A True Account — Irian Jaya
The true story of survival, obsession, and what happens when you disappear into the jungles of Irian Jaya with nothing but a first-year medical education and a determination not to waste your second chance.
“I couldn’t put it down. Very well written and such a unique experience.”Savannah Verified reader
“Amazing photography, interesting storyline. Appears medically accurate and genuinely funny.”Matthew Verified reader
Dr. Prieskorn was a first-year medical student at Michigan State who nearly didn't make it into class at all. He had no orientation packet, no place in the incoming class, and no backup plan.
He spent two weeks attending classes he wasn't enrolled in, quietly taking quizzes that had no answer sheet with his name on it, waiting for someone to drop out so he could take their spot.
Someone did. He got in. And he promised himself he wouldn't waste it.
That summer, Dr. Prieskorn joined a medical mission to one of the most remote and isolated places on earth. The plan was to spend a few months helping people who had never seen a doctor. What happened instead became this book.
Dr. Prieskorn has spent over thirty years since that summer as an orthopedic surgeon in Detroit. He will tell you that nothing from those three decades in the OR comes close to what happened in Irian Jaya.
Photograph from the book — Irian Jaya, 1984
From Chapter One
It was August 1983, and we were all excited to finally be at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. On three long tables in the central corridor of Fee Hall, 150 orientation packets lay neatly arranged in alphabetical order. Behind the tables stood second-year medical students with forced smiles, serving as guides for the freshmen.
I patiently waited in line, meeting people, some of whom I thought I could be friends with, others I knew I could not. I finally made my way to the tables, and I looked for my name: Pope, Price, Roberts, Smith.
No Prieskorn. I must have missed it. I started back at the M's, and then the A's, and even looked under the tables, but there was no orientation packet bearing my name.
"Excuse me, I don't have a packet," I said in a subdued voice so as not to draw attention to my predicament.
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The updated edition includes photographs Dr. Prieskorn took during his time in Irian Jaya, most of which have never been published before. They show what no amount of description fully can: where he was, who he met, and how far from the world he knew he had actually gone.
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Before Irian Jaya, Dr. Prieskorn nearly lost his place in medical school over a five-dollar transcript fee. The chapter on how he fought his way back in is worth the price of admission on its own.
What it actually looks like when you are the only person with any medical training for hundreds of kilometres, and you are still a student, and the situation does not care about either of those things.
The people Dr. Prieskorn met in Irian Jaya had their own logic, their own rituals, and their own relationship with life and death. This book treats that with the honesty it deserves, not the romanticisation it usually gets.
He has seen a lot since then. He will tell you plainly that none of it compares to what happened that summer. The near-death experiences are in here. They do not need embellishment.
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