Milwaukee Catholic Herald – Vocations 1-16-03

HEALTH CARE MINISTER — Sr. Phyllis Franzen visits with Anita Divala at the Johnston Primary Care Clinic in Milwaukee, where the School Sisters of St. Francis responds to telephone callers who have health concerns. Many years in Honduras offered Franzen the chance to learn the Spanish language, which she commonly uses in her nursing ministry.(Photo by Sam Lucero)

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MILWAUKEE — Working as a nurse for almost 50 years has provided Sr. Phyllis Franzen many facets of a career that also includes convent life and missionary work.

Nursing "can be looked at as a career, but at the same time making people whole. Bringing wholeness out of them is a wonderful vocation," said the School Sister of St. Francis. It has also allowed her to travel "to wonderful places, to meet wonderful people. . . I may not see Christ in everyone, but respect the person," states Franzen.

She has been fortunate to see results. When young mothers bring their children to Johnston Primary Care Clinic in Milwaukee, where Franzen now works, she realizes that she most likely gave the mothers their baby shots years ago.

Interest in nursing began with an uncle who was a doctor in rural Iowa with an office in his house and the waiting room next to the family kitchen. When she visited, she watched her aunt serving as nurse. At a young age, Franzen was excited to receive a nursing kit for Christmas. She still connects to that early desire when she picks up a nursing instrument.

When this Chicago-raised high school junior entered the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee, she asked to be a nurse and hoped to also be a missionary. Graduating in 1954 in nursing, she worked at Sacred Heart Sanitarium.

In 1960, she went to Honduras and stayed for nine years. In isolated La Libertad, she worked with an international team at a government supported mission clinic, easing her way through the language barrier.

"We prayed together in Spanish," she said. "We were with patients and their families who were always around. We assisted in surgery, the delivery room and in the emergency room. I taught student nurses in Spanish without studying the language."

On Sundays, the sisters went out to mission churches to teach catechism to the children or to orphanages to prepare children for First Communion.

Conditions in the countryside were primitive by U.S. standards, said Franzen. "People came from a distance and families could stay at the clinic. We always gave them a tray of food. There was much malnutrition. They were so depressed ... and the children would often sing for food. Parasites were a common problem and many children were poisoned from pesticide dusting."

The sisters would occasionally have to treat people with serious machete wounds. All they could do was give them pain medicine and send them to the hospital in the next town, said Franzen. At that time they had to cross six rivers to get there.

The experience in Honduras was a valuable part of life for Franzen. It reminded her "when Jesus came on earth, this is the environment he was in. He wore sandals, people cooked outdoors."

A dilemma for her at this time was, "'Should I make things better by bringing them things we have here (in the United States)?' I didn't resolve the conflict," she stated. "I still have a conflict of how much of the U.S. to bring."

Life in Honduras provided Franzen with a "cultural baptism."

It was the result "of many encounters with truly human people of Honduras; people who were poor, but shared, people without formal education, but with beautiful talents ... people without the church's presence, but with faith to share."

With her Central American experience, Franzen was a natural to work with the Hispanic community. After a short stint with public health nursing in Colorado, Franzen returned to Milwaukee to work as a pediatric nurse practitioner at the old county emergency clinic at 24th and Wisconsin. For 12 years, she worked at the Guadalupe clinic until it closed in 1986. She would see sick children, act as administrator and fund-raiser, was the social person for volunteers and developed staff to take over the WIC (Women, Infant, Children) and maternity program.

Franzen took time out to nurse her dying mother and then had the tables turn as she dealt with a bout with cancer in 1985. Although her mother's interest in China sparked a lifelong desire to work in that country, Franzen never accomplished that dream but did visit China several years ago with a brother and sister-in-law who were teaching there. Currently, Franzen has joined her brothers and other family members on a trip to Chile.

Her career work has also included a year-long study on health care needs of the Hispanic community, when she interviewed agencies and individuals. She worked with the parish nurse program that "helped to bring spirituality to the community and is most positive."

At Johnston Primary Care clinic, she works two days on telephone triage (responding to all patients who call about a medical or health need) and a day with diabetics. As a Spanish-speaking person, Franzen teaches classes and translates information.

"During any one hour, I can be involved in five to six completely different situations and different personalities," she said. "It could be a frail woman living alone, who has just fallen and can't walk ... or a drug seeker looking for a narcotic -- all with their own pain and all needing my full attention."

Although she's old enough to retire, the thought does not enter Franzen's mind. "At 70 years old, I don't see the point in needing to quit when I have something to offer in the work of carrying on Christ's healing ministry," she said. "There is creation theology that nursing relates to, on a cellular level, a tissue level... the whole aspect of healing now in this age. It is always a people kind of thing, a healing, a wholeness kind of thing. The work we do is God's work. God heals, builds, creates."