Catholic Healthcare Education Center:

The Breaking Point

At twenty-three years old, Claire weighed only forty-seven pounds. Standing just five feet one inch tall, she was skeletal—a heartbreaking physical manifestation of the internal battle raging within her. Severe anorexia, paired with crippling anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, had left her imprisoned in a cycle of self-destruction that seemed unbreakable.

She had been hospitalized before. She had cycled through multiple physicians. But one by one, they had closed their doors to her. Frustrated by her resistance to care and labeled “non-compliant,” the medical community had largely written her off. Even the psychiatrists had stepped away from her case. There was a growing sense among those who encountered her that perhaps the most humane thing would be to simply let her pass quietly.

But Claire’s mother refused to accept this verdict. She could not believe that her daughter’s life was expendable. She could not surrender to the darkness closing in around her child. In desperation, she reached out to Dr. Jane Brotanek at MyCatholicDoctor.

Dr. Brotanek answered the call.

When Conscience Speaks

“My conscience told me that I could not refuse her care,” Dr. Brotanek recalls simply. “I had to listen to her. I could not turn her away.”

These words capture something essential about what MyCatholicDoctor represents: a return to the foundational principle of Catholic medicine—that every person, no matter how difficult, how sick, how seemingly impossible, bears the image and likeness of God and deserves our best effort, our full attention, and our unwavering compassion.

With Dr. Brotanek’s help, Claire’s mother was granted conservator status, enabling continuity of care for a young woman whose own mind had become her enemy.

Dr. Brotanek began where all good medicine begins: she listened. She examined Claire carefully. She ordered comprehensive labs. And what those labs revealed was catastrophic.

A glucose level of 43—dangerously low. A white blood count of 1.9—profoundly suppressed, indicating severely compromised immune function. Liver function abnormalities revealing the profound malnutrition that ravages the entire body. Dr. Brotanek knew immediately what these numbers meant: cardiac dysfunction. Claire was not living with anorexia in the abstract—she was minutes or hours away from sudden cardiac death.

The Power of Prayer Meets Medical Wisdom

Faced with an insurmountable obstacle, Dr. Brotanek took her crisis to the One who has always held the power of life and death in His hands. She attended Mass and prayed for wisdom. She offered her Mass for Claire. She asked the Lord for guidance.

“I could not think of a way to get the patient to the emergency room,” she explains. But often, when we bring our burdens to Christ, He does not leave us in our helplessness.

After Mass, clarity came. Dr. Brotanek called a trusted cardiologist colleague. Together, they strategized. The cardiologist confirmed the severity: Claire could collapse and die at any moment. Without inpatient care, she would die. He suggested a plan—send her for an echocardiogram and EKG, and let the abnormal results speak for themselves. The truth, they prayed, would compel the hospital to act.

Dr. Brotanek called the hospital in advance, providing a detailed clinical picture. She prepared the ground, much as a gardener prepares soil to receive a seed. When Claire arrived, the EKG and echocardiogram confirmed every fear: her heart was failing. As predicted, the results mandated immediate admission.

Claire tried to leave. The hospital staff gently held their ground. An ethics committee, moved by the gravity and urgency of the situation, immediately convened. They recognized what Dr. Brotanek had recognized: that a young woman’s life hung in the balance, that she lacked the mental capacity to refuse life-saving treatment in that moment, and that mercy and justice required intervention.

With the hospital’s ethics committee standing as guardian of both her life and her dignity, Claire remained. 

The Multidisciplinary Miracle

Over the course of more than two weeks in the hospital, something remarkable unfolded. Claire’s cardiac function began to stabilize. Her weight began to climb. A multidisciplinary team—cardiologists, nutritionists, mental health specialists, all experienced in eating disorders—worked in concert to restore not just her body, but her hope. 

She was assigned a recovery health coach specializing in anorexia and mental illness, someone who would walk beside her in the months and years to come. Psychiatric care was arranged. Her anxiety and OCD—the demons that had whispered lies to her for so long—began to receive appropriate treatment. For the first time in years, Claire began to feel the possibility of healing.

Dr. Brotanek coordinated all of this care. 

But the healing wasn’t occurring in isolation. Something else was happening in prayer.

The Healing Power of Intercession

More than forty members of the MyCatholicDoctor Prayer Team learned of Claire’s struggle. They held her name before the throne of God—not in abstract petition, but in specific, daily intercession. They prayed for her cardiac recovery. They prayed for her psychological healing. They prayed for her mother’s strength. They prayed that somehow, miraculously, a young woman would reclaim her life.

With the power of prayer, all things are possible.

The data tells one part of Claire’s story: normal cardiac function restored, stable weight gain, psychiatric symptoms managed, and immune function recovered. But the fuller story cannot be captured in lab values or medical charts. It is written in the restored light in a young woman’s eyes. It is present in conversations she can now have with her mother. It is evident in a future she can now imagine.

What This Means for Catholic Healthcare

Claire’s story matters not because it is unique, but because it reveals what happens when Catholic medicine is practiced as it was always meant to be practiced: with conscience as our guide, with prayer as our foundation, and with the conviction that no patient is disposable.

In a healthcare system that often treats patients as problems to be solved or dismissed, Dr. Brotanek and the team at MyCatholicDoctor demonstrated something countercultural and prophetic: that the most vulnerable among us deserve our very best. That conscience demands we say yes when the world says no. That a physician’s calling is not merely to cure, but to accompany, to advocate, and to love.

When Jesus sent His disciples out in Luke 10, He gave them a specific mandate: “Cure the sick who are there and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.'” He did not ask them to cure only the grateful sick. Not only the compliant sick. Not only the sick whose recovery seemed probable. He called them to heal the sick who are there—whoever presents themselves, whatever their circumstances.

Claire was there. Dr. Brotanek answered.

Why Your Support Matters

This is the work you make possible when you support MyCatholicDoctor. Every gift, every prayer, every word of encouragement enables physicians guided by conscience and faith to say yes to the impossible cases. It allows us to hire compassionate recovery coaches, to coordinate multidisciplinary care, to take the time that our fragmented healthcare system no longer permits.

In a world that too often writes off the difficult, the complicated, and the suffering, you are saying: Not on our watch. These lives matter. These souls matter.

Claire is alive today because one physician listened to her conscience. Because a mother refused to surrender hope. Because forty members of a prayer community interceded for a stranger. Because a hospital ethics committee recognized that mercy and justice require protection of the vulnerable.

And Claire is alive because you—through your support of MyCatholicDoctor—help create spaces where such miracles become possible.

Today, Claire is alive and well.

But thousands of Claires remain—suffering, isolated, written off by a healthcare system that has lost its way. They are waiting for physicians who will answer the call. They are waiting for communities that will pray for their recovery. They are waiting for us.

Join Us in Reclaiming Catholic Healthcare

“The kingdom of God has come near to you.” These words, spoken over Claire in her moment of greatest need, remain true. They remain available. They remain powerful.

When you support MyCatholicDoctor’s mission to reclaim Catholic healthcare and witness miracles, you become part of this sacred work. You become part of the answer to desperate prayers. You become, in a very real sense, a healer yourself.

Will you join us?

“My conscience told me that I could not refuse her care. I had to listen to her. I could not turn her away.” — Dr. Jane Brotanek

Claire is alive today because one physician remembered what medicine is truly for. Help us continue this sacred mission.

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Names have been changed to protect patient privacy. All clinical details are accurate and provided with patient and family consent.