In 1953 I was hired to work for an aircraft company. The hiring process involved a complete physical examination, including X-rays, at the employer's facilities. Several weeks after I had started work, I was called into the medical department, where the company doctor informed me that my X-rays revealed a small spot on my lung. Since this could possibly indicate tuberculosis, a communicable disease, he was obliged by law to report his findings to the county health department. My employment at the company was put on "temporary hold."

Very shortly after this, the health department scheduled me for tests. X-rays once again showed the small spot. In addition, more tests revealed that I was positive for tuberculosis, and arrangements were made for me to be admitted into a large tuberculosis sanitarium.

I was quite upset, and my husband and I both wanted further confirmation of these findings. My husband's brother-in-law was a medical doctor in another community, so during the period when we were waiting for my admittance to the sanitarium, we visited him. He and several doctors associated with him conducted the same tests, and the same condition was confirmed.

I entered the sanitarium as scheduled. I was quite despondent and could find no solace in the religion that had served me up until then. My husband, though not a Christian Scientist, had been briefly exposed to its teachings when he was a teenager. He remembered that his studies of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and his visits with a Christian Science practitioner, had provided great comfort and peace of mind. Thinking primarily of my comfort rather than healing, he provided me with copies of Science and Health, the Bible, and the Christian Science Quarterly. He also engaged the services of a practitioner who, as part of his regular activity, made personal visits to this sanitarium.

I immediately started to read Science and Health and was thrilled to learn of a caring and loving God. The practitioner visited me, and I was so uplifted I knew my healing had taken place that very night. The practitioner typed out a reference for me from Science and Health from the chapter called "Christian Science Practice." It read: "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man" (p. 393). The rest of the page goes on to say that it is the divine Mind, God, that governs man—not mortal mind. I just wanted to be reading Science and Health day and night. I became radiant in knowing I was relying on prayer for my freedom from this predicament.

Almost immediately, more chest X-rays taken in the sanitarium came back without any sign of a spot on my lung. The doctors and technicians were mystified. They subjected me again to the other tuberculosis tests, which this time all came back negative. Everyone at the sanitarium was perplexed. Although I had no sign of the disease, they nevertheless decided not to release me, but to keep me in the sanitarium until the results of a thirteen-week guinea pig test were complete. When those results finally arrived, and there was not a trace of the disease, I was released from the sanitarium.

After several months, however, the county health department required another full session of X-rays and tests to satisfy their concerns about my freedom from communicable disease.

They agreed that I could submit myself for retesting by a doctor of my choice. I was subjected to all of the usual tests, every one coming back negative. More than that, and to the astonishment of some of the same doctors who had previously tested me, there was no trace of a scar on the lung. The county health department was satisfied with the results of this independent evaluation.

Since then I have led a healthy, productive, and happy life. I'm grateful to Mrs. Eddy for her writings and for her teachings about a loving God. Christian Science changed my life, and I am glad to have been able to have our three daughters attend Sunday School.

Lydia V. Carlsen
Oakhurst, California