John Lindblom – Record-Bee staff
The 600-year-old Buddhist monastery is known as ?The Tiger?s Nest? and is fastened, cocoon-like, to the side of a mountain in an area some regard as Shangri-La, but in reality is the Asian empire of Bhutan.
?You are literally sitting on the edge of this precipice,? said globe-trotting Lakeport physician Dr. Paul Axtell. ?The monks are there giving you their blessing, praying and chanting, and the horns are blowing and the drums are pounding, and you have the altitude, the wind, the cool air and oxygen affecting your body, birds flying up from below, and it is 3,000 feet straight down.
?You say a little prayer to yourself that you get out of there, but you realize you are in a very special place,? said Axtell, who says he climbed nearly four hours to get there. ?It was the craziest, scariest, most surreal moment of my life.?
The Tiger?s Nest experience had to be a very special moment, indeed, to achieve that distinction, because, in his voluntary service missions to Third World countries, Axtell has seen and done much.
As he relates it, in his travels he has swam with a great white shark, gone on nature walks in areas of Africa inhabited by wild lions and leopards, and made a pilgrimage to the last Inca civilization in the bluffs of Machu Picchu, Peru.
So, he is a man who has been to the top of the mountain of human experience, but, more importantly, a traveling surgeon who has been over the top in his dedication to the precepts of the Hippocratic Oath.
As a member of a branch of health care volunteers that visits only friendly countries, Axtell has made teaching and surgical forays to South Africa, Asia, Nepal and South America. He was on a waiting list for four years before making his most recent trip to Bhutan, the only Buddhist kingdom on the planet, in February. When he went, he took medical equipment donated by the Lakeport Fire District with him.
But all expenses, including those for medicines, hotels, planes and all else he pays out of pocket.
?We enjoy a good income from what we do in America, but you always should give something back and that?s the reason I do it,? Axtell reasoned. ?I always felt that I gained more than I gave and was more enriched when I left a country. You are immediately set into an environment where there are just good (medical) people from all over the world, all there for the same reason … Trying to help the people help themselves.?
Axtell can recall working with a surgical team comprised of an anesthesiologist from India, a resident from Cuba and volunteers from Canada and the U.S.
Health issues in each country Axtell has visited are distinctly different and each leaves an indelible impression on the surgeon.
In Africa, children with AIDS and birth defects. ?When I go to Africa, I always try to do a lot of pediatric surgery. When children there are not able to function normally because of the AIDS epidemic, they?re basically left like yesterday?s trash, crawling on the ground. If they?re unable to walk normally, they are considered outcasts. We get them back up on their feet and get them into physical therapy. We operate on children all day long. Children, children, children.?
In Peru, tumors. ?I became a tumor surgeon, bone tumors. We went into villages and did surgeries on malignant tumors all over the body that had never been done before in Peru. We were doing shoulder replacements and hip replacements and taking out large cancers, just to make loved ones comfortable for their last six months or a year. We helped these people survive by doing radical surgeries and taking out the cancers and it was gratifying to make them realize that a bone cancer is not necessarily a death sentence.?
In Bhutan and Nepal, leprosy. ?Leper colonies have faded away, but still in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, you?ll see leper colonies. Leprosy is a very treatable disease with antibiotics, but these countries have lepers ? men in their 60s and 70s ? who had been there for 30 or 40 years and never got treated. Leprosy is burned out now, but they still have all these residuals. Another thing about Asia, people are smaller so we have to bring all the plates and screws we use in surgery down to pediatric size.?
But performing enormous amounts of surgery is only one of the reasons Axtell and other physicians make these missions ? and not the most important one at that. Teaching, he said, is a more critical function.
?You do as many surgeries as you can and I?ve been in those programs before,? he said, ?but the best thing we can do, we feel, is to leave something behind so they can do something they couldn?t before. A fracture, a hip replacement, a neurological problem.
?If we can impart that knowledge to their physicians or their residents, we?ve left something behind and when we leave they?re more self-sufficient.?
Lecturing to residents, practitioners and others in Third World countries presents some challenges. In Africa, Axtell found himself trying to lecture to a group from Transkei, a proud region that was self-governing even before the Mandela era.
?Culturally, they have an entirely different language,? said Axtell. ?This is the language with the clicks. (As seen in the 1980s comedy film, The Gods Must Be Crazy.) They have four or five clicks.?
In Bhutan, Axtell found that medicine was badly outmoded because of the country?s long-closed borders.
?They don?t have any of the newer materials we have,? he said. ?They don?t have hand drills, they don?t have x-rays and they don?t have a cat scan in the entire country.?
But exposures to the cultural aspects of these countries, he said, holds a fascination. Most especially in Bhutan, where time has essentially stood still, as can be observed from architecture from the 11th through 18th centuries and numerous hilltop monasteries.
There are few tractors, said Axtell, so plows in Bhutan are pulled by yaks, which also are a main meat and milk source. Television and/or computers can be found in perhaps one of every 10,000 homes. Families regard it as an honor to have at least one male child begin training for life as a monk at the age of 4 or 5.
Autos are a main source of transportation, but driving them on single-lane roads with blind turns much as this region?s Highway 175 Hopland Grade is a harrowing experience. Head-ons are frequent and the vehicle fatality count is high, Axtell said.
?But it?s the last bastion of a place that is the same now as it was 5,000 years ago,? he added, ?and when you get the opportunity to go there you just go.?
Contact John Lindblom at jlwordsmith@mchsi.com.
