academy of   Pediatrics 1976-1977

Chapter Chairman Wyoming Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics 1977-1983

President and Founding Member of Wyoming Pediatric Society, 1977-1983

Chief of Staff Bishop Randall Hospital, Lander Wyoming 1970-1972 

Chief of Pediatrics Bishop Randall Hospital, Lander Wyoming      1968-1986, 1990 to 1996.

Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics, University of Wyoming 1980-7

Wyoming Representative to and Council Member of American Academy of Pediatrics District VIII Perinatal Committee, 1990 to 1996

Pediatric Consultant to Wyoming Deaf and Blind Services 1985 to 1996

Medical Director Morning Star Manor Nursing Home, Ft. Washakie 1990-1997

Missionary Medical Advisory Committee, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 2003-Present

 

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

Diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics since 1972         

Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1973          

Fremont County Medical Society 1965-1997

Wyoming State Medical Society 1965-1997

Irish and American Pediatric Society 1996-2000

The new face of medicine

 

The new face of medicine
Or what you need to do in today's environment

Recent events have brought to my attention what you, my posterity need to be aware of with the changes in American medicine.

First you need to be in charge of your own medical records. Since the advent of Hillary Clinton's meddling into the health care scene with the passage of HIPA. We have seen a rise in the schism between the patient and the physician. There has been a loss of trust.

When a patient requested his medical records, we used to give them freely. Now they are sold back to the patient. The process that one has to go through now to obtain medical information is complicated and time consuming and at times frustrating.

The time was when the doctor kept the record and was the repository of your medical records and information. When he closed his practice, he passed them on to his successor or notified the patient to pick up their records.

Now that Obama care is in place electronic medical records are going to be mandatory. You are supposed to be given a copy of the visit with a diagnosis and treatment given or prescribed.

I have received calls in the missionary department from returned missionaries who need their immunization records. They have not kept track of their records and have expected the church to keep their records for them. They are disappointed when I have to tell them that I cannot assist them.

My suggestion is that you make a file and keep a record of all of your immunizations and record your visits to the doctor and hospital. A hard copy is good, but with today's technology you can keep it on the hard drive of your computer and back up to at least two flash drives. The technology may change in the future, so adapt to that.

If you do not take charge of your own data, you will eventually be frustrated and disappointed.

By being the keeper of your own medical records you can then transfer from one medical home to another and not have to try and remember dates, illnesses, surgeries, and hospitalizations.

One man once told me, "a dull pencil is better than a sharp mind." Keep a document of every illness, hospital visit, dental encounter and medical procedure that you have.

I suggest that you be fully immunized.  You should keep a written record of all immunizations. There should be a backup copy of these records.

Here is a list of the immunizations that you should receive.
Tdap every 5 years or DT ever 10 years
MMR one series is enough
Hepatitis A and B
If you have not had either then there is a combination vaccine called Twinrix
Polio, one series is enough
Chicken Pox (Varicella) unless you had the disease.
For young missionaries get meningococcal meningitis vaccine or if you are going to college and living in a dorm.

These immunizations should be obtained. They are recommended by the first presidency and council of the twelve and by grandpa.

Keep your records.  Recently I learned that electronic medical records can be deleted after 7 years.  This from the Internet.

"Medical records shall be retained for at least seven years. Medical records of minors shall be kept until the age of eighteen plus four years, but in no case less than seven years. (d) The Hospital may destroy medical records after retaining them for the minimum time period."

Spiritual Cerumen

 

Recently I woke up and had trouble hearing out of my right ear.  My right ear is the good ear, and the left is the one I have trouble hearing out of.  I touched my face and felt pressure in my right ear that was not present in the left.  I knew something was wrong and wanted to get my otoscope out and look into my right ear, but my eye was not on a stalk like that of a snail, so I had to rely on someone else to look for me.  Fortunately, I was able to secure an appointment with my ENT doctor that day and he found my ear canal was clogged and obstructed with cerumen or ear wax, for those of you who are not familiar with medical terminology.

He removed the cerumen and I immediately felt relief and my hearing was restored to normal.  This was the first time in my life that this had happened to me.  It was a simple procedure and was quickly accomplished.

We often have spiritual cerumen build up in our spiritual ears until it obstructs our ability to hear the word of the Lord through the still small voice of the Holy Ghost.

When I was in high school our choir sang this song which repeats the words “Hear the word of the Lord”.

In instructing the church, the Lord says in the Doctrine and Covenants 46: 17-19 that we will receive information through the Spirit. We must then have ears to hear before our hearts receive understanding.

 

What is this spiritual cerumen that dampens our hearing of the spiritual whisperings? It is the roar of the crowd and the mocking of the great and spacious building.  It is the praying and not listening.  It is the failure to read, ponder and pray. Just as our body builds up and secretes earwax (cerumen) little by little until it obstructs the ear canal and interferes with our physical ability to hear, the ability to “Hear Him” is impaired by spiritual cerumen. Thus, we have ears to hear, but hear not.

 

So, my grandchildren, keep your ears clean!

 

Love,

Grandpa