faith! - Mark Mayson
As a boy, Mark Mayson was in constant motion. He was the kid who asked, “Why?”
“Why, why, why, why and why,” Mark recalled asking. As he matured and followed his interest in science, he discovered that the field’s systematic, methodical processes often led to answers. He liked that.
“In science you keep asking why and sometimes you actually can get to the reason,” he said.
But Mark, 57, group leader of Palmetto Pulmonology which encompasses Prisma’s Baptist and USC pulmonology practices, never could have imagined how many questions he would be asking as a physician nearing his third decade of work, facing a pandemic caused by a virus that too often takes aim for the lungs. “Nobody knew,” he said.
Mark recalls receiving a call early in 2020 from a colleague in Florida. “Be ready. This isn’t like anything we’ve ever seen,” Mark remembers his friend telling him. At first, Mark thought, “Well this is bad, but it will be short-lived.”
Today, as the world moves past the one-year mark of COVID-19’s wrath, Mark knows differently. He calls the experience “the COVID roller coaster.” In typical situations, Mark explained, when a patient starts to get better, they stay on a trajectory toward healing. With COVID, a person could be ready to be weaned off a ventilator, or at least appear so by all logical medical measurements, and then 12 hours later, they can decompensate and roll back down hill, fast.
With COVID, because so little is known about how the virus reacts, doctors like Mark “have had to make a lot of adjustments on the fly.”
That experience can be “both fascinating and frustrating,” he said. “Most of the things we’ve done in the past just didn’t work. It’s just so different from what we’re used to seeing.”
Still, through it all, Mark’s aptitude and appreciation for quick decision-making have kept him going. Having suffered from an early bout of COVID himself also gave him insight and empathy. (While his case never approached the seriousness of some of his patients, he did experience “severe aches to the bone and extreme fatigue.”)
Early in Mark’s medical training, he was drawn to ICU doctors and specialties such as pulmonology because they were fast-paced and filled by smart doctors who Mark knew would challenge him.
Mark’s affection for medicine may have begun as a teenager on a beach trip with family friends. He developed strep throat and “was sick as a dog.” The father in the family was a physician. He examined Mark, who was feverish and aching all over, and diagnosed strep. He prescribed an antibiotic, and within 24 hours, Mark was back on the beach. “How cool is that,” he recalls thinking.
Mark also credits his Episcopal upbringing and his parents’ support with his decision to enter medicine. An Episcopalian out of the womb, Mark attended church every week in his native Augusta, Ga., sometimes twice a week. He was an acolyte, a choir member, and a student at the Episcopal day school, which meant Wednesday chapel services, too. In those formative places he learned about loving one’s neighbor and respecting the dignity of every human being. With a mother who was Greek Orthodox, Mark also developed a deep respect for the rituals of religious practice. He’s particularly fond of incense.
He also appreciates services that “vary it up” like St. Martin’s does – Celtic and Jazz masses, for example. A musician himself, Mark enjoys all kinds of music. He and his wife Julie have been to more concerts than they can count. Among them? Phish, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Widespread Panic, Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Allman Brothers, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, and REM, which he first came to know while attending the University of Georgia, where the now famous band got its start. Mark also plays bass in a band of his own, The Rhythm Method, with several other physicians. The band has been a salvation during the pandemic. Once a week, the crew gathers to practice and play their instruments loud and “like teenagers.”
Another lifeline: the many hours he has spent in his backyard, tilling dirt, planting, and establishing outdoor spaces where he and Julie can escape the anxieties brought on by the pandemic. Mark created a labyrinth for Julie as a birthday gift last fall. Clearing the space in an overgrown corner of their yard and then placing the large smooth stones to mark the labyrinth’s path was another great escape. Outside he can ponder a medical conundrum or other big questions.
“What I have found out is doctors try to make all the abnormal stuff normal. That’s what we do.” And then the rest is beyond medicine. “I think God is helping guide me in learning that,” he said.
He is now experienced enough to know what he can help improve and what he can’t. He strives to deliver all of his care “as empathetically as possible … humility and empathy are things people can’t have enough of,” he said.
In his prayer life – those conversations with God that take place outside planting, while jamming out with fellow musicians or jogging along a familiar path, Mark said, “I ask God to help me make any situation better.” Sometimes that means a patient will recover and sometimes it means Mark must instead “make the passing more respectful, dignified, comfortable.”
He recently lost a patient whom he had known for more than 20 years. Sadly, COVID came at her with a vengeance. As they discussed her situation, she insisted that she did not want extraordinary measures taken. He knew she was making the right decision, but it was still very hard. He had grown to love her; admire her. He still misses her and suspects a part of him always will.
Moments such as those, however, are the moments of “privilege” and “honor” that medicine provides, he said. Mark has also come to believe that science does not explain everything – especially what happens spiritually during death.
“There’s more to it than science … that life force, the God within all of us.” He’s seen it. He’s felt it. “Death is not the enemy,” he said.
Mark and his wife Julie have been members of St. Martin’s since 1997. They have two grown sons, Jamie and Trad.
