From War To Waiting Room

How Dr. Paul Dagher’s Childhood Led Him To Life As A Surgeon, Healing In Jesus’ Name

By Yogi Collins

Two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. While the news threw me for an emotional loop during an already vulnerable time in my life, I was simultaneously blessed in many ways. The cancer was caught early and was very treatable, I had a supportive family, and I felt confident in my doctors. 

One of those doctors—and blessings—was Dr. Paul Dagher, a surgeon at Watauga Surgical Group in Boone and the man who performed my lumpectomy. 

Living in War

It was not lost on me that my surgeon’s name was pronounced “dagger.” What’s in a name? Apparently a lot, and I appreciated the levity (however, I kept that to myself since he’s probably heard that one before). I decided that with a name like that, Dr. Dagher was meant to be a surgeon. 

And there may be some truth to that. A native of Lebanon, a country 1/12 the size of North Carolina, Paul Dagher was eight years old in 1975 when the country’s civil war between Christians and Muslims began. 

“It was very unusual to grow up in the middle of a war,” Dagher recalls. “I remember the actual fighting and some of the fear that goes along with being hunted down in an apartment building, hearing bullets and rockets fly by and explode, and witnessing dead bodies-- things in war that a young person would usually never be exposed to.”

It’s a level of fear most of us can’t imagine let alone comprehend, and it forced Dagher and his younger sister to quickly mature and develop acute awareness of their surroundings. 

“You just learn instinctively how to respond, how to take cover, how to take care of your family members,” Dagher shares. “I remember sitting in the car waiting for my dad to come down from visiting some people and the rockets started exploding, literally, right next to us. The instinct of a 13-year-old boy to jump into the driver’s seat to go pick up my dad rather than waiting for him to come? Things that, here, you would never dream of doing, but you had to do out of necessity for safety.”

God’s Protection

Despite the fear, Dagher recalls the faith his parents displayed and the impact that had on him. 

“Growing up in a war situation can break people and tear them down, but it can also cause people to become stronger and to rise above difficulties. In our family, I attribute that strength to the faith that my mom and dad instilled in us as kids. Even though, yes, it was very scary being hunkered down in a tiny hallway in the nighttime when the bombing occurred, [it helped] hearing my mom and dad open up the Scriptures and read to us, especially Psalm 91 where it talks about the Lord being our refuge and our fortress.”

Witnessing the Lord’s protection reinforced to Dagher that God is real and helps us in times of need. 

“Depending where you are in life, you experience different attributes of God. If somebody is sick and they are praying and asking for healing and they’re healed, they experience God’s hand of healing,” he said. “If somebody’s not sick, they can’t experience that. For me and my family, we experienced His hand of protection, guidance, and provision. There were multiple times when our lives were literally saved.”

One of those times came after government authorities warned residents to have at least two concrete floors above them during nightly air strikes to protect them from falling rockets. Because Dagher’s family lived on the top floor of a six-floor building, their third floor neighbors invited them to stay with them. 

“My folks opened up the Scripture and read one about God’s hand of protection,” Dagher recounts. “My mom and dad decided not to take us down to the third floor that evening and the next morning our neighbors from the third floor ran up and said an anti-aircraft bullet had come through the window of their guest bedroom during the night and landed in the middle of one of the beds and burned it. That’s just one little example of how God directed my parents through having peace from reading that scripture and it saved one of us from death.”

Ministry in Medicine

While Dagher’s strong faith is one of the positives to come from the war, I’d argue that his becoming a surgeon and eventually landing in Boone is one as well. 

“My decision to go into medicine was a little bit influenced by the war and by sometimes seeing people who were injured and had to have surgery, but I was also interested in potentially being a pilot and potentially doing computer stuff,” Dagher acknowledges. “Those were my three areas of interest as a kid, but I finally realized that I’d prefer working with people rather than machines.”

Because he was English-educated, Dagher’s only option for attending university in Lebanon was at the American University of Beirut. The war, however, made it too dangerous for a Christian student like Dagher to go there. “Beirut was divided at the time into East Beirut and West Beirut,” he explains. “East Beirut was the Christian side and West Beirut, where the university was the Muslim side. It was the middle of the war and a time when people were going onto the campus and kidnapping the Christian students, so I either had to change my career choice, go to England since my mom is British, or come to the States.”

Dagher chose the States and attended Wheaton College in Illinois followed by medical school at Loma Linda University. After his residency, Dagher moved to Boone to work at Watauga Surgical Group, a connection made via his college roommate Ben Furman, son of Dr. Richard Furman, one of the founders of World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan’s Purse with which Dagher now serves, sharing his surgical talents in hopes of showing God’s love to hurting people. 

“The Lord has blessed everyone with talents,” he attests, “and I have a skill set that I realize can benefit other people. There’s definitely a need overseas. In many places, there’s just one surgeon and a family doctor who may have worked for a whole year without any time off. Going there allows [a doctor] to take some time off with their family, and, most importantly, helps people who don’t have access to healthcare and shows them the Lord’s love and care. Anybody can do good works, but the difference is when we do good works in Jesus’ name. We want to let people know that we care for them and that Jesus cares for them.”

As his former patient, I can vouch that Dr. Dagher does that stateside as well. He’s the only physician I’ve ever had who asked if he could pray with me before a procedure, reminding me in a scary moment that God is indeed our fortress--in war and in peace.

This article was originally written for the Winter 2018 Edition of The Journey magazine.