Where I Come, From Where I'm Going: A Cambodian American Journey Through AAPI Heritage and Osteopathic Medicine in the Year of the Snake

By Michael Ny, OMS II, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Great Falls, Montana Campus (photo credit: Matt Ehnes).

Each year, the arrival of Cambodian New Year—Chaul Chnam Thmey—offers me a moment of joyful reflection. It takes me back to childhood mornings, when the scent of freshly lit incense would drift through our home—Mom’s quiet ritual to honor our ancestors. Celebrated in mid-April, it marks a time of renewal and remembrance for Cambodians around the world. Just weeks later, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month begins—a timely continuation of cultural recognition that deepens my reflection on what it means to carry the legacy of a community shaped by both pain and persistence.

I choose the word persistence intentionally. While resilience speaks to the ability to recover from hardship, persistence captures something more enduring—the steady, determined effort to move forward in the face of generational trauma, displacement and invisibility. It’s the ongoing fight to preserve culture, pursue opportunity and belong in spaces where we’ve rarely been seen. That, to me, is the spirit of the Cambodian American experience.

AAPI Heritage Month reminds us that “Asian American” is not a monolith. That label cannot capture the diversity of more than 50 distinct ethnic groups, each with their own histories, cultures and challenges. Aggregated data often obscures the specific struggles of smaller populations like Cambodian Americans—whose stories and needs are too often overlooked.

As the son of two Cambodian refugees who immigrated to Richmond, Virginia, I was raised in a culture that is rich, spiritual and steeped in tradition—but often invisible in American discourse. We grew up in a trailer park, and though we didn’t have much, I never felt poor. My parents, survivors of a genocide that tried to erase them, ensured we were safe and had the opportunities they never did. Watching them navigate language barriers, limited healthcare access and economic hardship taught me early on that survival often depends on systems not built to serve families like ours. Their story became the lens through which I view others who’ve been overlooked or underserved—not with pity, but with deep recognition. I feel called to care for these communities because I’ve lived on the margins of those systems and understand how easily people can fall through the cracks.

That recognition—the quiet struggles I witnessed in my own home and community—shaped how I came to understand care. Long before I became a firefighter and paramedic or began medical school, I learned what it meant to care by watching my elders respond to illness with whatever knowledge and means they had. One practice I remember vividly is coining, or kos kyal—a traditional Cambodian remedy in which a coin is dipped in Tiger Balm and rubbed firmly along the skin in a specific pattern across the chest and back to draw out “bad wind,” especially when someone had a fever. As a child, I didn’t question it; it was simply how we tried to make someone feel better. Now, as a medical student, I’ve come to understand that practices like coining—often misunderstood or misread in clinical settings—carry deep cultural meaning.

What I once saw as simple acts of comfort, I now recognize as early expressions of another way healing can begin—rooted not in pharmacology, but in presence, touch and intention. While coining and osteopathic manipulative medicine come from different traditions, both remind me that healing can happen through the hands, and that sometimes the most powerful interventions are the ones that honor the body, the person and their story. It’s a philosophy that continues to shape how I hope to show up for patients: not just with knowledge, but with humility and the willingness to meet them where they are.

As I enter my dedicated COMLEX study period and prepare to begin my third year as an osteopathic medical student, the symbolism of this year feels especially poignant. According to the lunar calendar, 2025 is the Year of the Snake, a symbol of wisdom, transformation and healing. Like the snake shedding its skin, I feel myself evolving—stepping into the clinical world, ready to apply all I’ve learned.

Even as I step forward with hope and purpose, one truth lingers: I have never, in my life, met a Cambodian American physician. Growing up, I never saw anyone who looked like me in a white coat. Even working in public safety, I never met Cambodian Americans in healthcare. That absence shaped my sense of what was possible and helped me understand the quiet, lasting power of representation. When it’s missing, it narrows what we believe we can become.

According to American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine data, just 52 out of 6,691 Asian-identifying applicants to osteopathic medical school were Cambodian—only 0.75 percent of the Asian applicant pool. Alongside Malaysian and Hawaiian applicants, Cambodians represent one of the smallest subgroups in osteopathic medicine, and in medicine at large.

That’s part of what drew me to Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. TouroCOM’s mission—to train physicians for underserved communities and build a more inclusive healthcare system—felt personal to me from the start. It affirmed what I’ve long believed: I’m not just here to become a doctor. I’m here to be someone else’s first. The first Cambodian American physician someone meets. The first to care for a patient who speaks Khmer. The first to show a young Cambodian student that this path is open to them too.

In many ways, I’ve become who I once needed to see.

Cambodian American communities, largely made up of refugees and immigrants, face unique barriers: intergenerational trauma, limited access to education and systemic health disparities. These realities are not burdens. They are fuel. They ground me in purpose as I move forward in my training and prepare to serve.

This journey hasn’t been easy—but the story of my culture has taught me that nothing worthwhile ever is. If the Year of the Snake symbolizes rebirth, then I choose to step forward with it—honoring my heritage and walking a path that lets someone like me know that they belong, too.