Cambodian's encounter with a Phila. doctor has made a lasting difference.
By Adam Fifield
Inquirer Staff Writer (Philadelphia, USA)
It was the Khmer Rouge soldiers' cruel idea of a party trick.
Day after day, they would see 5-year-old Hengly Lay in the village and call out. Hopping over to them, he knew it was going to happen again.
Gathering around him, they would taunt him and demand: Stand on one leg. Then, pick up your other leg and put it on your shoulder.
Because polio had withered Lay's left leg and made it pliable, he could drape it without strain, and as his tormentors ridiculed him, he endured the humiliation.
"Everybody around me, they would just laugh," recalled Lay, now 35, and living in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge, which terrorized Cambodia during the late 1970s, claiming at least 1.7 million lives, arrested Lay's uncle and murdered him. Though a younger sister and brother died from starvation and disease, Lay survived.
But in the deeply traumatized country, where most of the doctors were wiped out and where land mines and disease left thousands disabled, his impairment went neglected.
To take a step, he had to shift his weight to the right, reach down and grab his nearly useless left leg and pull it forward. Next he would stabilize his left knee so it would not buckle under his weight, then do it all again.
The story of how he found a new life - with the help of a doctor from Philadelphia and a Cambodian American community leader from Chicago - is a testament to the power of altruism and to little things that can make a big difference.
While an undergraduate student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Lay took a job at a downtown hotel. In January 1993, he encountered some American tourists. Among them were Cambodian American Samorn Nil of Chicago and Judy Kleppel, a doctor specializing in rehabilitation medicine, from Philadelphia.
Disarmed by the clerk's amiability, Kleppel and another American woman taught him some English. He took to calling Kleppel "sister," a common term of affection.
The doctor sympathized with his affliction, but worse than his cumbersome movement were his limited possibilities.
"He never really believed he would be married," said Kleppel, now 52. "He never believed he would have a girlfriend; he never believed he would have children... . I remember thinking that was sad, and why? Why, necessarily?"
Disabled Cambodians often face discrimination, said Maria Reina, president of the Chicago-based Center for International Rehabilitation. They are excluded socially, seen as a "disgrace" or as contagious, and "cannot participate actively in society."
After Kleppel and Nil visited a workshop in Phnom Penh that made prosthetic limbs and orthopedic braces, Kleppel got an idea.
"I went back to [him] and I said, 'Do you know about something called a brace?' "
To show him, she drew a rough picture, but the concept was still alien.
Lay agreed to go with her to the workshop. There an orthotist evaluated his gait and measured his leg for a brace.
Within a week, Kleppel said goodbye and flew home to Philadelphia.
A year later she learned that Lay had gotten his brace and that it had significantly improved his movement. What she did not know then was how completely it would transform his life.
He landed a job in customer service at a local telephone company, took up volleyball, and married. He now has a son, 9, and a daughter, 2. He is scheduled to graduate next year with a law degree from the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh.
Samorn Nil, 52, who has kept in close touch with Lay since 1993, said that with the brace, his friend's "self-esteem, his image, changed significantly."
Indeed Lay himself said, "This brace gave everything to my life."
But in January, Lay e-mailed Nil with alarming news: The brace that had brought him such prosperity for 13 years had broken.
It happened at work, as Lay walked up the stairs. Something snapped, his leg folded, and he crumpled to his knees.
In one instant, the huge distance he had traveled, all his hard-won confidence, seemed to disappear.
"I was very shocked," he said.
Concerned coworkers, who couldn't see the brace because Lay concealed it under pants, inquired if he was OK.
Hiding his panic, he replied: "Oh, it's no problem. It's just something wrong with my leg."
Now the old fears flooded back. Now he had to resume his old way of walking; shifting his weight, lifting his leg with his hands, stabilizing his knee.
"I felt desperate," he said. "If I don't have the brace, how am I going to deal with my living?... How will I support my family?"
He returned to the workshop that made the brace, but it had closed. He went to the Cambodia Trust, a charity that serves the disabled. Staff members did not have the proper parts for his brace but said they would repair it if he could supply them.
Feeling more and more hopeless, Lay approached a welder, who mended his device but warned that the remedy would not last long.
Not knowing where else to turn, Lay e-mailed Nil and asked how to contact Judy Kleppel. That e-mail spawned dozens over the next three months, as Lay's American friends tried to help him.
But Kleppel did not know what parts he needed. So Lay took a photo of his brace and attached it to an e-mail.
Then Kleppel contacted her friend Jack Lawall, of the orthopedic brace and prosthetics company Harry J. Lawall & Son Inc., based in Northeast Philadelphia.
"The parts made over there are not manufactured the same way over here," Lawall said. So his challenge was to find American parts that would "go with their parts over there."
He determined that Lay needed two knee joints and two knee locks. He found the parts and gave them to Kleppel at a discount, and she mailed them to Lay.
But the brace-maker in Phnom Penh said they were insufficient, that four metal support bars were also needed. Worried for his future, Lay was distraught.
After another round of e-mail messages and two more months, Lawall found the metal bars and Kleppel sent them to Lay.
By mid-April, the repairs were complete, in time for his hometown's New Year celebration. With his confidence restored, Lay walked through his village with pride.
Lay is effusive in his gratitude. "I am very, very grateful to Judy," he said. "After I get a brace, I can have everything in my life... . I can do anything."
----------------
Contact staff writer Adam Fifield at 856-779-3917 or afifield@phillynews.com.
Day after day, they would see 5-year-old Hengly Lay in the village and call out. Hopping over to them, he knew it was going to happen again.
Gathering around him, they would taunt him and demand: Stand on one leg. Then, pick up your other leg and put it on your shoulder.
Because polio had withered Lay's left leg and made it pliable, he could drape it without strain, and as his tormentors ridiculed him, he endured the humiliation.
"Everybody around me, they would just laugh," recalled Lay, now 35, and living in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge, which terrorized Cambodia during the late 1970s, claiming at least 1.7 million lives, arrested Lay's uncle and murdered him. Though a younger sister and brother died from starvation and disease, Lay survived.
But in the deeply traumatized country, where most of the doctors were wiped out and where land mines and disease left thousands disabled, his impairment went neglected.
To take a step, he had to shift his weight to the right, reach down and grab his nearly useless left leg and pull it forward. Next he would stabilize his left knee so it would not buckle under his weight, then do it all again.
The story of how he found a new life - with the help of a doctor from Philadelphia and a Cambodian American community leader from Chicago - is a testament to the power of altruism and to little things that can make a big difference.
While an undergraduate student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Lay took a job at a downtown hotel. In January 1993, he encountered some American tourists. Among them were Cambodian American Samorn Nil of Chicago and Judy Kleppel, a doctor specializing in rehabilitation medicine, from Philadelphia.
Disarmed by the clerk's amiability, Kleppel and another American woman taught him some English. He took to calling Kleppel "sister," a common term of affection.
The doctor sympathized with his affliction, but worse than his cumbersome movement were his limited possibilities.
"He never really believed he would be married," said Kleppel, now 52. "He never believed he would have a girlfriend; he never believed he would have children... . I remember thinking that was sad, and why? Why, necessarily?"
Disabled Cambodians often face discrimination, said Maria Reina, president of the Chicago-based Center for International Rehabilitation. They are excluded socially, seen as a "disgrace" or as contagious, and "cannot participate actively in society."
After Kleppel and Nil visited a workshop in Phnom Penh that made prosthetic limbs and orthopedic braces, Kleppel got an idea.
"I went back to [him] and I said, 'Do you know about something called a brace?' "
To show him, she drew a rough picture, but the concept was still alien.
Lay agreed to go with her to the workshop. There an orthotist evaluated his gait and measured his leg for a brace.
Within a week, Kleppel said goodbye and flew home to Philadelphia.
A year later she learned that Lay had gotten his brace and that it had significantly improved his movement. What she did not know then was how completely it would transform his life.
He landed a job in customer service at a local telephone company, took up volleyball, and married. He now has a son, 9, and a daughter, 2. He is scheduled to graduate next year with a law degree from the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh.
Samorn Nil, 52, who has kept in close touch with Lay since 1993, said that with the brace, his friend's "self-esteem, his image, changed significantly."
Indeed Lay himself said, "This brace gave everything to my life."
But in January, Lay e-mailed Nil with alarming news: The brace that had brought him such prosperity for 13 years had broken.
It happened at work, as Lay walked up the stairs. Something snapped, his leg folded, and he crumpled to his knees.
In one instant, the huge distance he had traveled, all his hard-won confidence, seemed to disappear.
"I was very shocked," he said.
Concerned coworkers, who couldn't see the brace because Lay concealed it under pants, inquired if he was OK.
Hiding his panic, he replied: "Oh, it's no problem. It's just something wrong with my leg."
Now the old fears flooded back. Now he had to resume his old way of walking; shifting his weight, lifting his leg with his hands, stabilizing his knee.
"I felt desperate," he said. "If I don't have the brace, how am I going to deal with my living?... How will I support my family?"
He returned to the workshop that made the brace, but it had closed. He went to the Cambodia Trust, a charity that serves the disabled. Staff members did not have the proper parts for his brace but said they would repair it if he could supply them.
Feeling more and more hopeless, Lay approached a welder, who mended his device but warned that the remedy would not last long.
Not knowing where else to turn, Lay e-mailed Nil and asked how to contact Judy Kleppel. That e-mail spawned dozens over the next three months, as Lay's American friends tried to help him.
But Kleppel did not know what parts he needed. So Lay took a photo of his brace and attached it to an e-mail.
Then Kleppel contacted her friend Jack Lawall, of the orthopedic brace and prosthetics company Harry J. Lawall & Son Inc., based in Northeast Philadelphia.
"The parts made over there are not manufactured the same way over here," Lawall said. So his challenge was to find American parts that would "go with their parts over there."
He determined that Lay needed two knee joints and two knee locks. He found the parts and gave them to Kleppel at a discount, and she mailed them to Lay.
But the brace-maker in Phnom Penh said they were insufficient, that four metal support bars were also needed. Worried for his future, Lay was distraught.
After another round of e-mail messages and two more months, Lawall found the metal bars and Kleppel sent them to Lay.
By mid-April, the repairs were complete, in time for his hometown's New Year celebration. With his confidence restored, Lay walked through his village with pride.
Lay is effusive in his gratitude. "I am very, very grateful to Judy," he said. "After I get a brace, I can have everything in my life... . I can do anything."
----------------
Contact staff writer Adam Fifield at 856-779-3917 or afifield@phillynews.com.
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Businessmen to Pay for Improper Medicare Bills
Three Pennsylvania businessmen have agreed to pay the federal government a $645,000 settlement to resolve claims that they were “improperly billing” Medicare for medical equipment, according to an account in the Bucks County Courier Times.
The three men—Harry J. Lawall Sr., Harry J. Lawall Jr. and Wayne T. Lawall are responsible for the day-to-day operations of Harry J. Lawall & Son Inc. and Lawall at Hershey Inc., both in Philadelphia, and Lawall Prosthetics-Orthotics Inc. of Wilmington, Del., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The story said the Lawalls submitted claims or knew about claims made through the U.S. Department of Health. Four former Lawall employees filed the lawsuit under the whistleblower provision of the U.S. False Claims Act.
The settlement amount includes a $109,650 payment that will go to the former employees who provided the information for the federal investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Click on the following link for the full story on this whistleblower case.
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