By Thea Jarvis

Susan Sendelbach joined St. Joseph Hospital pastoral care department three years ago. Formerly a campus minister at Emory University, Georgia State and Agnes Scott, she earned a graduate degree in theology from Catholic University and is completing a Doctor of Ministry degree from Emory University. Mornings find Susan at the Interfaith Ministry Institute in Marietta, a private counseling practice she co-directs with her husband, Jim. Afternoons at St. Joe's, she is on of 10 chaplains serving some 300 patients at the northside Atlanta facility.

Ms. Sendelbach has a very special concern for persons with AIDS.

"The issues are so intense," she explains, noting that such ministry includes not only the patient, but family and friends as well. It must even touch she says, other AIDS patients who follow the progress of the disease to see how it may eventually impact on them. The social controversy that surrounds AIDS and the terminal nature of the disease heightens the pressure felt by her patients. While persons with AIDS comprise only about 25 percent of her chaplaincy load, such patients require almost three times as much care and time.

Susan met her first two AIDS patients shortly after she came to St. Joseph's Hospital.

"I went looking for them," she says, smiling. "I felt they probably were lonely and needed somebody to make a special effort to meet them."

One of the men was seriously ill, and died soon after Susan met him. The other, an accomplished musician whose ties to the Church were close and strong, converted to Catholicism after the initial diagnosis was made. He was in and out of the hospital several times for treatment and care and died after receiving the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.

"He felt a lot of loving support" from the Church and those around him, Susan is happy to say. "You can't judge an individual, even if someone can find blame. You can't attack someone and not give them the ministry and care they need."

During her evening shift, the pace is slower than the hectic morning schedule common to most hospitals. Patients have more time on their hands, time sometimes spent worrying or visiting with anxiety-ridden family members. It is a time when fears and crises are faced.

"I offer patients a hopefulness based in realism, not ignorance of the facts," Susan says of her work. "I encourage them to put their energy into positive actions," reconciling with family and friends when necessary, setting their lives in order, even planning funerals. She tries to discover where patients are spiritually and help them build a closer relationship to God.

In ministering to AIDS patients, Ms. Sendelbach has consistently encountered open, loving people of depth and truth. "They've helped open my mind and challenged me to be more open."

One of her patients, the longest to live with Kaposi's sarcoma, a fast-spreading form of a normally mild skin cancer which appears in many AIDS victims, wanted "a crash course in God." He was burdened with a fearful image of God and was deeply "concerned about being forgiven," Susan remembers. She spent many hours dispelling his fears and reassuring him of forgiveness and hope. As he was dying, struggling for breath, he suddenly looked up and, with a radiant smile on his face, exclaimed, "Susan said there would be a light." He died with his hands outstretched, as if reaching for the light.

Susan finds "the emotional and spiritual state of a patient does help them." Enjoying life, traveling, spending quality time with people they are about is the difference between "experiencing the time they have versus waiting for death."

"It's important to know that most people do live a couple of years -- up to four years -- and research is still going on," she points out. Although it is considered a terminal illness, Ms. Sendelbach holds out hope that "something new will be found, miracles will happen."

She is also convinced that, in ministry to people with AIDS, demonstrative care is essential.

"I get more affectionate with (AIDS patients) than with others because they're so isolated from physical touch. They seem to want it."

Hugging a patient with AIDS is a lot more acceptable than it used to be, Susan explains. When she first began dealing with AIDS patients, there was "less education and a great deal of ignorance about taking precautions, being overcautious" about casual contact. While prejudice was a factor, even in health care of persons with AIDS several years ago, "people have come to know and love and trust (AIDS patients) as individuals. There's a lot more openness."

"AIDS is not a contagious disease. It's transmittable through very specific activity," Susan emphasizes. If an AIDS victim bled directly into another persons' open wound, if they shared intravenous drug needles or had intimate sexual contact, then there would be legitimate ground for concern.

The father of one AIDS patient she knew flew in from New York despite his conviction that he would contract the AIDS virus from his son just by being near him. There had been a major family rift over the patient's homosexual lifestyle and the significance of the father's action was not lost on his son. Education of the father was added to the reconciliation process and a period of peace and healing lasted until the patient's death.

"When a person is ill," Susan reiterates, "his sexual orientation should be a concern. There is a prejudicial grouping of gays" that must be avoided. "We must see people as individuals, not groups."

She explains that, although AIDS usually targets the homosexual community, she has personally cared for two heterosexual intravenous drug users and a woman who contracted AIDS through her husband, an intravenous drug user.

"The Church has the opportunity to minister to saints, sinners, gifted and not gifted. We don't minister to people who are already living the perfect life," she has found.