Outside Your Comfort Zone: Flying Doctors Mission to Cambodia

"How will you explain to people what your are going to do? We don't speak Cambodian." Dixie asked me. "Just lie down on the table, and I will start working on you. They'll get the idea." I replied. Soon we had people crowding around, eager and curious to be next. Folks on crutches, wheelchairs, there was even a fellow without any legs in a wagon encircling the portable chiropractic table. We had set up an impromptu chiropractic clinic in the courtyard of the Siem Reap Hospital in Cambodia. Dixie and I were part of a 19 person health care mission with Flying Doctors of America in November 2010 providing free medical, dental, surgical and chiropractic care in the impoverished Southeast Asian country of Cambodia.
Chiropractic is a wonderful healing art. It also make great entertainment on mission trips. People love to see and hear the groans, moans, winces, cracks, pops and smiles that emanate from our treatment table.

For five days we travel to villages on the outskirts of Siem Reap. Siem Reap is the primary tourist destination for travellers to Cambodia. It sits just outside the entrance to the UNESCO World Heritage Site- Angkor Wat. Highlights of my trip included adjusting blind villagers, diagnosing Parkinson's disease in a farmer, improvising a splint for a little girl who was run over by a motorbike, performing acupuncture on an ailing monk and exploring the archaeological ruins.

Traveling the world to alleviate human suffering is exciting, exotic and exhausting. Getting back to work helps me recuperate. Where will my next mission take me? Stay tuned!

One Friday night when I was 15 years old, my friend Rob Feldman brought over a book of poems by Alan Ginsberg called "Howl". Illustrating the book were images of a statue of Buddah wrapped in a Banyan tree rising from the jungle floor. I was entranced by these images which were from Angkor Wat, the largest temple complex in the world. Angkor Wat sits at the outskirts of Siem Reap, where our Flying Doctors of America Mission will land at the end of this week. 20 American doctors, nurses, dentist and support personnel will arrive, equipped to triage, examine, diagnose, and treat men, women and children in and around Siem Reap, Cambodia. All of our services and medicines will be supplied for free, courtesy of the volunteers and those who have supported us. We will also tour Angkor Wat as part of our mission, thus achieving a goal that I first conceived 40 years ago! After our mission is completed, Dixie and I will travel to Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore we will visit with Charles Lee, a former intern at our practice who is now married, expecting a child, and practicing chiropractic in Singapore. In Malaysia we will tour the newest chiropractic college in the world located in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. We arrive back in the USA just before Thanksgiving.