Review: "PCMO" by Ty Flewelling

PCMO by Ty Flewelling
Published May 2025
★★

In the 90s, looking for his next job, Flewelling hit upon something unusual: a Peace Corps Medical Officer. He applied, and before he knew it he was off on a new adventure in Turkmenistan, a country he knew nothing about. Unlike other Peace Corps books I've read, Flewelling wasn't a volunteer (PCV); instead, he was a paid employee responsible for the health care of the Peace Corps volunteers in Turkmenistan. Health care services in the country were...not great...and so by and large, if he couldn't take care of whatever came up, the next step was medical evacuation to the US or a third country.

Now...I find travel and expat books fascinating, especially if they are about places I haven't visited. I find Peace Corps books fascinating. I find medical books fascinating! So on paper, this was a compelling fit. But...I did not really care for the voice, and I did not really care for the focus of the content.

The voice
There was just a wee bit too much casual sexism and xenophobia for me. I'm sure none of it is things that registered as sexism and xenophobia to the author, but to me it read as a near constant barrage of "female" as a noun, "illegal alien" instead of "undocumented immigrant" (language was different in the 90s, but this book was not published in the 90s), observations about every woman's appearance (why are estimated height and weight important to this story?), digs at Islam (actually only one of those that I highlighted, but I think if you're going to say that they do treat women badly (28), and then most of the book is set in a predominantly Muslim country, you need to back up and start over), etc. Flewelling says partway through the book that To maintain volunteer privacy, I will refer to volunteers in general terms and not mention them by name (81), and that's fab! I can get behind that. Yay patient privacy. But that's only after he spends page after page whingeing about another—named—medical employee and disparaging her with the sexist suggestion that she'd be more at home in a sewing circle. (This is later followed up by a smug note that that employee didn't last in her position.)

All of this is compounded by fairly extensive use of ALL CAPS for emphasis, plus a whole host of exclamation marks, sometimes multiple!! Those are relatively minor things, and not so uncommon in a self-published book that hasn't necessarily had professional editing, but it's not my favorite.

The content
So...I have a "doctors" shelf on Goodreads, and I have a "diplomacy" shelf, because I find both medical things (Flewelling is a physician associate) and diplomacy things (diplomats, trailing spouses, etc.) interesting. I did not expect a sense of overlap here, but Flewelling pretty quickly fell in with the expat/diplomatic crowd in Turkmenistan. He was no diplomat (though I don't doubt that his medical skills are good), but the amount of this book that is about hobnobbing with the ambassadorial crowd far outstrips the amount of the book that is about, you know, medicine.

I attended another spectacular party at the Pakistan Ambassador's residence. Of course, the usual host of local diplomats were in attendance. Funny, it used to be "Mr. Ambassador" this, or "Madame Minister" that. Now it's just "Tariq," "Rolph," or "Seraph." (135)

And that's nice and all. I'm sure it was an adventure for him. But the only people to whom name-dropping is interesting are 1) the person dropping the names and 2) people unhealthily obsessed with social status. I would have liked a lot less about how well Flewelling got on with the diplomats and a lot more about local staff, local friendships, etc.; certainly I would have liked a lot more about medicine.

It's 27% of the way into the book by the time Flewelling reaches Turkmenistan, and 61% of the way into the book before Flewelling mentions—a passing mention, at that—the second individual patient he saw (as opposed to, e.g., mentioning doing a batch of check-ups). There are a few more mentions of trends of illness, such as bacterial enteritis, scattered throughout, but actual discussions of the medical work he was there to do are few and far between. Chapter 17 (82%) finally focuses on medicine—but even that is limited to four stories. Two of those are about PCVs...but one of those isn't even a medical thing. Obviously not every chapter needed to be medicine-focused to hold my attention (and obviously not everyone wants to read a book full of medical stories, and obviously the author didn't want to write one, and that's fine!), and I guess the author is more proud of his invitations to ambassador parties than interested in detailing the ins and outs of PCV medical care, but...I suppose I wish the book had been titled Hobnobbing with Diplomats: Non-Medical Memoir of a Peace Corps Medical Officer, because then I'd have been forewarned.