Louisville Medicine Volume 70, Issue 10 | Page 20

TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD
Ethiopia , 2004
Buzkashi-2004 in Afghanistan
( continued from page 17 ) with us experienced flight problems . I had to “ cover ” the pediatric patients until he arrived . The very first weekend I was called to the ER to see a young child from the village suffering from asthma . Treatment options were limited , and I had trouble keeping the oxygen saturation above 90 %. Suddenly , I felt a hand on my shoulder and Bill was standing there offering support and recommendations , which was very helpful to me both medically and emotionally .
In Northern China , not too far from North Korea , I slept in an abandoned hospital with no heat in sub-freezing temperatures ; yet the food prepared by the locals was so delicious I gained weight on the trip . I examined patients with a Chinese doctor where I used the “ western approach ,” and he used the “ Yin and Yang ” approach to make a diagnosis together before we prescribed the patient his or her treatment .
Leigh Anne and I traveled with a team to Zambia to treat the prisoners in several different prisons . One night we opened the door to our room to be greeted by dozens of large spiders crawling all over the walls . We learned the prisoners lay on their side and were so packed together they touched one another . At 2:00 a . m ., a whistle would sound and they would turn to the other side . Yet , those same prisoners would fill the prison courtyards every afternoon joyfully singing hymns of praise . Leigh Anne and I were able to visit Victoria Falls and white-water raft the class 5 rapids on the Zambezi River .
Not long after the end of the Tora Bora conflict in Afghanistan our small team drove from Pakistan over the Khyber Pass and past the Tora Bora Mountain Range on the way to Kabul where we gave a few lectures at a large hospital and held some clinics in a village . The real hero of the trip was an engineer who borrowed a huge truck from the Marines and cleared the entire hospital sewage system where all toilets and sinks and showers had become nonfunctional during the Taliban reign . We also attended a game of Buzkashi , which is an ancient Afghan game in which horse-mounted players attempt to place a goat or calf carcass in a goal .
Those 25 years of travel radically changed my life . I am so thankful for all the opportunities , and I am humbled by the talented outdoor leaders who guided me and the career missionaries and their families who spent their entire lives joyfully serving others in need at great personal sacrifice . These travels revealed how others had helped me grow emotionally , socially and spiritually . I observed extreme poverty on every trip , and I observed immense suffering all over the world ; at the same time I was received over and over with a genuine feeling of friendship from those same individuals . Their joy overwhelmed me considering the conditions they were enduring . I held hands with different prisoners in Zambia who wore their same uniform for years surviving on minimal food , but they sang boldly from their heart with hymns of joy . I experienced deep personal sorrow over a three-day period while taking care of a 3-year-old in a remote village , and the child progressively became weaker and weaker and died on the third morning .
What started as a chance to see the world through hiking and mountaineering became a personal transformation through those experiences on short-term mission trips , which resulted in my leaving a full-time practice of interventional cardiology at age 52 despite the fact I tremendously enjoyed interventional cardiology . I became an energetic volunteer in different aspects of medical missions . Left to my own selfish ambitions , I would have never made such a life-changing decision . I am convinced all the above travels , experiences and friendships with individuals from many cultures helped me make this decision . Not only did my family come alongside me in this life-changing decision , God intervened in my life to transform me . From the villagers north of the Nile River , to the patients with no digits as a complication from leprosy to the prisoners in their dank cells of Zambia , their decisions to follow God were initiated by the general revelation of this world : in all its beauty and intentional design , in the majesty of creation I experienced throughout all my travels .
Dr . Dageforde is a retired interventional cardiologist .
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