This is Nowhere

I am perched on a ledge on the fourth floor, watching the coconut trees sway in the breeze and marveling at how the ocean fades into clouds.  I arrived on Koh Tao (Turtle Island), Thailand, yesterday at 2:30 in the PM.  I left Vietnam with 30 minutes to spare on my Visa. What a long trip for such a short distance! I clocked three hours at the Hanoi airport, having been warned that traffic would be a mess (it wasn’t), and seven hours at the Bangkok airport.  Here I had my first Starbucks peppermint mocha in over 3 months.  It was disappointing, not because it didn’t taste like itself, but because I guess I’m over it.  


The boat ride from the coast to Koh Samui was uneventful, and I slept.  The high speed catamaran ferry ride to Koh Tao might have been one of the worst things that ever happened to me.  I was set up near the bow because I wanted to keep an eye on my backpack, or more importantly, my laptop within.  With about 200 people on board, I would say twenty percent of them threw up.  It was a circus with the attendants running around with plastic bags: “Pass this that way QUICK!”  I did okay until the last third of the trip.  My eyes made their way from my designated set focal points; pink stripe, green bag, and America’s Best Dance Crew on TV.  I took deep breaths.  I burped.  I made a plan to snatch my neighbor’s plastic bag.  Over and over, my mantra, ‘you’re a fisherman’s daughter, you’re a fisherman’s daughter, you’re a fisherman’s daughter, don’t you dare,’ rang in my head.  As the boat slammed down into the waves, I caught sight of mountainous green coastline rolling into the ocean, and then feared I’d imagined it.  And then I was here.  


I found Kaz smoking a cigarette outside his hotel, met his little brother Jantzen, and have since collected some Danes and a bloke from East London who sounds the same as the green street hooligans.  A nice crew of people.  As I sat having my coffee this morning, I imagined that all I need in this world is an Astrolite adjusting table, some index cards that say, “Chiropractor $10 xxx-xxx-xxxx I’ll come to you,” and an island paradise setting.

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.

Sick Day

I took my first sick day today.  I’m not sure that I actually have “quote-on-quote” sick days, but I woke up this morning and decided it wasn’t going to happen.  The coughing at night is getting ridiculous.  Kaz left for a two day trip to Halong Bay this morning, so I figured it was a good time to visit the International Medical Clinic and clean the house.  First of all, I haven’t been adjusted in about 75 days, and that alone can run down a body.  I usually like to be adjusted at least once a week.  I am highly anticipating my adjustment next week when the dudes get here.  The thing about Winter in Vietnam is that it’s really not that cold; but there’s something very cold about it.  It doesn’t feel much different than September or October in Seattle.  So maybe I dress tougher than I can handle, especially when jumping on a motorcycle with wet hair at 8:45 am every day.  I bring my own helmet, which has a windshield visor, and this I love.  There is nothing like trying to blink something out of your eye for the last three miles of a motorcycle trip.  But I see that a lot of people are wearing their face masks.  This is something you never see in America, unless you happen to pass my mom mowing her yard on her John Deer.   The masks come in all sorts of prints and patterns, and now that I think about it, so do the helmets.  The ride to work is a moto fashion show.  I guess I just don’t really believe that they keep out the pollutants.  In rush hour, there is enough exhaust in the air to outdo garage suicide.   So maybe I’ll start wearing one. 

At the clinic they give me an intake form and I head to the only open seat.  The lady next to me immediately stops her conversation and faces me, looking from me to my form.  I pull the form in real close to my body, which over emphasizes my “upside down left hander” writing style.  She slowly leans back until she is even with me and cranes her eyes to see what I’m writing.  I set my pen down and I sarcastically turn my head to look at her.  She stares at me.  I stare at her.  Chicken.  I win.  She turns back to her friends, and I know what she is saying.  Left handers are like mutant life forms here.  I am used to every single patient exclaiming to my translator that I am writing with my left hand (in Vietnamese).  It’s really funny, because 80% of my “white” friends here are left handed.  My conclusion?  A.  Left handers are more adventurous.  B.  Vietnamese are not allowed to grip the pen with the left hand from an early age.  But who knows.

The doctor tells me that my throat is inflamed and he wants to test for strep and influenza.  The nurse comes at me with two very long q-tips, and apologizes in advance.  First she sticks it down my throat and swishes it around until I am gagging and tears are starting to pour out of my eyes.  Then she says she’s REALLY sorry, and basically sticks this q-tip up my nose until I’m sure it’s touching my brain.  As she’s telling me to relax, I’m struggling out of her reach like a squirming two year old.  I’m even squealing, “Nooooooo!”  That has got to be the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to me.  Blood and guts stuff makes me really queazy.  So when she says, “Don’t blow your nose too hard, you might blow blood,” something happens to me.  I know this feeling; like I’m about to faint.  She tells me to go wait in the waiting room, and I barely make it to a chair.  I slump over the side of it, and I can feel my whole body starting to get really hot.  I’m struggling with my jacket with my head lolled to one side.  Breathe breathe breathe.  Things start to return to normal.  The doctor comes back.  The tests are negative.  I have a cold.  And it only cost me a hundred and fifty U.S. bucks.

I probably cleaned my apartment for a solid five hours today.  It gets dusty fast!  I rearranged all my furniture (what little I have), and did loads of laundry.  I hooked myself up with a heater to dry the things I need to use immediately.  Otherwise they could hang out for days and never make any progress to dryness.  I started to weigh the pros and cons of going out to eat at around 4:30 pm.  Pros: It’s fast, cheap, and delicious.  Cons: It’s pretty cold outside, and if I can’t find the eat spot five blocks away that my friends are always raving about, I will have to continue on to my favorite spot about a mile away.  After looking sheepishly into my tiny fridge, I put on a hoodie and a jacket and set off.  Instead of walking all the way around the very large block to the next main road, I decided to go through the heart of it.  There are narrow dark alleys with tall homes and shops which wind haphazardly into nooks, crannies, dips, and turns.  I run through here quite often on my way to see friends in the neighborhood, but it struck me tonight how freaked out I would have been to take this walk upon arriving in Hanoi.  I literally chuckled to myself as I came around a corner and saw a man standing next to his motorcycle wearing black gloves with his mask covering his face and his black hat pulled down to his eyes.  Tell me that wouldn’t freak you out in the states!  But again, masks are commonplace.   So I jauntily continued on and successfully found the Bun Cha place.  They serve me Bun Cha at work about once a week on my revolving street food menu.  The chopsticks don't taper and are not even the same length.  I expertly squeeze some lime juice on them and wipe them off with a napkin.  Here is what the view from my seat looked like:

Here’s the dish at work:

When I got home I watched one episode of Summer Heights High that I’ve been downloading today on iTunes.  I haven’t turned on the TV but once in my apartment, but I have spent a small fortune on iTunes.  Home shows keep me sane and remind me of the people I loved watching them with.

Lastly, in the events of the day, I had quite a few bill collectors come to the door.  They can tell if you’re home from how the lock hangs.  Here are my bills:

One huge water jug (like the old cascade clear deliveries): $1.75

Water bill (showers and laundry): Also $1.75

Internet and Cable Bill: $4.00

Electricity: $3.00

Can’t really complain about that!  

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: