Linath Lim’s life was formed by hunger.
She was not but 13 when the Khmer Rouge seized energy in Cambodia and ripped her household aside. The totalitarian regime despatched her and 4 siblings to work camps, the place they planted rice and dug irrigation canals from dawn to sundown — every surviving on two ladles of rice gruel a day. One disappeared, by no means to be discovered.
Only a few months earlier than the Khmer Rouge fell in January 1979, Lim’s father starved to loss of life, among the many almost one-quarter of Cambodians who perished from execution, compelled labor, hunger or illness in lower than 4 years.
For Lim, the indelible stamp of childhood anguish drove two of her life’s passions: serving individuals as a doctor and cooking lavish feasts for family and friends — each of which she did till she died of covid-19 in January.
Throughout the week earlier than her loss of life at age 58, she handled dozens of sufferers who flooded the hospital through the lethal winter covid surge, whereas bringing home-cooked meals to the hospital for her fellow well being care staff to take pleasure in throughout breaks.
“These experiences through the conflict made her humble and empathetic towards the individuals round her,” stated Dr. Vidushi Sharma, who labored with Lim at Group Regional Medical Heart in Fresno, California. “She all the time wished to assist them.”
Lim’s story is one among struggling and triumph.
Through the Khmer Rouge’s brutal reign and the Cambodian civil conflict earlier than it, Lim and her 9 siblings attended college sporadically. The ravages of conflict compelled the household first from its small city to the capital, Phnom Penh, after which into the countryside when the Khmer Rouge took energy in 1975. As a part of its imaginative and prescient to create a classless agrarian society, the communist group cut up households and relocated residents to rural labor camps.
Lim survived the work camps as a result of she was good and resourceful, stated her youngest brother, Rithy Lim, who additionally lives in Fresno. She dug ditches, hauled clay-like grime on her again, constructed earthen dams in the course of a river throughout monsoons — all with little meals or relaxation, he stated.
She additionally grew to become a skillful hunter and fisher, and discovered to establish vegetation that have been fit for human consumption.
“You can not think about the horrible situations,” he stated. “Consider it as a spot that you simply reside like wild animals, and other people inform you to work. There’s no paper, no pens. You sleep on the bottom. We witnessed loss of life of all types.”
Vietnamese troops liberated Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Later that yr, Lim, her mom and siblings sneaked into Thailand. “The entire household walked by way of minefields,” Rithy Lim recalled. There, they waited and labored in refugee camps. At one camp, they met a dentist from California’s Central Valley who was on a medical mission.
When Lim and her household arrived within the U.S. in 1982, they landed in Georgia. However she and an older brother quickly moved to the small city of Taft, California, about 45 minutes west of Bakersfield, on the invitation of the dentist they’d befriended on the Thai refugee camp.
When she hit the bottom, the 4-foot-11 dynamo, then 19, was pushed by “pure dedication,” Rithy Lim stated.
Inside two years, Linath Lim discovered English, earned her GED and graduated from Taft Faculty — “growth, growth, growth,” her brother recalled. (She discovered to make conventional, middle-America Thanksgiving dinners when she labored on the neighborhood school’s cafeteria, which she would later prepare dinner for scores of family and friends.)
She went on to attend Fresno State after which the Medical Faculty of Pennsylvania, sleeping on associates’ couches, borrowing cash from different Cambodian refugees and scraping by.
“Think about not having any cash, learning alone, sleeping in another person’s lounge,” Rithy Lim stated.
Lim grew to become an inner medication physician “as a result of she all the time wished to be actually concerned with numerous sufferers,” Rithy Lim stated. After her residency, she returned to the Central Valley to observe in hospitals and clinics in underserved communities, together with Porterville and Stockton, the place a few of her sufferers have been farmworkers and Cambodian refugees.
California has the most important Cambodian inhabitants within the nation, with roughly 89,000 individuals of Cambodian descent in 2019, in accordance with a Public Coverage Institute of California evaluation of American Group Survey information.
Twice, Lim joined the Cambodian Well being Professionals Affiliation of America on weeklong volunteer journeys to Cambodia, the place she and different docs handled a whole lot of sufferers a day, stated Dr. Track Tan, a Lengthy Seashore, California, pediatrician and founding father of CHPAA.
“She was a kindhearted, very mild particular person,” recalled Tan, who stated he was the one member of his household to outlive the Khmer Rouge. “She went past the decision of responsibility to do particular issues for sufferers.”
Most just lately, Lim labored the swing shift, 1 p.m. to 1 a.m., at Group Regional Medical Heart. She admitted sufferers by way of the emergency room, the place she was uncovered to numerous individuals with covid. She labored further shifts through the pandemic, volunteering when the hospital was short-staffed, stated Dr. Nahlla Dolle, an internist who additionally labored with Lim.
“She instructed me there have been so many sufferers each day, and that they didn’t have sufficient beds and the sufferers needed to wait within the hallway,” Tan stated.
Colleagues stated she was conscious of the dangers however beloved her job. Lim, who was single and didn’t have children, drew happiness from celebrating others’ joys. After getting residence from work within the small hours, she slept for a bit, then bought as much as prepare dinner. Her specialties have been Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese and Italian meals. She generally ordered a complete roasted pig that she transported to the hospital. Her memorable Thanksgiving dinners served 70 or extra individuals.
“For any event that comes up — if it’s a birthday, if it’s a child bathe, if it’s Thanksgiving — she would prepare dinner, she would order meals and convey all people collectively,” Dolle stated. “She beloved to feed individuals as a result of she skilled famine and lack of meals.”
The week earlier than she died, Lim cooked for her colleagues nearly each day, and threw a child bathe for Sharma, full with hen calzones and blueberry cake.
“Day-after-day, we have been having lunch collectively,” Sharma stated. “She did the bathe, after which she’s gone.”
Lim, who had well being issues together with diabetes, had not been vaccinated. Household and associates had urged her to deal with herself, and to verify her blood sugar and take her drugs. “She would care about everybody however herself,” Sharma stated.
On Jan. 15, Lim instructed associates by telephone that she was exhausted, achy and having bother respiration. However she stated that she can be superb, that she simply wanted to relaxation. Then she stopped responding to calls and texts.
When she didn’t present up for work a number of days later, her brother went to verify on her at residence and located her on the sofa, the place she had died.
Now her brother and colleagues are haunted by what-ifs over the lack of a outstanding girl and physician: What if I had checked on her sooner? What if she had been vaccinated? What if she had gotten care when she began feeling ailing?
“To have somebody who has been by way of all that in her childhood after which flourish as a doctor, a human being, coming to a brand new nation, studying English, going to highschool and school with out having a lot monetary help, it’s phenomenal,” Sharma stated. “It’s unbelievable.”
This story is a part of “Misplaced on the Frontline,” a undertaking from The Guardian and Kaiser Well being Information that goals to doc the lives of well being care staff within the U.S. who die from COVID-19, and to research why so many are victims of the illness.
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially unbiased service of the California Well being Care Basis.
