Getting Ready for Vietnam, Not Just Writing About It

Getting ready for an international medical mission involves a lot more than getting time off work, buying plane tickets, and showing up at a hospital somewhere. There are the normal travel preparation things: passports, visas,  vaccinations. Then there are the other parts and pieces like fund-raising, team meetings, inventorying equipment, packing everything into carefully weighed containers. 

I've been a virtual member of the International Extremity Project for several years, usually sitting at a keyboard in California and blogging team members' stories, updating Facebook pages, uploading photos sent from the team. This time I'm juggling all of those passports, visas, vaccinations myself instead of just writing about what's happening on the other side of the world.

 
How does a high-tech marketing manager get involved in an international medical mission? The short story is that I saw a photograph on my podiatrist's wall. My podiatrist happened to be Dr. Bruce Lehnert and the photograph was taken on one of the team's early missions to Vietnam. After handling the website and blogging for several years, they asked me to join them for this year's mission. While in Vietnam, I'll be helping with some of the record-keeping and documentation and writing blog posts about the team, the patients, their families.