July/August 2008

The Doctor of Second Chances

Continued from page 1

By Thomas Wailgum

By 2000, Sheftall had given up his hospital job and was performing simple, low-risk procedures in private practice in Wiggins. Out of the blue, a doctor he'd worked with as a resident invited him to a Vietnamese hospital to help train doctors in laparoscopic surgery. On that trip, Sheftall took a chance excursion to Phnom Penh that changed his life. He volunteered at a local hospital there, as he usually does when he travels: "I'm curious, and whenever I go to a new place, I like to learn about how medicine is delivered there," he says. In that hospital he saw the desperation of the Cambodian doctors, whose ranks had been decimated by the Khmer Rouge, as they struggled to serve more patients than they could handle. "The young doctors hardly had anyone to train them," he says. "And in 2000, standards of medical care were very low in Cambodia."

That trip to Phnom Penh led to another and yet another. In January 2002, Sheftall had surgery; his debilitating back pain had finally been diagnosed as a herniated neck disc. Although the operation alleviated the pain, some of his fingers remain permanently numb. Resuming his career as a general surgeon was out of the question.

Plastic surgery, however, was something he could do, as it doesn't require the tactile sensitivity that general surgery does. Sheftall saw the situation as a chance to specialize in burn reconstruction.

Within a few weeks of his surgery, he was back in Cambodia, volunteering in a friend's clinic. By then, he'd begun traveling there regularly for his version of vacation (he can get "a little bored" on a typical holiday, he explains). "Instead of going somewhere and playing golf or sitting on a beach," he says, "I decided to go back to Cambodia twice a year and do burn surgery on kids who would be lined up and waiting for me." He also served as a coach and mentor to local doctors. "Going somewhere where the people really honest-to-God needed someone to help them learn how to do something was very attractive to me," he says.

In 2003, Sheftall opened his own clinic, the American Medical Center in Phnom Penh, and moved to Cambodia full time. He soon realized his vision of helping children get "a fair chance in life" by founding an informal charity he calls Operation Kids. So far, he and other doctors employed at his clinic (and a few volunteer doctors) have performed 100 operations on burned and disfigured children, free of charge.

Although Sheftall is most passionate about his medical work, it's not his only enthusiasm: he's also a card-carrying member of the Malaysian PGA Tour, a status he earned in 2005 at the tour's grueling qualifying school (or Q School). It's probably the most unlikely of all his achievements. A talented junior golfer, Sheftall gave up the game at age 15. He had what he calls a "temper problem" and seemed destined never to compete again.