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By Kate Cauley

Created: 11 May 2019

Not long ago, I watched a man carefully walk into clinic, cane in hand, right arm and leg trapped in contracture from a stroke. He sat down silently and handed me his chart. I read the words hemiplegia…. aphasia… I turned page after page as other patients filed into the clinic to sit in the open chairs, waiting for me, the “new doctor”. I sat on my seat, my mudha, and continued to stare at the stroke victim’s chart as this new world faded around me.

As a practitioner in the United States the resources to work with stroke is limited to very rare opportunities in hospitals. My experience with stroke had only been in textbooks, lectures and TCM theory. This was new.

Taking a moment to compose myself, we greeted each other in the customary way of the Nepalese: I said namaste as I pressed my palms together and assumed direct eye contact. Bimdev returned the gesture with one hand raised, his right hand betraying his illness, and muttered an unintelligible reply. I began my work, taking vitals, touching his scalp, hands, arms, and feet. Looking into his eyes, I knew I was nowhere near instilling that patient doctor trust so crucial to healing and that I needed to gain it if I were to help this man.

Read more: Bimdev Says His Daughter’s Name

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By Mallory Harman

Created: 28 January 2019

She sat there like a queen, or a dictator, regally poised in a red plastic chair, her gold-tasseled nose ring eclipsed by her broad nose. Faded tattoos traced the corners of her chin in the shapes of upside down “E”s — symbols she later said have no meaning. Wisps of silver hair framed her face and pulled back into a small bun, displaying the sizable golden plates gouged through the centers of her ears. Their worth could be seen in their weight — thick, circular slabs resting uncomfortably on the cleft above her earlobes, a ruby shimmering at the center. The large beaded necklace she wore weighted by a heavy studded golden cylinder indicated she was a married woman. This necklace was the cleanest thing she was wearing, the neon green beads sparkling atop her dirt-laden choli (traditional top).

As I approached her, she sat stoic, still. Her vibrantly colored clothes countered the message of her icy demeanor — I felt unsettled by this contradiction, and the air of peculiarity around her. I sat down on my mudha (a brightly colored Nepalese bamboo stool), pretending to finish my previous patient’s chart, and finally looked up. Her eyes pierced mine — strong, sharp, intimidating. She stared at me as if she was sizing me up - all 4’11” of her. For a moment I sized up myself, too. “Namaste” (hello), I said in my best Nepali accent, holding my hands up in prayer at the center of my chest. Before she responded, the interpreter looked from me to her, mimicked my greeting and said, “Lasso” (“lah-so”). To my embarrassment, and subsequent confusion, I learned that this was the proper greeting in Tamang language. My patient, like many of the patients I saw in Tistung, was a Tamang woman.  

Tamang Women

Read more: Tamang

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By Andrew Schlabach

Created: 05 January 2019

I’m totally overdressed, now sweating in my puffy jacket that only a few hours ago seemed totally adequate to stave off the morning frost. The Nepali middle hills tower and surround my small team of companions as we examine a man whom we came to see. The small, thirty to forty square foot shed made of corrugated sheet metal that is cobbled together with wire, serves as a house for him and his wife. It becomes our backdrop as we sit on a blue plastic tarp spread over the dusty, hard-packed ground. The stench of gangrene burns my nostrils and I am thankful for the thin latex barrier provided by my examination gloves as I probe the bone deep wounds on his feet. His three goats and a small mangy black and white dog look on at the strange scene with indifference.

Just an hour earlier, I was witness to one of the loneliest human beings I have ever encountered. About a two hour hilly and steep walk from our Bajrabarahi Clinic -- basically two valleys over-- lays a small settlement of about a dozen stone and mud houses. Some have traditional thatch roofs, where others have a mixture of terracotta tiles and newer corrugated metal. A small creek supplies water to a population of about fifty Tamang people. The Tamang people may have been the original inhabitant of the Kathmandu valley originating from Mongolian tribes who migrated through northern Tibet into Nepal. Today they remain a very isolated ethnic group maintaining their own language and customs, rarely intermarrying with other ethnic groups. Typically they are very superstitious with a healthy skepticism of foreigners and have a higher than average poverty and illiteracy rates-- especially in these more isolated areas.

Read more: The Best Medicine of All