You're taking a tour of China with your wife and a relative, and you become seriously ill. Since you are accustomed to relying solely on spiritual healing, you feel that you want to stick with that familiar form of help in this unfamiliar place. How do you get the help you need?
For Gordon Atwood, that's not an abstract question. In 1993, he and his wife were on a ten-week trip in the Pacific that included a ten-day tour of mainland China. They were in Beijing when Gordon fell ill.
"It was beastly hot," he says. "We had been warned not to drink the water over there, but we were always in American hotels, and I was just dying for a glass of water. It was bottled water, but I asked for ice in the water because I wanted it cold. Apparently, the ice was made with contaminated water, because I became ill with a severe case of diarrhea."
