A PATIENT’S JOURNEY

Slightly hunched with a deep faraway look in his eyes, Khon Hun limped down the clinic walkway. After he registered at the front gates, nurses took his blood pressure and temperature. He sat silently as they checked his eyes, ears and throat, and listened to his heart. The 75-year-old father of three almost made it to the general doctor before he stumbled. A volun-teer helped him regain his balance and guided him to the doctor at the Cambodian Health Professionals of America (CHPAA) clinic in Koh Kong, Cambodia. Sixty doctors, nurses, dentists and other health professionals from CHPAA traveled from Los Angeles to Cambodia on a medical mission during the last week of January. While medical supplies were limited, the mission was successful in seeing 6,000 patients during the course of the week. Hun arrived on the second day of the mission. He works as a toll taker on a bridge near the border of Cambodia and Thai-land in Cham Yeam. Hun lives close to his work with his wife of twenty years and three daughters – ages 18, 16 and 15.

Written By Amber StephensPhotography By Mark Samala

ONE MAN’S EXPERIENCE THROUGH THE CLINIC

With a quiet voice speaking Khmer, Hun told Dr. Daniel Chan through a translator he has constant pain between his eyes. His vision is so blurry, the doctor concluded that not even the clinic’s reading glasses could help him. He has ex-perienced pain in his knees the past five years as well, espe-cially his right knee. He has frequent chest pains waking him up in the middle of the night. With the help of a CHPAA volunteer, Sirivuth Sem, Hun made his way to the station where physician assistant Kelly Drake could administer a steroid joint injection to help his knee. She took the syringe out of a box labeled “Kelly – IN-JECTION” and prepared the shot. Two Cambodian medical students watched as Drake carefully inserted the needle into Hun’s right knee. After Drake cleaned up the point of injection, Sem put Hun’s arm around his shoulder and led him to the pharmacy. Pressing his left sandal firmly onto the cement, Hun slid his right foot back and forth to feel for each step of the three-step stairs to the pharmacy to wait in line. Hun’s dusty yet neatly pressed, long-sleeved pinstripe shirt stood out among the colorful array of attire in the clinic. Hun graciously accepted medication for his knees as well as his chest pains from the clinic pharmacist. He received a referral to have eye surgery in Phnom Penh, which is six hours away. Hun appeared to have a cataract, a very common condition for the elderly in Cambodia. According to the website for the non-profit Cambodian or-ganization Seva, there are about 160,000 Cambodians who are blind. In addition, the website says 80% of blindness such as from cataract is preventable and curable. Right now, there are about 90,000 Cambodians of all ages

with cataract blindness and 22,000 new cases added each year. Howev-er, only 13,000 people per year are able to obtain sight-restoring surgery, which is a very brief procedure. Hun, a survivor of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970’s, is one of many elderly Cambodians who have been through de-cades of war and conflict in the impoverished country. The Khmer Rouge regime caused the deaths of over 2 million Cambodians. Hun clutched his medicine as volunteers helped him make way to the entrance of the clinic where Srey Touch, his youngest daughter, waited outside the main gates. She sat patiently on a motor scooter , the vehi-cles seen everywhere in Cambodia. Srey, wearing a nectarine-orange shirt and sweatshirt with jeans adorned with the outline of a teddy bear on the left pant leg, helped her father onto this motorcycle. His right leg wobbled and he lost his bal-ance once again. Srey held on to his skinny frame and advised him to rest before getting onto the motorcycle. Hun solemnly complied.

A faint smell of burning trash filled the air as Hun bent down to sit on the fad-ing green grass under a tree. Just a few paces behind him, a woman turned a wheel on a motorized sugar cane drink machine with a loud BAM BAM BAM sound of the turning wheel. Hun stared blankly at a volunteer who hustled past him to keep order in the clinic line and at a tuk tuk, a motorcycle-powered rickshaw, passing by him carrying smiling tourists. Srey put on a burgundy helmet and walked over to her father. She helped him stand and straightened his collar that was folded in the back. She and a volunteer helped her father onto the bright red motorcycle. Srey took her father’s hand as they sat and waited for the rest of his family to exit from the clinic in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees. Hun’s journey through the clinic was guided by a half dozen CHPAA volunteers with each han-dling the fragile, aging father with gentle care. Although he found relief for most of his ail-ments, he will have to live without consistent treat-ment in the rural lowlands of Koh Kong. In a time of insurmountable difficulties in Cambodia, Hun was able to experience the compassion of others in a country finding its way after a dark and haunted past.