June 25, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO— Sometimes, says Carol Pochy, a client of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church’s health care clinic, you have to trudge through hell to find a taste of heaven.

That’s what she does weekly as she navigates the church’s Tenderloin District to visit the clinic. “It’s not the best part of the city,” Pochy says. “I can smell urine, feces, people sleeping on the street,” she says, describing her weekly visits.

(The health care program at Glide Memorial Church is featured on “Spiritual Immunizations,” a UMTV video report the week of June 25. It is available at the UMTV Web site www.umtv.org.)

Five days a week, nurse practitioners, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, and trained medical staff are on hand to treat the poor through primary and urgent care, mental health counseling, podiatry services and referrals for dental and vision.

Pochy, once a part of San Francisco’s sizable homeless population, was recovering from addictions to crack, heroin and alcohol when she started visiting Glide about a year ago. Initially, she sought relief “for cravings and the stress – detoxification – because I was getting clean and sober,” she says.

But the complementary care is what brings her back. Complementary care, not generally considered part of conventional medicine, is often used in combination with traditional medical care. Pochy says Glide’s free acupuncture treatments improve her digestion, help her get more sleep and tone down her stress.

It’s a story Tim Agar, a director of the health program, has heard before. “Complementary care becomes especially helpful in dealing with the recovery population,” he says. “It allows people to manage their stress.”

“I lie there and get to relax, and almost fall asleep. And then I leave here and I have this energy. I really started feeling it work for me,” Pochy adds.

“We are trying to say,” Janice Mirikitani, the church’s executive director and president of its foundation, says, “that there are many approaches to healing and many avenues to healing. And one starts with the premise that the individual is a whole being.”

More information on Glide Memorial United Methodist Church and its health care program is available at the church’s Web site www.glide.org.