Finding God in the ER - Our Conversation with Dom Valenti

Dom Valenti wanted to be a chiropractor. At sixteen, a radiologist talked him out of it. Years later an academic advisor looked at a C+ in zoology and told him he'd never make it to med school. Both were doors closing — and Dom now says both were God. He spent four years in a busy emergency room and works today in a cardiac ICU, and in this conversation he tells Ryan what he's actually seen: not lightning-bolt healings on the hospital floor, but what he calls micro-miracles. A 36-year-old stroke patient who hadn't been out of bed in seven days. A bath, a beard trim, some music, and a man fist-bumping the air from the edge of the mattress. Two old friends from Franciscan talk about what it looks like to bring God to a bedside when the system gives you seven minutes.

In this episode

• Why Dom deleted social media for a month — and what came back when the scrolling stopped
• The Arthur Brooks book behind it, and the "doom loop" that keeps people from the questions you can't Google
• Two closed doors that looked like failure and turned out to be direction
• A phone call from the nursing department that reached him at a rural Austrian train station
• What Dom means by "micro-miracle," told through one stroke patient in the neuro ICU
• His own healing: a shoulder he couldn't push up on for a year, and a men's retreat where nobody knew to pray for it
• The two-part rule for faith at work he got from a Catholic ethicist: be excellent, and be kind
• Why Ryan schedules an hour with every new patient, and what the Surrender Novena has to do with chronic pain

Chapters

00:23 — Opening prayer, then health wins and health sins
04:29 — Deleting social media, boredom, and where creative thought went
07:14 — The "doom loop" and why God speaks in the quiet
13:05 — Franciscan, households, and how these two know each other
14:56 — Wanting to be a chiropractor, and the advice that redirected him
18:49 — Finding nursing, and a competitive advantage he didn't expect
22:14 — The Austria semester and the phone call at the train station
26:58 — Why the ER, straight out of school
29:36 — Modern medicine isn't the enemy: where it saves and where it doesn't
32:25 — Have you ever seen a miracle in the hospital?
34:00 — The 36-year-old stroke patient, and what one nurse decided to do
40:03 — Dom's shoulder: healed at a retreat he didn't ask to be prayed over at
43:55 — Two goals at every bedside: make them laugh, bring God in
48:40 — "Be excellent at your craft. Be kind." Evangelizing at work
51:13 — Inside Ryan's practice: an hour a patient, and why that's unusual
55:40 — Praying for every patient, praying with some
55:47 — The Surrender Novena and letting go of "my diabetes, my back pain"
61:11 — Closing

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Show notes, blog, and full transcripts: healthinthespirit.com

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Got a healing story, a question, or a guest suggestion? ryan@healthinthespirit.com / annie@healthinthespirit.com

Health in the Spirit is recorded under the patronage of Ss. Cosmas and Damian, physicians who healed the body and soul without counting the cost.

This podcast is for education and encouragement. It isn't medical advice and doesn't replace care from your own clinician.