Forty years as a village doctor: one medical bag, two generations of records
He knows every ailment, allergy and door direction in a village of six hundred. A grandfather's emergency contact of choice is the village doctor — who has answered calls for forty years.
Dr. He has been through four house-call bags.
The first was made of fake leather, bought in 1983 by his father with a month's wages, the year he graduated from the county health school and came back to the village. That bag walked the muddy lanes, the field ridges, the hill paths. Its corners wore bald; the strap broke three times. The fourth, the one he carries now, is canvas, and besides a blood pressure monitor and a glucose meter it holds a phone with the health files of every chronically ill elder in the village.
Dr. He is the village doctor of Hejiawan, forty years on the job. Of the village's six hundred–odd residents, he knows who has what chronic condition, who is allergic to which drug, which way each family's door opens. His house calls don't recognize office hours: a child feverish at midnight, one phone call and he's out the door with the bag; an elder who can't get around gets two visits a week to have their blood pressure taken. Someone once worked it out: over forty years, the ground he covered on calls would circle the earth several times. "All of it on foot, and on a motorbike."
His case records are the village's health history. A stack of yellowing call slips survives from the eighties: which child had measles and in what year, which elder was diagnosed with high blood pressure and when, which new bride carried a penicillin allergy. The children of those records are grandparents now, and they still come to Dr. He when they're sick. "He knew what my grandmother was allergic to, so he knows what I should watch out for," the villagers say.
Forty years of a village doctor's work: the diseases aren't always complicated, but the people under his watch are always all accounted for. He remembers every name, and behind every name stands a household at ease.
The closest call came two years ago. An elderly villager living alone suffered diabetic complications. He phoned Dr. He in the daytime, his words slurred — and Dr. He heard that something was wrong: wrong tone in the old man's voice, wrong rasping in the background. He talked the family through it by phone while riding his motorbike over, and did what needed doing before the ambulance arrived. The old man pulled through. Afterward his son came back from the city, took Dr. He's hand and said: "All these years my father lived alone, your number sat first on his emergency contact list."
Dr. He is sixty, the age when he should retire. But he can't — no young doctor has come to take over. The county health bureau worked out a transition: Dr. He stays on for five more years, the town clinic sends a physician to the village two weeks a month, and targeted trainee village doctors are being groomed. These days he often has a young doctor trailing him on calls as an apprentice, and he is handing over forty years of folk know-how and old files piece by piece: "You know the ECG machine better than I do. But I know Aunt Wang's illness better than you do. The two of you together — that's a proper village doctor."
Two years ago Dr. He received a national "most beautiful doctor" nomination. The day he came home with it, the village held a small welcome at the gate of the committee office. He skipped the speeches. He just took out that first fake-leather bag and said: "I've kept this bag. Not for nostalgia — to remind myself that the day I first shouldered it, I promised the village: when you're sick, I come, whatever the hour. Forty years in, I still owe the next forty."
In the end
How long can one person's sense of responsibility be? Dr. He's answer: the length of a generation's health. In the last mile where medical care is hardest to reach, it is people like him, bag on shoulder, who spend forty years walking that mile into level ground.