My Holly Jolly

I woke up on Christmas morning and smiled.  I took one of those deep breaths where you feel the winds of relaxation rush from the happy pit of your belly.  One simple reason: a much needed day off to be spent with friends.  The staff at work pooled their money and bought me a gift the day before.  I was questioned intently about what I wanted.  I really didn’t want anything, and I especially did not want to break their banks.  “A scarf?” my friend pleaded with me.  “Ok, yes, a scarf would be fantastic.”  So the next day a group of excited kids with sparkling eyes shuffled like little robots into my adjusting room.  “Merry Christmas!” they shouted, and presented me with a gift wrapped in paper covered in christmas trees and santas.  They all looked so proud.  My boss followed them in.  “I am so surprised!” she said.  “I didn’t tell them to do this, they did it by themselves.  You know they are very poor.”  My little angels.  I opened my scarf, which turned out to be a beautiful flowing red knitted poncho.  Ouch.  My heart.  I was speechless.  I can’t wait to come up with something really great to get them all for their New Year next month.  My boss got me the best mattress in Vietnam.  I’ve been sleeping on thin squishy foam.  Last night was a dream.  There were nights in Vietnam when my mom and I slept on box springs where every position comes with a jab.  I am in deep appreciation.  

So I get out of bed on Christmas morning, and I get ready to go.  I have to be at my friends’ house in 20 minutes.  Then the doorbell rings.  Ka chunk, ka chunk, I turn the lock in the door and anticipate a possible bill collector (they just show up, I’m not in any financial trouble).  So there’s Kaz, fresh off the airplane from Thailand.  I met Kaz in my parent’s kitchen.  His aunt worked with my dad on the Starbound in the Bering Sea of Alaska.  At the time he walked in the front door, said, “Hey.  Kaz.”  I said, “No, I’m Cass.”  “He said, “No, I’m Kaz.”   Ahhh.  Kaz has to renew his Thai visa.  I was expecting him the day before, but then he didn’t have a visa to enter this country, and told me he would have to sit in Bangkok for two days.  Kaz just turned 21.  He’s got on those moon boot skater shoes, fluorescent swim trunks, a tank top covered by a flannel, and a shark tooth necklace.    He can’t believe how cold it is here.  He made it all the way to my door by himself; a true christmas miracle in this country of backward streets and labyrinths.  “Just in time for Christmas brunch.  Come on.”

So we did brunch at a high end restaurant with seven americans, one auzzie, and one brit-auzzie.  We were quite a group.  The vietnamese santa came and gave us candy, and we stayed for four hours and finished off the night bar hopping.  Now I’ve got a little brother to watch out for for two weeks while he’s here in Vietnam.  That’s what I like about encounters across the world.  You see your friend from kindergarten in your home town, and it’s all, “Hey, great to see you.”  Someone you met for the smallest moment in time becomes like family when you are far away.

We had coffee, beer, wine, and spiced red wine TO CHOOSE FROM (endless glass)  So we just got one of each, most of us : )

Shhhhh

I don't expect this blog to be particularly interesting, but because I've made a personal commitment to keep writing, I hope something decent will come out.  Sometimes you get so tired, you don't care one way or the other . . . . and that's how I'm feeling right now.  I'm at the point where I just want to make bullets of my daily activities, just to feed those who have an interest.  So here's what's going on:  I've hired three men DC's to come over, and they should all be over in January.  I feel like they will only make a good thing better.  It's one thing to chat with the staff in broken english all day, and it's another to share the experience with people who are right there with you with the same goals and background.  The clinic opened to the general public yesterday, and I am the only doctor.  At first I was feeling a bit bombarded . . . maybe we should have talked about how to schedule to not make me feel like I constantly had five people waiting for me?  Today was much better.  The goal is SLOW and STRONG.   I can only give so many new patients my best efforts every day to spark the good word about chiropractic . . .  That point is now understood amongst management, and I don't actually mind that I have to work everyday until another chiropractor hops the pacific pond.

How are the attitudes of the general public?  I am doing my best to spread the word that chiropractic is for everyone, not just aches and pains.  I had a woman yesterday come in to ask about her husbands back pain, and I learned they were trying to have a baby.  Well!  Don't mind if I tell you how chiropractic might help with that!  It would be a very exciting feat!  One of my docs from Canada wrote me today to tell me that he met a vietnamese family in Edmonton who had heard about our clinic.  Well well well.  Awesome.  The funny thing about the culture which is so different, is that they will not feel happy with you as a doctor if you do not give them a pill to take.  The clinic currently has an empty pharmacy, to be stocked with pain meds, water pillows, vitamins & supplements, and various other supplies.  I can't in good conscious tell them to take anything.  So in usual form, I tell them, if you feel like you have to, then I'm not stopping you.  I clearly have to conform to an expectation, and then draw them in another direction.  It will be a task.  I usually answer questions with, "No one wants to take pain pills, so . . . "  Then they just look at me.  My translator takes an extra step without my consent, explaining that in America, the general attitude is to avoid pain pills, but that's not how we feel in VN.   They chuckle at me.  Education is key, and once I have some muscle behind me (other docs) I'll have more time to get the big idea across.

When I left America, I wondered how little ole me would fare with my chiropractor co-workers who would most likely have more than my two years of experience in the field.  Now I'm here, running the whole shebang, and I got to choose who I wanted to work with.  I've set up the entire protocol of this huge place (a fifteen million dollar building), with three body guards, two cleaning ladies, two x ray techs, a night watchman, 8 receptionists, and 20 physiotherapy/massage grads.  I didn't hatch the idea, but I've had a big part in bringing it together.  In a way, it's what I had planned from the second I saw the ad.  But how it happened can only be part of the secret.

Rulers

There are ways to measure the passing of days gone by with units not found on calendars or cell phone clocks.  I've been known to measure time in how long it takes to grow out my toenail polish.  For instance, I might remind myself that by the week ONLY my big toe still has color, it might be time to forget about the boy or the vacation or the special event that may have prompted the pedicure in the first place.  There is just something comforting about holding onto a great experience and knowing it was just a toenail in time away.  But when my best friend has heckled me enough, I sadly sigh into the bathroom cupboard, pull out the acetone, and say goodbye to THAT life experience.

Over here I've started working 6 days a week, soon to be 7.  The opening ceremony for the clinic is next week, and apparently I am the star.  The biggest news station in Vietnam will be there.  I'm not really sure how to handle the responsibility or the spotlight, but when unsure, fake it til you make it.  I certainly don't feel like anything I'm doing is all that difficult; it's just a lot of hard work, plugging along day after day.  Especially for a princess like me who has, in the past, convinced herself that she NEEDS (a lot of) downtime.

You don't have the luxury to be picky over here.  If a local friend drags you to a street stand serving only one dish, you eat it.  You pick up those dirty chopsticks washed haphazardly in cold water sans soap, sitting there on that table two feet off the ground.  You squat down on a plastic blue stool one foot off the ground.  And you even feel like you went the extra mile to squeeze some lime juice on the utensils and wipe them off vigorously with a napkin.  I laugh every time I sit at these mini kiddie tables.  This is the most natural form of dining out, but I still always think of a movie called "Land of the Little People" which my mom taped for me on the VCR straight off the TV without pushing pause at the commercials, somewhere around 1988.  Seriously, just imagine the table four year olds have to sit at on Thanksgiving, only a lot dirtier.  You get used to these things.  You take what you get, sometimes because it is the only Vietnamese word you can remember.  I'm proud enough just to be able to say pho ga (chicken pho) when I can't read a word on the menu.  As I'm writing this, my neighbor is blasting some awful Vietnamese music like it's House Party 2, and what am I gonna do, knock on his door and complain?  That option just isn't logical.

My very first blog had something to do with having too many choices, and I have to say I feel a sense of serenity at not having to decide all the time.  There is freedom in captivity!  But it's also fun to slowly push out; to learn the word you need to get what you want next time; to recognize streets and call out cab drivers.

I've almost gone through a tube of toothpaste.  I only have four tubes of Crest left.  My Aveda shampoo is almost gone.  I gage my supplies on a daily basis and contemplate mixing it up with some Vietnamese brands, because I'm not ready to be left alone in this country without my home comforts.  I will lose those parts of me in stages, and I will suffer when I squeeze out the last drops.  Another chapter over.

Getting Back to Brass Tacks: Chiropractic in VN

The first time I laid eyes on my chiropractic staff, I didn’t realize that this would be our first meeting.  The boss lady had called me at 2 pm and told me to meet her at the clinic at 3 pm.  I was sitting in a coffee shop overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake, eating a sandwich.  I was wearing flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt.  I think my legs were pretty hairy too, and all scabbed up from mosquito bites.  I finished my sammy and jumped in a cab.

I sauntered through the clinic gate at 2:55 and was met by the clinic 24 hour security guard.  I asked for the boss with her name and a shrug, and he led me back to the courtyard.  As I rounded the corner, I was met with applause from a U shaped group of twenty-something year olds.  Whoa.  “The doctor!” my boss proudly exclaimed, and the clapping continued.  The day before had been my first effort to learn a vietnamese sentence.  I started out strong: “I don’t . . . .I . . . . don’t . . . . .”  Hmmm.  I looked down at my fingers.  Must be stage fright.  “Ummmmmmm. I don’t . . . . speak . . . . . . Vietnamese” I managed to get out in their language.  As I think I’ve said before, if you don’t get it perfect, they still won’t understand you, even after all the effort.  “Who here speaks English?” I asked in English.  I was met with stares.  The girl next to me turned to me and said, “We are very happy to meet you and very excited to work with you.”  My boss turned to the crowd.  “Can you understand her English!?” she barked in English.  She was met with unsure nods.  She dismissed the class and led me away.  I wondered what they could possibly think of me, a fellow asian of about the same age, looking like any traveling backpacker coming off of the street.  

I have been training “the kids” for about five days now.  I went through my prepared material in the first two days, and wondered how I was ever going to be able to keep them busy for ten days.  I was actually pretty nervous about not having enough material by the end of the second day.  I basically gave my standard chiropractic health talk that I would give to any patient, but in this case left a lot of time to make sure nothing was lost in translation.  They need to know what I am doing and why I am doing it so that the clinic can run as smooth as possible and so they can explain chiropractic themselves.  They eagerly ate up their anatomy lesson and memorized which organs and systems are being affected by the nerves exiting each vertebra.  If they didn’t know the function of an organ, it turned into a lesson on organ function.  If they couldn’t grasp the sympathetic nervous system, I took the time and patience to explain it to them until a light bulb would go off and then the Vietnamese would be flying across the room and other faces would light up too.  I started to feel really proud of my little students.

The morning of the third day, I looked on amazon.com hoping specifically for “Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul” but willing to settle for any inspirational stories about chiropractic for the kindle.  There happened to be one, and I downloaded it just before I had to run out the door to catch my motorcycle ride to work.  I figured, worse come to worse, I can read in English and my translator can translate.  The boss stresses that learning english is just as important as any chiropractic information they get.  Only two translators understand me at 90%.  The other two understand at about 65-75%.  So this requires a lot of repeating and slowing down.  They enjoyed the chiropractic story so much.  As the published stories usually end in a miracle, there was much clapping and looks of surprise.  I decided I would try to tell them about a miracle every day.  Apparently, for most people, the first few days was just noise coming out of my mouth, but they are beginning to catch on.

For the last couple of days, I have just been winging it.  Since they did so well with learning where the nerves go, I spent a day teaching them about dermatomes (areas of skin innervated by a single nerve root) and how to test for problems.  After that, I figured I might as well teach them which muscles are supplied by the spinal nerves, and how to test muscle strength for each level of the spine.  This morning I said, tell me everything you know about Cervical vertebra number five.  Their reply: “It affects the throat and lower neck muscles, you test the dermatomes of the outer part of the arm, and you muscle test shoulder abduction and elbow flexion.”  My little angels!  Today they learned the process for taking a case history (OPQRST, PC).  Then I acted like the patient and made them ask me questions.  In this way, I have a code word for a series of questions I want them to ask, and I don’t have to waste the time on translation because they know what to ask.

The thing I stress the most is that chiropractic brings hope to life.  In the spirit of my great chiropractic mentors, I show inspirational youtube videos like my buddy Peter Kevorkian, and repeat some of the great Kevin Donka stories.  It brings tears to their eyes, as they have never imagined that they could be part of something that will have such a big impact on the world around them.  It brings tears to my eyes too.  

I spend a lot of time writing on the board, because they understand better when they can see it.  I draw pictures.  Yesterday I thought I had better learn their names.  They are named after actual “things” here.  We have two Victories, two Waters, a Mountain, a Cherry Blossom, a “such as or the same” (this one wrinkled her nose at her name’s meaning), a Flower, two Rivers, a Forest, a Happy, an Advantage, a Hero and a Sunny, just to name a few.  I learned 27 Vietnamese names in ten minutes, and they were so happy when I went through the list the first time with no mistakes.  Of course, musical chairs would tarnish me big time. 

And my pronunciation is never perfect.  They love to correct me.  I ask them to teach me new words every day.  I say it, and I get 27 answers back with an encouraging nod for me to try again.  They beam at me.  They tell me they love me and adore me.  One of them has volunteered to bring me back and forth to work every day.  They invite me home and bring me food and take me grocery shopping.  They asked where I live, and after telling them, they said, “Your street is named after Heroine.”  “No way!” I exclaimed, wondering if I lived in the ghetto.  I mimed sticking a needle in to my arm.  “Heroine?”  We all broke out into laughter.  “Heroine is girl Hero, and your street named after famous vietnamese heroine who is 16 year olds.”  Well laugh out loud.  Even though some are older than me, they are my kids, and I am happy to be around them every day.

I am working my butt off over here.  I told my boss I would be happy to be in charge of new doctor recruitment.  I know when I looked at the position, I had my doubts because the emails in English made me question if anyone would even be able to communicate with me.  The applications have been pouring in, and every question is important and must be answered.  It is, however, a lot of effort to put out for someone who might not come.  On my third day of training, I was called up to the bosses office to receive the news that the other doctor who was supposed to be back next week decided not to come.  This basically means that I am now solely in charge of the chiropractic direction of this three million dollar clinic.  I get to chose the protocols on everything.  I get to shape the impression of chiropractic in this town of six million in Vietnam.  The  cool thing is that when I ask my staff, what does chiropractic focus on?  They say, “The nervous system.”  What travels from the brain to the body by way of the nervous system?  “Signals.”  What do the signals carry?  “Information.”  What disrupts the flow of information?  “Subslushation.”  If you think Americans have a hard time with ‘subluxation,’ come over here.  I feel really glad that the philosophy that I learned at Sherman goes over with admiration, but most importantly, without argument.  In America, some patients find chiropractic to be absolutely amazing.  Here, they all do.  It is really really really cool.


The Clinic and Staff: