Eileen Gottschalk welcomed her son SPC Matthew Schrader home from Iraq this week. Schrader is stationed at Ft. Hood and will be back in East Texas on June 20. "When he opened me, he saw the leakage in my digestive system and smelled an ugly odor. It was like a leaking sewer system," says Daniel Visitacion of New Harmony.

Dan, the strong silent type, smiles tenderly as his wife, Juliet, vivaciously reports recent events in their love-story of 25 years.

Juliet tells of scheduling an appointment for a colonoscopy at Bethesda Health Clinic in downtown Tyler for Valentine's Day this year. Not very romantic.

"The world's worst Valentine's Day date ever," laughs Juliet.

In keeping with Bethesda's policy of adjusting fees based on patient's income, the price to the Visitacions was simply the cost of their Bethesda "co-pay."

Serving the working, uninsured of Smith County, since it was established five years ago, Bethesda has racked up over 43,000 patient visits, almost 12,000 of those in 2008 alone, without any help from Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government tax-dollar-funded programs.

Earlier in the year, when the Visitacions arrived in East Texas after working in Afghanistan since 1986, the first thing Juliet did was look for a place volunteer, putting her nursing skills to service for others.

She found Bethesda.

Now her own husband is benefitting from the clinic.D

r. Hempe, volunteering his time, ordered the colonoscopy and, as an added precaution went ahead and did a hemacult, a test to determine blood in the stool.T

he news was not good. Daniel had colon cancer.

Amazingly, about the same time, Dr. Duane Andrews, a man well-known throughout East Texas for his skill as a surgeon, was volunteering at the clinic for the very first time

Two weeks later, Dr. Andrews cut Daniel open in an operating room at Trinity Mother Frances Hospital where the Board of Directors had approved a greatly reduced fee.

"Contrary to the two good CT scan reports," the surgery revealed a bad situation, says Dan, "The surgeon came out with bad news, but he said our God can heal me."