My Journey- Part I

In 1998, I was an exceptional African American doctor of medicine who believed spiritual healing and western medicine went hand in hand. Head of a hospital psychiatry department, I treated an inner city population that was starved for good care. Cared? Yes, I cared. These were my people. Creative? Yes, I had started and run Ohio’s first successful transition program for prisoners. It helped them transition back into their communities and prevent them from coming back to prison. And, I made of lot of money doing what I loved. Day in, day out, year after year, I stepped up and delivered without once faltering. My screen name was Healer.
Acting on wicked anonymous slanderous lies that I had hidden $ 400,000.00, IRS buried me in liens. Then an avalanche of evil descended upon me. Investigations sprung up out of nowhere. My high life was about to come down. Friends were scarce. Withdrawing her appearance, my counsel Denise called the Ohio Child Support Court a pit of vipers whose all-female staff was out to get me. It was unbelievable. I thought everybody liked me. But it only took an Eyewitness News exposes about me running on my birthday, disparaging my child support record, to make me realize this was not coincidental.
I wasn't surprised when my psychiatric practice dwindled and failed or when my personal life fell apart. Tanya was fed up. She and Vanessa (our daughter) moved in with her brother Joey. With heartbreaking honesty, Tanya said I had squandered their security with an affair. Memory was a cloud with all its facts and rationales about what had happened. Yet I had no clue why my life was thus unfolded. Everybody expected me to stay in Ohio and fight for my reputation; there were plans to put me in jail. But God winked. Days later, old friend Dr. Roman called and offered me a job in California where my search for justice turned into a real test of survival. I returned to my role as a Healer and embraced it with the passion of finding a lost love.
In May 1999, a tipsy blonde strolled up to my doorstep with sexual desires oozing from every pore in her body. She was lost and wanted to come in and use my telephone. While some men would have fallen on their knees and thanked heaven for a gift like this; but my initial reaction was “what's wrong with this picture?” Never before in my life have I been hanging at the crib and had a beauty queen ring the door bell, lusting for me like I was the Rock. Why now? Why me? Should I bite, or should I not? Then God winked, again.
This encounter was cut short by an emergency call from Shelly at my Clinic about a suicidal ex professional baseball player who wanted to kill himself. With Miss Cornucopia on my lap probing the recesses of my throat with her tongue, it was hard for me to concentrate. But when I called Babe Ruth, his friend told me this Babe had just made the worst mistake of his life and was certain he was going to jail. This Babe Ruth was a black man who couldn’t trust white people again. He would only talk to a black psychiatrist- in person.
How could I have turned him away? My own problems arose from a lie somebody told IRS about me. What were the odds, I had to ask myself that another black man with IRS problems would call this “particular” clinic with this “particular” problem, so similar to what I was facing myself. Depressed and forlorn, the friend said they were driving to my office from Sacramento. I agreed to be there to meet him. Dropping off Her Highness at a local drug store, I went to meet my new patient and his friend at the Clinic and stayed late into the evening.
Three months later, the Ohio Child Support Court asked the California Medical Board to suspend my medical license because of my child support arrearage. I could only have my California medical license reinstated by going back to Ohio and petitioning the Court. I'm no saint; but this was becoming Kafkaesque. God winked again. Five days later, I proved Ohio’s actions were illegal and because of the complaints I had filed about the official misconduct that linked the Ohio Child Support Judge who asked California for the suspension of my medical license to the men who spread the 400,000 dollar lie.
California immediately restored my license the next day. I rejoiced about going back to work but I realized I had been given a much larger blessing. God had anticipated the evil before it had sprung and had given me all I needed to answer it when it arrived. By this point, I had learned how and where to make official complaints but not yet how or what to do afterwards. When I knew God’s love anticipated what was going to happen. I changed my screen name to Percipience.