Dr. C. Louis Perrinjaquet, Doc PJ to his friends, lives in Breckenridge, Colorado and for a few months each year he practices family and sports medicine among the ski-season crowd. I can tell what you’re thinking at this moment: this guy’s a ski bum part-time physician who’s living the high life in a Rocky Mountain paradise. I thought the same thing while reading an article about him in Trail Runner magazine. Actually my exact thoughts after one full paragraph were more like, nut-case-ski-bum-part-time-physician. He’s a genuine piece of eco-work, but not for the reasons you might imagine. Doc PJ doesn’t use heat in his home, takes cold showers to conserve energy, buys giant bags of rice and beans to cut down on packaging, teaches transcendental meditation in his living room and breathes exclusively through his nose. I was with him right up to the point of breathing exclusively through his nose. That must be a TM thing; or possibly something to do with cold showers and not using heat during Colorado winters.
Doc PJ is also an avid trail runner, but again, not for the usual reasons. He trains six days per week to prepare for long stints as a jungle doctor. He treks to Darfur, Honduras, Cameroon, and Haiti to do relief medical work; often traveling on foot carrying a 50-pound pack filled with medical supplies. He has pulled rotted teeth from the mouths of Pygmies and cleaned gunshot wounds in raging war zones. He invests $5,000.00 and treats 5,000 people. By the end of the second paragraph I’m ready to canonize the guy and then I read these lines: “In 1991, PJ was working in Vanatu in the South Pacific, when he saw a diabetic man with no shoes. PJ gave him the shoes off his own feet. And to fill the void, he made a pair of sandals out of tire rubber.” This guy is the MacGyver of international medical relief doctors! He’s my newest hero.
I’d love to report that Doc PJ is a committed Christian who is living out his calling in Christ. Sadly, nothing in the article suggests that faith plays a part in Dr. Perrinjaquet’s unusual life. His life’s motto is placed at the bottom of his e-mails: Life is Bliss! Christian or not, you have to love this guy’s attitude and his passion for making the world a better place. Our world needs more people who live to serve others. Doc PJ may not realize it, but his life’s work is intensely Biblical in its application. Think, Mother Teresa in a pair of handmade sandals made of worn out automobile tires. This is the kind of life Jesus died to provide for us: others first, meeting the needs of the oppressed, orphaned, and sick, and being the living embodiment of Christ. Christian or not, the dude’s a role model for us.
Michael McCullar
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