Davik Teng (bottom) and Sin Chhon (top) holds daughter, Davik Teng, before they embark on their trip to the United State and Davik's heart surgery. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)
By Greg Mellen,
Staff Writer
SVAY CHROM, Cambodia - The morning Davik Teng is to leave her village in Cambodia does not start well.
The 9-year-old is groggy and grouchy in the way of 9-year-olds worldwide who have had too much excitement in too short an amount of time.
"I told you not to play too hard," says her mother, Sin Chhon, in Khmer as she hauls the girl by the arm out of their tiny hut to wash her face. Sin dips a ladle into the outdoor cistern and splashes water into Davik's face. Later, Davik scowls as Mom tries to coax a massive spoonful down her throat. At breakfast, the child cries because of a stomachache.
In the future, Davik may see this as a milepost day when her life changed forever. In a few hours, she will get into a van that will take her to Phnom Penh, where she will catch a plane for the United States. It's the beginning of a journey that will lead to open heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart that threatens to shorten her life.
But that is all to come. And for the moment Davik is out of sorts.
A day earlier she had laughed and played with her friends, something to which she is unaccustomed. It is the kind of activity that just three months earlier would have been unthinkable. Since receiving vitamins, heart medications and money for better food, Davik has rallied.
Her father, Souen Tap, who left the family years ago but will see Davik before she leaves for the United States, will say she looks cured. But she is far from it.
Her face and body are now a chestnut brown - a big improvement from the pallor she exhibited in October. But she is still reed thin and small for her age.
For most of her young life, Davik has been a child denied of play. She would linger in the shadows, watching. She could only engage for short spurts, until her lungs and heart would burn and she would have to stop. It was as if she lived life on a dimmer switch.
Those who have devoted themselves to her want to see that change. They want her to have that rite of childhood - to play with abandon. It is for her they have come together.
This is Davik's journey, but it is also the journey of two men, Peter Chhun and Chantha Bob. They are chiefly responsible for making sure this little girl in western Cambodia, 180miles away from Phnom Penh, won't wheeze her life away in a one-room, 6-by-9-foot bamboo hut to become just another sad statistic from a struggling land.
Three people, three journeys, one broken heart.
A failing heart
If not for a chance encounter with a waiter from Long Beach and a friend of his who runs a Long Beach nonprofit that seeks out the Daviks of this world, the little girl's days would have been a slow downward slide possibly ending in an early death and certainly diminishing in quality.
Her overworked and inefficient heart would continue pumping blood through the hole and stressing out her lungs. Her breath would come in ragged jags. Eventually, a heart that had worked too hard for too long would give out. That was Davik's future.
It's called a ventricular septal defect, or VSD. The condition develops in the womb from unknown causes. It is not an uncommon ailment in Cambodian children. In about one-fourth of the cases it heals itself. In Cambodia, where one in seven children die before the age of 5, it is believed the defect goes undetected in many children.
In Davik's case, it was apparent at an early age that something was wrong. Sin says Davik's problems were apparent almost from birth.
"When she was born she was a chubby kid," Sin says through translation. "Then she lost a tremendous amount of weight and was skin and bone. I was very worried but had no idea what to do."
As a single mother who makes less than $2 a day when she can find work in construction, Sin couldn't afford pediatric care. She didn't know what was wrong, and was powerless to do anything about it if she did.
Sin made the long trek to Phnom Penh with the infant Davik, paying several days' wages to ride the bus. Sin says doctors diagnosed lung disease and said nothing could be done.
Davik just had to let nature take its course.
The defect in Davik's heart is 1 centimeter in diameter, according to Dr. Mark Sklansky, a cardiologist at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, which has volunteered its facilities and a world class cardiac team for Davik's surgery.
"A centimeter? That's significant," said Dr. Bill Housworth, the new director of the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, which has helped Davik. "It's big and it would cause her big-time problems."
Typical symptoms include fast breathing and accelerated heartbeat, low weight gain and pale skin with cyanosis, or a blue discoloration. Davik had all these symptoms.
"She easily got tired," Sin's sister Souen Chhon said of her niece. "She moaned and cried at night. Most of the time she was sick in bed and not playful. Everybody worried about her."
Sklansky says the surgery should be relatively straightforward.
The route Davik, Peter and Chantha have taken has been anything but that.
Village life
To get to Davik and Sin's home, one turns left on a narrow unmarked dirt road and leaves the century. Only a few miles from the province capital of Battambang, Svay Chrom might as well be on another planet.
Davik, her mother, older sister Davin and a great-aunt share a one-bedroom hut on the family compound. It is the smallest home in the complex and the only one without any photos or decoration on the walls. With no electricity, running water or toilet facilities, the compound consists of four homes where Davik lives with her family, 20 cousins, uncles, aunts, a grandfather and great-aunt.
The poverty is stark. No one in the family has a motor vehicle not even a motor scooter.. They have no electronics, although they do have a battery that powers a fluorescent light. Sin rides a bike with a broken fender.
Ched Souen, the family patriarch, says this has been a hard year in the compound. He lost his wife, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren: an infant and a 4-year-old. He barely understands the diseases and ailments that led to the deaths. They are just part of the ebb and flow of life here.
In the early morning of Davik's last day at home, she feels better after breakfast and her mood improves. For lunch, her aunt makes Davik's favorite meal, a sour soup made with tamarind leaves, watercress and pork ribs.
"This is our last meal together," Sin says as lunch is being finished and suddenly the tears start to flow.
Sin begins to say her goodbyes and the whole compound is weeping.
Cousins and aunts choke out farewells.
"Kyum sabay chet nas," or "I'm so happy" is a typical refrain blurted between sobs.
"She never expected to go to America, she never expected to have her daughter's heart repaired," Peter translates as Sin's message to the family.
"And then the rest of the people, most of them said, `Just come back with a new heart. Just come back with a new heart,"' Peter translates. He, too, is crying. Even the van driver wipes his eyes with a towel.
As the car is about to pull away, an aunt touches fingers with Davik through the window. Then the van pulls away and family members fade in the dust.
Bobby's journey
Chantha Bob, or Bobby as he's called, is the linchpin in this story. If he didn't come across Davik, the story ends differently. Ends the way it does for so many ailing Cambodians, hapless and forlorn.
A waiter at Sophy's Restaurant in Long Beach, Bobby looks younger than his 41 years. A survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Bobby was robbed of much of his childhood. When he was 8, the Khmer Rouge came, tied his father's hands behind his back and marched him out the door. Bobby never saw his dad again.
Bobby spent almost three years in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines before immigrating to Oregon.
Growing up without a dad has left a void in Bobby.
"Whenever I see parents and children, I get emotional," Bobby says. "I think about what I missed. This is what I want to give them when the time comes, give them what I missed."
Bobby makes frequent trips to his home country, delivering food and supplies to the needy in villages. In 2005, Bobby made such a trip to Davik's village. His older brother Sambo Bob discovered Sin and her family while scouting for those in need of help for the Cambodian American Community of Oregon, an aid group for whom Bobby's younger brother Chanley Bob is a volunteer.
Bobby is Davik's hero.
When the pair is reunited in Phnom Penh, Davik jumps into Bobby's arms and rarely lets go. For the next three days, she is like a vine draped over him. And Bobby, it seems, couldn't be happier or more content.
For Bobby, who longs for marriage, kids and a family of his own, Davik fills the hole in his heart.
Peter's journey
The ghosts are everywhere in Peter Chhun's homeland. As a cameraman for NBC News as the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia raged, Peter filmed his share of carnage. He saw man's brutality and war's devastation.
Before leaving for a brief holiday in Thailand in early April 1975, Peter kissed his mother on the cheek and said he'd see her in two weeks. He never did.
Phnom Penh fell on April 17, 1975. Peter's mother became one of the estimated 1.7 million Cambodians who died from executions, starvation and deprivation during the Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year reign.
He returned to Cambodia several times on aid missions in the late 1980s and early '90s. But in 2006, with retirement just a few years away, Peter wanted to do more with his life. At the suggestion of a friend in Long Beach, Peter founded the nonprofit Hearts Without Boundaries, with the vague goal of aiding Cambodians.
In October 2007, when he accompanied doctors from San Diego who were performing minor surgeries at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Peter found Davik and his purpose.
Seeing the children who were helped by the outpatient surgeries and devastated when he learned Davik would be turned away, Peter saw what the rest of his life would look like.
"I had never thought of children before," Peter says of his aid missions. "Now I start my new life. My new mission."
Saving Davik
Bobby, who first met Peter at Sophy's, learned in 2007 that Peter was going on a mission with doctors to fix hearts in Cambodia. He remembered hearing about the little girl in the remote village and wondered whether the doctors could fix her. "Why not?" Peter says.
They sent a message and money to Davik's family.
"When I got the message from America I was so happy," Sin says. "I had high hopes my girl would be fixed and made normal."
But tests revealed Davik needed open heart surgery that was beyond the capability of doctors at Angkor Hospital for Children.
Peter and Bobby wouldn't concede, however. If life in the West had taught them one thing, it is the can-do attitude of Americans. If Angkor Hospital for Children couldn't help, they would find a place that could.
Eventually they would get Davik an appointment at a French hospital in Phnom Penh. This time they were sure she would be saved.
Once again they were devastated. Davik was too sick for surgery. Her blood count was frighteningly low. The doctors told them to return another day.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the United States, Peter wouldn't accept that Davik was beyond hope. He started fundraising to get her proper nutrition, vitamins and heart medicine. Davik's condition improved. But it was only a stop gap. The heart was still leaking, the hole remained.
Then a co-worker at NBC suggested he talk with Lauren Ina, one of Peter's compatriots on the trip to Cambodia with the San Diego doctors. More important, Lauren is the wife of Sklansky, the cardiologist at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.
More tests were performed on Davik and, finally, there was good news. She seemed to be a candidate for surgery. Furthermore, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles agreed to provide its facilities and surgeons for the operation.
Peter was over the moon. Maybe they would be able to save this little girl after all.
Back to Cambodia
It all happened quickly. Within days after Childrens Hospital agreed to do the surgery and set a date to see Davik, Peter and Bobby were on a plane to Cambodia. They arranged to meet Davik and her mom in Phnom Penh.
When the pair pulled up in a tuk-tuk - a motorized rickshaw - Davik jumped out. There were still hints of Davik's frailty, though they were more subtle.
After a grueling ordeal to get visas for travel to the United States, Peter, Sin and Davik finally secured the documents. And then Bobby and Peter took Sin and Davik back to their village so they could say goodbye to their family.
As an added treat, Peter arranged for a ceremony to be performed by folk dancers and monks to bless the journey.
Peter said when he was in Phnom Penh, the trip felt like many others. But seeing the circumstances of Davik's village life reminded him of his own life as the child of illiterate parents.
"Her life and my life here were no different," Peter said. "America gave me a new life and they don't have the same chance."
The day before Davik's departure was a day of celebration. Dancers performed a New Year-style dance about a deer and a hunter.
On a Friday morning there were tears once again. Davin and her little sister hugged. Davik's father tried to remain stoic, but was blinking rapidly as his daughter hung on tight.
There may still be obstacles. Sklansky worries about "contraindicators" to surgery, such as abscesses due to the lack of dental hygiene in Cambodia.
It is clear Davik's last shot at life-changing surgery will be in the United States.
If all goes well, Davik should be home in Svay Chrom for Cambodian New Year in April.
Peter likes to say he'll bring her home for New Year with a new heart.
Some might say it isn't a new heart, it's a repaired heart. Maybe it's both.
greg.mellen@presstelegram.com
SVAY CHROM, Cambodia - The morning Davik Teng is to leave her village in Cambodia does not start well.
The 9-year-old is groggy and grouchy in the way of 9-year-olds worldwide who have had too much excitement in too short an amount of time.
"I told you not to play too hard," says her mother, Sin Chhon, in Khmer as she hauls the girl by the arm out of their tiny hut to wash her face. Sin dips a ladle into the outdoor cistern and splashes water into Davik's face. Later, Davik scowls as Mom tries to coax a massive spoonful down her throat. At breakfast, the child cries because of a stomachache.
In the future, Davik may see this as a milepost day when her life changed forever. In a few hours, she will get into a van that will take her to Phnom Penh, where she will catch a plane for the United States. It's the beginning of a journey that will lead to open heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart that threatens to shorten her life.
But that is all to come. And for the moment Davik is out of sorts.
A day earlier she had laughed and played with her friends, something to which she is unaccustomed. It is the kind of activity that just three months earlier would have been unthinkable. Since receiving vitamins, heart medications and money for better food, Davik has rallied.
Her father, Souen Tap, who left the family years ago but will see Davik before she leaves for the United States, will say she looks cured. But she is far from it.
Her face and body are now a chestnut brown - a big improvement from the pallor she exhibited in October. But she is still reed thin and small for her age.
For most of her young life, Davik has been a child denied of play. She would linger in the shadows, watching. She could only engage for short spurts, until her lungs and heart would burn and she would have to stop. It was as if she lived life on a dimmer switch.
Those who have devoted themselves to her want to see that change. They want her to have that rite of childhood - to play with abandon. It is for her they have come together.
This is Davik's journey, but it is also the journey of two men, Peter Chhun and Chantha Bob. They are chiefly responsible for making sure this little girl in western Cambodia, 180miles away from Phnom Penh, won't wheeze her life away in a one-room, 6-by-9-foot bamboo hut to become just another sad statistic from a struggling land.
Three people, three journeys, one broken heart.
A failing heart
If not for a chance encounter with a waiter from Long Beach and a friend of his who runs a Long Beach nonprofit that seeks out the Daviks of this world, the little girl's days would have been a slow downward slide possibly ending in an early death and certainly diminishing in quality.
Her overworked and inefficient heart would continue pumping blood through the hole and stressing out her lungs. Her breath would come in ragged jags. Eventually, a heart that had worked too hard for too long would give out. That was Davik's future.
It's called a ventricular septal defect, or VSD. The condition develops in the womb from unknown causes. It is not an uncommon ailment in Cambodian children. In about one-fourth of the cases it heals itself. In Cambodia, where one in seven children die before the age of 5, it is believed the defect goes undetected in many children.
In Davik's case, it was apparent at an early age that something was wrong. Sin says Davik's problems were apparent almost from birth.
"When she was born she was a chubby kid," Sin says through translation. "Then she lost a tremendous amount of weight and was skin and bone. I was very worried but had no idea what to do."
As a single mother who makes less than $2 a day when she can find work in construction, Sin couldn't afford pediatric care. She didn't know what was wrong, and was powerless to do anything about it if she did.
Sin made the long trek to Phnom Penh with the infant Davik, paying several days' wages to ride the bus. Sin says doctors diagnosed lung disease and said nothing could be done.
Davik just had to let nature take its course.
The defect in Davik's heart is 1 centimeter in diameter, according to Dr. Mark Sklansky, a cardiologist at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, which has volunteered its facilities and a world class cardiac team for Davik's surgery.
"A centimeter? That's significant," said Dr. Bill Housworth, the new director of the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, which has helped Davik. "It's big and it would cause her big-time problems."
Typical symptoms include fast breathing and accelerated heartbeat, low weight gain and pale skin with cyanosis, or a blue discoloration. Davik had all these symptoms.
"She easily got tired," Sin's sister Souen Chhon said of her niece. "She moaned and cried at night. Most of the time she was sick in bed and not playful. Everybody worried about her."
Sklansky says the surgery should be relatively straightforward.
The route Davik, Peter and Chantha have taken has been anything but that.
Village life
To get to Davik and Sin's home, one turns left on a narrow unmarked dirt road and leaves the century. Only a few miles from the province capital of Battambang, Svay Chrom might as well be on another planet.
Davik, her mother, older sister Davin and a great-aunt share a one-bedroom hut on the family compound. It is the smallest home in the complex and the only one without any photos or decoration on the walls. With no electricity, running water or toilet facilities, the compound consists of four homes where Davik lives with her family, 20 cousins, uncles, aunts, a grandfather and great-aunt.
The poverty is stark. No one in the family has a motor vehicle not even a motor scooter.. They have no electronics, although they do have a battery that powers a fluorescent light. Sin rides a bike with a broken fender.
Ched Souen, the family patriarch, says this has been a hard year in the compound. He lost his wife, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren: an infant and a 4-year-old. He barely understands the diseases and ailments that led to the deaths. They are just part of the ebb and flow of life here.
In the early morning of Davik's last day at home, she feels better after breakfast and her mood improves. For lunch, her aunt makes Davik's favorite meal, a sour soup made with tamarind leaves, watercress and pork ribs.
"This is our last meal together," Sin says as lunch is being finished and suddenly the tears start to flow.
Sin begins to say her goodbyes and the whole compound is weeping.
Cousins and aunts choke out farewells.
"Kyum sabay chet nas," or "I'm so happy" is a typical refrain blurted between sobs.
"She never expected to go to America, she never expected to have her daughter's heart repaired," Peter translates as Sin's message to the family.
"And then the rest of the people, most of them said, `Just come back with a new heart. Just come back with a new heart,"' Peter translates. He, too, is crying. Even the van driver wipes his eyes with a towel.
As the car is about to pull away, an aunt touches fingers with Davik through the window. Then the van pulls away and family members fade in the dust.
Bobby's journey
Chantha Bob, or Bobby as he's called, is the linchpin in this story. If he didn't come across Davik, the story ends differently. Ends the way it does for so many ailing Cambodians, hapless and forlorn.
A waiter at Sophy's Restaurant in Long Beach, Bobby looks younger than his 41 years. A survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Bobby was robbed of much of his childhood. When he was 8, the Khmer Rouge came, tied his father's hands behind his back and marched him out the door. Bobby never saw his dad again.
Bobby spent almost three years in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines before immigrating to Oregon.
Growing up without a dad has left a void in Bobby.
"Whenever I see parents and children, I get emotional," Bobby says. "I think about what I missed. This is what I want to give them when the time comes, give them what I missed."
Bobby makes frequent trips to his home country, delivering food and supplies to the needy in villages. In 2005, Bobby made such a trip to Davik's village. His older brother Sambo Bob discovered Sin and her family while scouting for those in need of help for the Cambodian American Community of Oregon, an aid group for whom Bobby's younger brother Chanley Bob is a volunteer.
Bobby is Davik's hero.
When the pair is reunited in Phnom Penh, Davik jumps into Bobby's arms and rarely lets go. For the next three days, she is like a vine draped over him. And Bobby, it seems, couldn't be happier or more content.
For Bobby, who longs for marriage, kids and a family of his own, Davik fills the hole in his heart.
Peter's journey
The ghosts are everywhere in Peter Chhun's homeland. As a cameraman for NBC News as the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia raged, Peter filmed his share of carnage. He saw man's brutality and war's devastation.
Before leaving for a brief holiday in Thailand in early April 1975, Peter kissed his mother on the cheek and said he'd see her in two weeks. He never did.
Phnom Penh fell on April 17, 1975. Peter's mother became one of the estimated 1.7 million Cambodians who died from executions, starvation and deprivation during the Khmer Rouge's brutal four-year reign.
He returned to Cambodia several times on aid missions in the late 1980s and early '90s. But in 2006, with retirement just a few years away, Peter wanted to do more with his life. At the suggestion of a friend in Long Beach, Peter founded the nonprofit Hearts Without Boundaries, with the vague goal of aiding Cambodians.
In October 2007, when he accompanied doctors from San Diego who were performing minor surgeries at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Peter found Davik and his purpose.
Seeing the children who were helped by the outpatient surgeries and devastated when he learned Davik would be turned away, Peter saw what the rest of his life would look like.
"I had never thought of children before," Peter says of his aid missions. "Now I start my new life. My new mission."
Saving Davik
Bobby, who first met Peter at Sophy's, learned in 2007 that Peter was going on a mission with doctors to fix hearts in Cambodia. He remembered hearing about the little girl in the remote village and wondered whether the doctors could fix her. "Why not?" Peter says.
They sent a message and money to Davik's family.
"When I got the message from America I was so happy," Sin says. "I had high hopes my girl would be fixed and made normal."
But tests revealed Davik needed open heart surgery that was beyond the capability of doctors at Angkor Hospital for Children.
Peter and Bobby wouldn't concede, however. If life in the West had taught them one thing, it is the can-do attitude of Americans. If Angkor Hospital for Children couldn't help, they would find a place that could.
Eventually they would get Davik an appointment at a French hospital in Phnom Penh. This time they were sure she would be saved.
Once again they were devastated. Davik was too sick for surgery. Her blood count was frighteningly low. The doctors told them to return another day.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the United States, Peter wouldn't accept that Davik was beyond hope. He started fundraising to get her proper nutrition, vitamins and heart medicine. Davik's condition improved. But it was only a stop gap. The heart was still leaking, the hole remained.
Then a co-worker at NBC suggested he talk with Lauren Ina, one of Peter's compatriots on the trip to Cambodia with the San Diego doctors. More important, Lauren is the wife of Sklansky, the cardiologist at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.
More tests were performed on Davik and, finally, there was good news. She seemed to be a candidate for surgery. Furthermore, Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles agreed to provide its facilities and surgeons for the operation.
Peter was over the moon. Maybe they would be able to save this little girl after all.
Back to Cambodia
It all happened quickly. Within days after Childrens Hospital agreed to do the surgery and set a date to see Davik, Peter and Bobby were on a plane to Cambodia. They arranged to meet Davik and her mom in Phnom Penh.
When the pair pulled up in a tuk-tuk - a motorized rickshaw - Davik jumped out. There were still hints of Davik's frailty, though they were more subtle.
After a grueling ordeal to get visas for travel to the United States, Peter, Sin and Davik finally secured the documents. And then Bobby and Peter took Sin and Davik back to their village so they could say goodbye to their family.
As an added treat, Peter arranged for a ceremony to be performed by folk dancers and monks to bless the journey.
Peter said when he was in Phnom Penh, the trip felt like many others. But seeing the circumstances of Davik's village life reminded him of his own life as the child of illiterate parents.
"Her life and my life here were no different," Peter said. "America gave me a new life and they don't have the same chance."
The day before Davik's departure was a day of celebration. Dancers performed a New Year-style dance about a deer and a hunter.
On a Friday morning there were tears once again. Davin and her little sister hugged. Davik's father tried to remain stoic, but was blinking rapidly as his daughter hung on tight.
There may still be obstacles. Sklansky worries about "contraindicators" to surgery, such as abscesses due to the lack of dental hygiene in Cambodia.
It is clear Davik's last shot at life-changing surgery will be in the United States.
If all goes well, Davik should be home in Svay Chrom for Cambodian New Year in April.
Peter likes to say he'll bring her home for New Year with a new heart.
Some might say it isn't a new heart, it's a repaired heart. Maybe it's both.
greg.mellen@presstelegram.com
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