10/31/2007
As I was leaving work yesterday, Mr. Sitha asked me to look at a baby out in the waiting area outside. I did a quick assessment and found a baby boy at three years of age who wasn’t walking, talking, sitting independently, nor could he use his arms for anything purposeful. He was however, very happy, smiling, and verbalizing throughout. I told the mom to bring him in tomorrow and I can work with him.
Today I saw him three times over the course of the day. Samath was very helpful in translating things as at this level of parent education, my Khmer skills are severely inadequate. She was surprised to find that I saw these types of things in the US, thinking it would only be found in countries such as Cambodia.
I would say the young child has cerebral palsy and/or microcephaly. He presented like another child Pam and I saw at Alyeska PT whom we couldn’t work with because he was just so self abusive and responded to nothing. This child however, is very happy, though he was pretty agitated with having to work possibly for the first time. My goals for him are sitting balance and rolling skills with arm coordination secondary. Throughout the sessions I had mom watching and doing so that she could follow up at home. She was very playful with the child and picked up what I wanted her to do quickly.
The family apparently live some miles away as mom would not go home to get a change of clothing (she only came with what she wore,) but she wanted to come in fairly often. When I told her to come in when the child had improved to sitting better, she said she wanted to come more often. Then I said once a month, thinking that she would not want to come any sooner, but she said that was too long also. After getting this assumption cleared away, I told her to come as often as she wanted. This is after Samath grilled her with the facts, most notably saying that you can’t cut something out to fix this. Mom took it pretty well after a few minutes of denial.
KINGS BIRTHDAY
After work I was invited to dinner with Lyna (office manager,) Sompal (nurse,) Dr. Long (eye surgeon,) another gal from the office whom I don’t know the name of, and two gals from the Chenda clinic which is somehow related to CSC. Riding on the back of a 50cc bike with two people is nothing thrilling, so the locals add insane driving techniques and bad traffic to the mix to spice it up. Weaving in and out of traffic all meeting up at a five or six way intersection with no one wanting to give right of way is something to be experienced. We’ve got two femur fractures right now in the clinic from motor scooter to car accidents.
Dinner was nice with seating at low tables on cushy mats. It was the same cook-your-own meal like in my previous post, but the atmosphere here is a hundred times better than the last place which was more like a feed lot.
The locals seem to revere the old king a fair bit and the rest of the country was off today actually. I however, have mixed feelings. I definitely have no allegiance to him and at this point I would give him no deference whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I can say that I disdain him as I see him culpable for the catastrophic events in the 1970s. Reading the history of those events is like reading a bad murder mystery. There are so many twists that lead to the ultimate outcome and there are so many are involved to include the US, Thailand, Vietnam, and three or more regimes in Cambodia. All were willing to sacrifice others for their own ends and did so. Even the UN has done far less than I had thought and given them credit for.
Visiting with my uncle the other day he went on to explain how he was the last person in the family to see my father alive. He was driving a truck to Battambang from Phnom Penh delivering rice or what not. In Battambang he met my father who was leaving for Phnom Penh with several other men. He explained that my father was a royalist and was going to Phnom Penh as he had heard the king was returning there soon. He also explained that my father was in fact, a member of the Khmer Rouge.
How could this be? The entity that was responsible for his death he was also a member of? Reading up on this it turns out that there were several factions of the Khmer Rouge and it was originally coined by the king. Many joined in support of the king and had no interest in the butchers of Marxism and Mao.
On that fateful day I’m told he went towards Phnom Penh and was met by another faction of the Khmer Rouge that was decidedly against the king. This is the Khmer Rouge that we all know of. I’m told he died then and there, though how uncle Chheang knew this, I did not ask.
Those in power want only one thing, to keep that power. Certainly there are those who work their entire lives with the betterment of the people utmost in their minds, but those are few indeed I believe. The vast majority of us just want to be left alone.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
It must be overwhelming to learn so much of your past all at once, with reunited family, and all new experiences in the land from where you once lived and fled. You’re the man.