Book details

  • Genre:biography & autobiography
  • Sub-genre:Personal Memoirs
  • Language:English
  • Pages:280
  • Hardcover ISBN:9798234113481

Michael Without Borders

A Second Medical Career

By Michael D. Polifka

Overview

For eighteen years, Michael traveled — to Indonesia, Western Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Nepal, Liberia, and Central Guatemala. First as a member of a large humanitarian organization, then alone, with two oversized suitcases of medicine and supplies and a commitment to return. What began as individual patient care — the child with pneumonia in Panama, the amputee in Nicaragua who looked him in the eyes and reminded him why he came — evolved into something larger and more lasting: the mentoring of local health providers in three of the world's most underserved settings, building programs that would continue long after he left. Michael Without Borders is the firsthand account of that second medical career — honest about what one physician can and cannot change, and quietly extraordinary in what it reveals about the human capacity for connection across every boundary of culture, language, and circumstance. Drawn from thirty-nine journals kept over eighteen years, with 380 photographs taken in the field, this is a book about showing up. Again and again. Over years.
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Description

For eighteen years, Michael traveled — to Indonesia, Western Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Nepal, Liberia, and Central Guatemala. First as a member of a large humanitarian organization, then alone, with two oversized suitcases of medicine and supplies and a commitment to return. What began as individual patient care — the child with pneumonia in Panama, the amputee in Nicaragua who looked him in the eyes and reminded him why he came — evolved into something larger and more lasting: the mentoring of local health providers in three of the world's most underserved settings, building programs that would continue long after he left. Michael Without Borders is the firsthand account of that second medical career — honest about what one physician can and cannot change, and quietly extraordinary in what it reveals about the human capacity for connection across every boundary of culture, language, and circumstance. Drawn from thirty-nine journals kept over eighteen years, with 380 photographs taken in the field, this is a book about showing up. Again and again. Over years.
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About The Author

Michael D. Polifka After graduating from the University of Vermont College of Medicine, Michael returned to southern Vermont to start a primary care practice in Manchester with his good friend Mark Novotny. He also worked in the local hospital emergency room. Over the next twenty-five years the practice flourished, expanding in depth and breadth. In 1995 he started the first free school-based health clinic in Vermont at the local high school, staffed by physician volunteers. In January 2005 he retired from primary care and began volunteering internationally. The tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia in late December 2004 had presented the first opportunity — one that would change the course of his medical career for the next eighteen years, taking him to Indonesia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Nepal, Liberia, and back to Guatemala, eventually evolving to mentoring homegrown health providers and building programs that would outlast his visits. In 2008 he received the Award for Service to Medicine and Community from the University of Vermont College of Medicine. He lives with his wife, Murrie, in Manchester, Vermont.
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