The Calm Before the Storm

Its a beautiful Portland fall Friday, and the countdown to departure has officially begun:

10 days.

My roomate and soon to be travel buddy has started packing, and the apartment looks more depressing than normal. The beiges are more beige without the trappings of what has been our home for a while. True to form, I seem to be putting it off as long as possible, though i'm not sure why because in all honestly, i've spent most of my time throughout the past several months trying to contrive any reason possible to not be in our apartment. I work late, I hang around the park after jogs, I crash at freinds' houses. My stuff lives there, but i barely do. My stuff...how much of it has ended up owning me at this point i'm not quite sure.

I'll be glad to part ways with that neutral toned monstrosity. Our neighbor's dog vomitted in the breezeway two weeks ago, and it wasn't until it finally rained that it started to go away at all. There are things I will not miss about it at all.

I suppose it makes sense to start recording this journey before we even come close to stepping on a plane, since the emotional journey, i think for all of us, has started so much earlier. From incessant running and uneasy stomachs to early morning conversations with the people closest to me, the journey is underway. I'm finding that running no longer quells the anxiety, and instead of ending a jog with burning quads and a clear head, i stutter to a halt, short of breath for the knot that refuses to release my gut. I know i've decided correctly; my heart is right. My head is just taking its own sweet time coming around. It's not used to this feeling, and maybe thats what tells me it is right.

Since this is the first blog in our journey, i should provide some backstory: her name is Teresa, and she's the reason i'm procrastinating the packing of my apartment. She was seriously injured in a snowboarding accident three years ago that left her mostly paralyzed. She has the potential to recover though, and she's tried just about everything. What she hasn't been able to try however, is a time honored practice in Lima, Peru. Which is where we're going. The idea is to get her to her first few months of treatment at Manos Que Curan and we'll know whether or not she will recover fully. After looking over her records, they've given her a 70-100% shot at recovery. And if it were me in the wheelchair, those are odds i would cross the globe for too.

The other reason i'm procrastinating is the lovely miss Katrina. We graduated together, and we've been close since, our lives converging in ways neither of us could ever have seen coming. She's the reason i'm going along on this crazy adventure as Teresa is a family freind of hers. She had been petitioning me to come along to help her and Teresa long before i was actually entertaining the idea, and one early morning driving back from a weekend in Spokane i sent the text message that, for me, started everything:

'I'm in. Lima here we come.'

And we're coming... but its been an emotional, jarring process. There's been paperwork, training classes, endless frustrations over itineraries, fingerprinting, heated discussions, and least favorite of all, making like human pincushions at the Portland Travel Clinic. Tucked up off of 23rd, in a picturesque office filled with photos of giraffes, Kat and i got pumped full of yellow fever, typhoid, and a myriad of other precautionary vaccines. They were fresh out of the rabies vaccine (apparently there's a world wide shortage), which made things cheaper, though i think we've both made mental notes to be on look out for dogs and bats. We also came away with prescriptions for malaria meds and the ever anticipated TD.

I think i've started to deal with the fact that i am very afraid. And i'm sure i have no idea yet what there is to be fearful of. Is it the seven-year-olds with razor blades we've heard stories about? Or perhaps more likely the loneliness that will well up when i spend my first holidays away from the six people who make up my heart and feeling isolated in ways i can't imagine?