TEAM

Jason has arrived!  Tu-Tu and I took a car to the airport to pick him up last week.  Tu-Tu’s name is actually just Tu, but I drew a picture on the board of a ballerina with a tutu the first day, and pointed at him.  It suits him.  The big question of the day at work that morning had been whether or not the clinic girls were going to find Jason attractive.  The boss declared, “Jason will be competition for Tu.”  “Really?” I thought.  Tu is about 5’2”, he blinks a lot and wears glasses, and he is very very timid.  “Because Tu can speak Vietnamese and Jason can’t!” she cried.  Hmmm.  Yessssss, exactly.  No comment.

So we all pile into the taxi and get going, and Tu whips around from the front seat and says, “Jason!  You will be my rival!”   The funniest part about it is that Jason didn’t even hear him.  HA!

Having someone around to go through this experience with me has made all the difference in slugging through these slow first days.  We run out to the street for snacks, such as roadside shish-kebobs, bang mi samiches, or danishes and coffee.  We see a few patients.  Then maybe we go back to the massage section and have a couple of people work out the knots for 20 minutes.  Sometimes we can’t believe how much of a dream job this is.  But there is definitely a down side:

The concrete God’s honest truth that people hold here is that health comes in the form of a pill.  I can tell someone that it’s going to take at least 6-10 adjustments before they start to ‘feel’ results.  It never fails that on about the third visit for the tough cases, my translator looks at me with pained eyes and says, “Still no change.”  Educate all you want to, but it’s like talking to a brick wall.  They will nod at everything you say, but we’ve heard rumors that go a little like this:  “I went to that chiropractic clinic, and it’s no good.”  “Why?”  “They don’t even give you any pills.”

What does this lead to?  The boss does not want to lose prestige in the community, so we have to work with Vietnamese patient psychology.  We’ve got glucosamine and fish oil pills, so I feel okay about recommending that.  But now it’s looking like the ‘pain pills’ pharmacy is about to get stocked up.  These people do not care about innate intelligence and living at 100%.  They just want to get out of pain.  So here is what I’m dealing with:  

“Big problem.  Many patients dropped out of care.  We must make them believe.  They have no trust.”

“OK, then we need to educate them more.”

(We made a video with subtitles because it was taking too long to explain on an individual basis.)

“They are too lazy to read subtitles on the video, I think you better tell them.”

“OK, I will take the time to explain chiropractic to them then.”

“Vietnamese don’t like to be ‘told’ anything.  It makes them feel like you think they are stupid.”  

“So we need to educate them so that they will trust us, but they won’t absorb the video and I can’t tell them anything because it makes them feel like I’m talking down to them?”

“Yes.”

Luckily for me, the highest ranking official that we’ve seen has become quite taken with me.  On his first visit, he made it clear to my translator that he would much rather see a man.  He did not look at me when I talked to him, and just stared at the floor.  He said his problems were his discs at C3, C4, and C5, and I had better not try to tell him otherwise.  He demanded a discount, and said if his xray didn’t look any different in two weeks, he wanted his money back.  By the time I palpated his spine, I already could not stand this man.  

On the next visit, he came through the doors a different man.  He smiled brightly, and told me if I really got him better, he would buy me some Bun Cha (a noodle and beef dish).  He said he slept through the night without having to take a sleeping pill, and his appetite doubled.  He declared that he would come every day.  By the fifth visit, he offered me a floor of his house to live for free.  He now brings a new patient in every few days.

So these are just the tidbits about the early days at the clinic.  I only have one good translator, and she works the morning shift.  Tutu translates in the afternoon.  I don’t know how he came up with the word ‘fatigue,’ but he now uses it to tell me when patients feel tired in their neck, and it rhymes with spaghetti:  “She tell me she feel faggedy in hers nesk.”  Jason and I hope that he never figures out the proper pronunciation.