慈濟傳播人文志業基金會
The Gentle Hands of a Doctor: Soothing the Old and the Young

Special Service Every Month

The blind old man lives alone. Month after month, TIMA volunteers visit him to check up on him and cheer him up.

Having been wiped clean, Mr. Pan, right, looks good and feels refreshed.

Dr. Ye Tian-hao (葉添浩) walked up a familiar, winding mountain path in a Taiwanese aborigine settlement called Shishan, located in Liugui District, Kaohsiung. When he saw a short wall where a bougainvillea plant was blooming vigorously, he knew they were almost there—Mr. Pan’s house.

Earlier that day in Baolai, also in Liugui, these people had taken part in a monthly free clinic provided by the Tzu Chi International Medical Association (TIMA). But instead of going home after the clinic ended, Dr. Ye and the others took an hour-long detour to make a house call. They were visiting Mr. Pan, who was 87, totally blind, and living alone. Only after they had given him a checkup and found out how he was doing would they feel they could go home. Checking in on Pan after the free clinic had become a monthly routine for Dr. Ye.

Pan lived in a run-down clay house. He had lost his eyesight gradually over the years. The first time Tzu Chi volunteers called on him, he ignored them. He had lived alone for such a long time that his isolation had made him unsociable and wary of strangers.

“It’s been a month since our last visit. I wonder if Mr. Pan still remembers us,” Ye thought to himself a little nervously.

As the group rounded a corner, they saw the old man coming slowly out of his house and walking towards them with the help of a cane. They were surprised by this welcoming gesture—on their prior visits he had always just sat in his dark living room. They picked up their pace toward him.

“Mr. Pan, here we are!” they greeted him. They hurried to help him sit down under the eaves of his house.

“Tzu Chi ladies?” he asked, his unseeing eyes looking in the direction of the group. “How many of you are here this time?” he asked.

“Ten,” they replied after they had counted off.

“Let me check your blood pressure, Mr. Pan,” Nurse Lai Ling-yin (賴玲吟) said. The man nodded. His pressure turned out to be slightly high but not too bad.

In addition to being blind, Pan had a skin condition. Other than that, he was quite healthy, so there was not much that they needed to do for him medically.

But he really needed some help with his appearance. “Shall we give you a haircut?” Nurse Huang Jin-tao (黃金桃) asked. When the group had asked the same question a month before, Pan turned them down outright, and they had to repeatedly cajole him before he finally changed his mind. Therefore they were pleasantly surprised this time when the old man accepted their offer right off the bat. “Sure, go ahead. I felt nice and neat after you cut my hair the last time,” he remarked.

While Chen Hong-yan gives Mr. Pan a haircut, Dr. Ye Tian-hao, right, looks on with a smile.

Chen Hong-yan (陳紅燕), Dr. Ye’s wife, hurried back to their car and got her gear out. Once back, she draped an apron around Pan’s neck and began to run the electric hair clippers over his head. The man kept his head down and sat quietly, like a well-behaved grade school student. As his hair got shorter, whitish patches on his skull became more visible. They were there because he had not washed himself in a long time—it was a skin condition that can be avoided if the skin is kept clean.

“Let me give you a wash today, okay?” Ye asked the old man.

“No! No!” he replied, shaking not only his head but his hand too.

Everybody expected that from him. It was exactly the same reply he had given them on all previous occasions. Given the fact that he was healthy, the volunteers had always let this matter go, but Ye really felt that something should be done about it.

The old man’s dark brown skin was covered with thick cuticles and small bumps. Ye knew that his condition would improve if he would wash himself more often, so he squatted by Pan’s side, like all those times before, and pleaded with him to reconsider. Despite his best efforts, the old man showed no sign of relenting.

Seeing that Ye was bound to fail again this time, volunteer Weng Hui-zhen (翁惠珍) and public health nurse Wei Rui-qin (魏瑞琴) decided to try a different approach. They went to the man’s kitchen, scooped water out of a cement tank and started to heat the water. Wei looked everywhere for a clean towel, but every one she could find was dirty and greasy. She could only pick out one that appeared to be the least dirty.

“Have you seen any soap?” Wei asked.

“He doesn’t wash himself, so I doubt he’s got any,” Weng answered.

Wei eventually found some dish detergent in a cupboard thick with spider webs. She squeezed some of it on the towel and washed the towel clean. Weng poured the water she had been heating into a washbowl. Then the two of them walked out of the kitchen with the water and towel.

They returned at a good time: Chen had just finished cutting Pan’s hair. Weng whispered to Nurse Huang, “We’ve got the water ready.” Taking the cue, Huang said to the old man, “Mr. Pan, let us sing you a song.” She and Weng belted out a popular tune, and everyone danced to it, which made Pan very happy. While they were at it, Lai and Wei began to wipe Pan, starting with his hand. The man suddenly noticed what they were doing and protested with a “No!” Lai and Wei stopped because they didn’t want to nettle him, but the quick-witted Huang quickly drew the man’s attention back to their singing by saying to him, “Clap along to our singing, Mr. Pan.” That successfully distracted Pan while they continued to wash him.

Lai and Wei were not finished with the wiping when the song ended, so the singers started another song, and then another. Finally, the monumental act of washing the man was completed. Everyone joined their hands and merrily sang “We Are Family” together. The old man clapped away cheerfully. Sounds of laughter rang out in the usually quiet mountain village.

“Mr. Pan, you seem to have become whiter!” Weng said, carrying another washbasin of clean water toward him. Now, Dr. Ye, who had been squatting nearby through all this, inched forward and took the man’s feet in his hands and washed them thoroughly. He even scrubbed the old man’s sandals.

Refreshed from head to toe, the old man could not stop smiling, displaying his only two teeth. Ye stood up, smiling even more broadly than the old man.

 
Fall 2014