Really this is it...

I just got to my hotel in Moshi and was able to send those posts I
wrote over the last few days, Well this is most definitely my last
post until next week, I head out tomorrow morning for Kili. If you
think of me during this week I believe my summit push will be midnight
Wed so you can picture me trudging up through the snow (while it's
still here) then, wish me luck!!!

PS- I got an email from my friends that I was doing the trip with that
their plane had been diverted to Athens due to mechanical issues and
therefore they won't be able to make it..... looks like this is a
solo mission (with a guide of course, don't worry).

Yello from Kenya!!!

I have now officially made it to a new continent, bringing the number
to 4 (counting three days in NYC) different continents I have been in
in the last 15 days give or take. Not too shabby if you ask me, but I
seem to be becoming a worse flyer along the way, which is odd if you
ask me. I've been on 15 different airplanes since June 15th and
instead of getting calmer but I've seen a panicked look or two on some
flight attendants faces along the way and that never instills
confidence in me as they are usually calm and collected in turbulence.
But I digress, even though I've only been in Africa for a few hours
for some reason, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels
great to be here, more so than any other place I've ever visited. For
those of you that don't know I'll be leaving Kenya tomorrow morning
for Moshi Tanzania, and I, along with three friends, will be climbing
Mt. Kilimanjaro this coming week, I so hope I make it to the summit.
Seeing as it is one of the 7 summits (the tallest mountain on each of
the 7 continents) it is a bit intimidating. What's worse is I was in
quite good shape at the beginning of this summer b/c I was running a
lot, but I've been fully enjoying/indulging myself through Europe the
last few weeks (not sure I've mentioned that I went from Rome to
Amsterdam to London this week) and I hope all the revelry doesn't come
back to haunt me. Anyway, off to bed, I will obviously not have
access to any computers etc this week, perhaps longer as I will be on
safari after this, ergo I won't be posting until next Saturday the
earliest. Don't take this as a sign of anything other than what it
is. Ciao ciao!

En route.....

To Nairobi. I'm sitting in the terminal at Heathrow right now waiting
to board my flight with a little bit of trepidation. I'm very excited
to make it to Africa for the first time ni my life but I'm also quiet
worried what will be going on upon my return. By that I mean I worry
what will happen if these idiot in Washington can't get their act
together, and quickly (all of them, both sides). I won't know what
happened until Aug 6th, so I can only hope and pray that my deepest
fears (I am always quite bearish in these types of troubling times)
are unfounded. I wish you all the best and until we meet again, I bid
you adieu. (written 7/30/11; 10:20 am GMT, posted TBD)

Hello from Amsterdam

Thanks to the beauty of free museum wifi I am writing this message sitting in the Vincent van Gogh museum whilst sitting and relaxing, looking directly at one of his most famous works, Zonnebloemen (Sunflowers in english, his yellow version you've all seen before). It's funny but I've never really been that into art but on his trip something has changed in me. After having seen all the beautiful art in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel included therein of course, and now all his great art I could say that my interest has most definitely been piqued. This painting itself is quite interesting as the flowers used would wilt (sp?) quite quickly thereby forcing van Gogh to start early in the morning and complete the entire painting in "one go," quite impressive if you ask me. Also it seems that he painted this specifically to please his friend Paul Gauguin. It's also interesting/sad to see how sad this mans life was and how famous he now is, given the fact that he struggled to sell his paintings while alive and he was so tormented that he took his own life at 37. One source of inspiration outside of his paintings is that he apparently was a wayward soul and had done nothing with himself until at the age of 26 he decides to learn how to paint, unsure if he even had any talent for it. This is proof that it's never too late to change what you're doing and move your live in a direction you'd like it to go. This makes me feel a little connected to him seeing as 26 is when I chose resign and go back to school having no idea how'd it all end up, and here I am.  All the best to all of you!

Sent from here

Ciao Italia!

I'm in the Naples airport awaiting my flight to Amsterdam as we speak. As I have taken some Italian in my life I can say that I'm disappointed with my level of communication, it's fair to say il mio Italiano non é molto bene. We've (my mother and I) spent the last week between Rome and Amalfi, checking out Capri for a day as well. Che bella! Italy is an interesting combination of the US and South America. I say that as parts of Peru are just pure mayhem, no real rhyme or reason to what's allowed. In Italy people and cars are flying around in a similar way but right when it seems out of control screening comes together. Controlled chaos is the best way I could put it. For example to cross the street you jut start walking into traffic. Cars look like they don't care but at the last second everything comes to a halt and it seems that this is expected. In Peru there is no control to the chaos at times, best exemplified by the dogs in the street, my friends that were down there with me will know what I'm talking about. Once again I've got some great pics but I seem to have misplaced my computer power cord so we'll see how I can go about getting them up. I hope all is well and I look forward to hearing from and seeing all of you soon! Ciao ciao.

Sent from here

The group.....

So here's great shot of the group we had for the first week down there, a mix of SBU and Case Western People.  On the right is me at the absolute top of Wayna Picchu, the mountain directly next to Machu Picchu that I missed out on last year because I was too far back in line.  No such problem this time around... Oh, and that is a near vertical drop of several hundred feet on to sides there, wet rock, etc...  Let's just say that a guy turned the corner with his wife whilst I was out there and asked how hard it was.  I looked down the side he couldn't see and said, "well it's a little slipery and difficult, but more than doable.... you just don't want to fall down that side."  At the sound of that his wife burst into tears and started whining, "don't go PLEASE don't go, I don't want you to die," while she was pretty much hyperventilating (really working on that PaCO2, is that too dorky a joke?).  I mean it was hard but not like he was going to die... note to self, don;t make possible death jokes to crazy looking wives about their fragile looking husbands.....

More....

I think I said I'd leave pics of Machu Picchu out but there is a lot of scenery in Peru and I figure how many pics of mountains can you guys bear?  If you want more mountain pics just let m eknow and I'll try to mix it up.  On the righ is a picture of yours truly outside of one of the orphanages we visited deep in the Andes, not a bad view if you ask me, and the kids were so thankful and nice!

Enough talk...

So I'm now in Rome with my mom.  The internet here is 10000x better than in Peru and I brought along my computer so I will be able to post pics easier.  You've heard me talk anough so here are some pics.  The left is the Plaza de Armas in Arequipa, on the right another great view of part of Colca Canyon.  I will continue here....

So....

Today, (7/12) we awoke at 4:30 to begin a hike through the jungle before sunrise. We made it to a lake early enough to see a family of 9 Giant Otters out for their morning swim. They're an endangered species but with the use of a hunting blind they passed literally feet away from us. Once the realized we were there they didn't seem to happy to see us. On out hike we saw these otters, five species of monkeys, fire/army ants, bullet ants (so named because if you're bitten by one the pain is akin to a gunshot wound), leaf cutter ants, a prehistoric chicken like bird called the Hoatzin (they have claws when young and are the only birds since pterodactyls to do so), ant eaters/lemur, many types of very colorful parrots, Hurons, piranhas, tarantulas, Amazonian wasps, and last night we went out on the river at night with a spotlight and saw caimans (smaller version of alligators). I have some good pics as usual to follow. Ciao!

Sent from here

Jungle

So I've made it to the jungle and what a stark contrast to where I've been in Peru thus far. I only took a 45 minute flight from Cuzco followed by an hour drive and 3/4 hr canoe ride and the elevation has gone from 11,500 feet to 600 ft and the climate has gone from fleece, pants, long sleeve shirt, possibly winter hat to "God I've never been so damn hot and uncomfortable in my life." I think you really need to just get used to sweating all day every day and move on, but I'm not quite there yet. I've also moved down in terms of comfort as now I have a bed, no hot water and no electricity. For those of you confused as to how I'm writing this I've found a way to write an email and send it to my blog and have it published. So I'm writing this email at 3:06 pm July 11th and it will post the next time my iPod connects to the Internet, which may not be for days. I hope all is well with all of you, many of you find a way into my thoughts periodically so until we meet again...

Sent from here

Upward and onward....

So I have now made it to the gateway to the Amazon jungle, Puerto Maldonado Peru. I am spending today in the town but will be going on a several hour long canoe trip up the Madre de Dios River making my way into the protected are of the Amazon. Seeing as this really will be the middle of nowhere I think I will be unable to post anything while I´m there but I will make sure to do so on the flip side. Even though I haven´t technically made it to the jungle yet the place I´m staying here feels like it is in the jungle and it´s awesome. I have my own bungelow with no real walls, a ceiling fan, a bed and a hammock. There´s a beatiful pool and a fantastic Thai restaurant. The best part though is that this morning I was walking around, trying to take pictures of monkeys ni the trees when a baby monkey seemed to take a liking to me. At first I thought he was attacking me but after a second I realized he was just curious and he then proceeded to climb up my arm and hang on. I have some great pics of it but unfortunately no way to get them onto this computer right now, I´ll make sure to post them later on. For those of you in NYC I will be making my way back there Sunday morning, and I will be around until the night of July 20th until I get back on another plane to go halfway around the world in the other direction.

A job well done...

Well my time working in a medical capacity in a third world country has unfortunately come to an end. I learned a lot about medicine, the world, and myself over these last few weeks. We as a group experienced everything from tears of joy from a grateful patient to fear of a riot when we were unfortunately unable to see everyone in need. As I mentioned before this has definitely opened my eyes to what is really needed to help these people going forward, and whilst we may not have made the biggest change for them shile we were here we definitely laid the ground work and did the necessary data gathering needed to make a more permannet change in the future. A few of my fellow students will be spending the remainder of next week in Urubamba finishing off 8 weeks of hard work between the Case Western and Stony Brook medical students. If any of you ever want to get involved in helping us, or have any questions you´d like answered regarding this or pretty much everything don´t ever hesitate to call. And now onto some more adventures....

Well fun while it lasted...

Everyone went out to town for a little (we had a short day due to the holiday) and I used said opportunity to try and upload some pics for you guys. It worked well for the first 2 (meaning that each picture only took about 10 minutes to upload) but then problems cam up again and it stopped working. I hope I can get you guys more stuff soon. We´re going to have a mini 4th of July party down here so off I go but I just wanted to wish all of you a hppy fourth of Jully!! Oh, and I also wanted to congratulate my cousing MAtthew as I have just learned he has been accepted into the next class of the NYPD, his first day is tomorrow!!! I just want to say great work Matt, I´m really proud of you and wish you nothing but the best in your new career, we´re all lucky to have guys like you (and your father) protecting us...

An unhappy patient....

Here´s one of my unhappy patients. All the women down here carry their children in these makeshift baby backpacks made of nothing but cloth. This day there were so many patients on line that I thought there would be a riot. We are so overwhlemed by the number of people that show up sometimes that we unfortuantely have to turn some away at the end of the day. We have to drive on very narrow, unsafe, dirt roads with no lights so we need to leave before the sunsets. These women were definitely cursing at me in Quechua, motioning to and making fun of my beard. They were not happy with me. No men down here have any facial hair so I guess it is a bit of a novelty when they see it... or maybe they just don´t like it or me, what can you do?

A picture, finally....

So here´s the pharmacy I was talking about earlier. Cash is in the background giving a girl directions on her medication (through a Quechua to Spanish translator). Like the hat the lady in front is wearing?

Well sorry for the radio silence, been all over the place and have no patience for this internet. Weçve been visiting a lot of villages in the mountains so far and for the most part the people have been great and very appreciative. Here is a picture of our makeshift pharmacy at 12,500 feetdeep in the Andes, you can see Cash working her magic there. Working in these villages has really ope4ned up some things to me, some good and some bad. The bad thing is that whilst I think weçre all working really hard down here and weçre trying our best in the end, we unfortunately wonçt make much of a lasting impact on these communitites. By that I mean we come in, and we can deal with current problems, but once we leave itçs back to normal and people will have to fend for themselves. Itçs made me think that only way to appropriately approach global health is through making sustained changes and implementing plans that can be followed. Whether or not that means sending students on a more regular basis for follow up care or better yet educating the people so they can do it all themselves I dont know but itçs definitely openeed up my eyes to things I never thought of before. It reminds me of all the homless people we used to treat at Bellevueçs ER, they come in, get patched up, and leave only to have no regular follow up care, the type of care that woulfd be able to prevent really bad things from happening down the line. I am actually writing this from the base of Machu Picchu, yes I went again, but this time I made the Wayna Picchu climb by getting up at 4am. I wonçt post a lot of pics from here as not much has changes since last summer so you can look at the other pics I posted last year. Interestingly this id the 100th Anniversary of the discover of Machu Picchu so thatçs pretty cool I guess.

PS: Well the pics are once again taking a long time to load, I wrote this whilst I was waiting for them to upload, and I need to catch a train so I cançt wait but I will do my best to update you going forward... Oh, and Jared, Içve got a pic just for you next time I get a chance....