Motivated by Pain

It is hard to believe that a medical / teaching mission like the one I am preparing to embark into Bolivia on hinges on three main things.  First, having alot of money for the plane ticket, some for the unusual foods I will eat while there, and for the crude accommodations while staying in the high country.

The overall weight of your baggage is your second hurtle to get past.  We are allowed to carry two fifty pound bags along with us.  One with medical supplies for the clinics we will operate and the other packed with our personal belongings for a two week stay in a country that we are unfamiliar with, where daily temperature swings can range from 35 degrees at night to 85 degrees in the daytime.  We will need to carry a sleeping bag and small tent because a couple nights will be spent under the stars and a full moon in the salar de uni salt flats.  Many of you know I suffer dearly when I get cold because of a couple of my previous crazy adventures where I fell prey to the effects of hypothermia.  So I will need to pack warm clothes I can layer plus my warmest coat and gloves, but all this stuff adds weight.  The article I most want / need to take with me I am afraid will put me over weight on my personal bag.  I have not gone on any mission with my search and rescue gang before without wearing this tool.  It is the tactical vest I wear.  It makes me look like a dork when I wear it but I could live for a week and help others survive along with me with the things I carry in it's many pockets.  GPS, extra batteries, compass, map of the area traveling in, light for my head, whistle, a big knife, binoculars, fire starting supplies, simple first aid kit, 15 foot length of 1 inch webbing, couple energy bars and toilet paper.  Things I will not need on this particular trip is my cell phone and the portable radio I would normally carry for communication with command.  There will be no cell phone coverage, nor home base to call for assistance if we get ourselves in trouble.  What adds to my dilemma also is I have always been a "meat and potatoes eater" and the country I will be traveling into has food groups I have never heard of or tasted before.  My secret plan is to pack along ten pounds of Taylor's (original style) beef jerky with me so if they try and get me to eat monkey brains down there I will have something to fall back on.  With my pack overweight, now the decision comes down to what I leave behind, warm clothes, my trusty all purpose tactical vest or food?

The last thing you would ever think you would need to worry about is...  do you have all your frickin shots.  Any of you that know me well, knows how much I hate getting shots.  Some of you probably remember joyfully holding me down when we would have to get one at the fire department from time to time.  Do any of you know how many shots you need before traveling into a isolated country like Bolivia?  Don't get me wrong they will let you out of the U.S. without taking all your shots but getting back into the U.S. is a different story.  Thinking I only needed to receive one injection for Yellow Fever I strode into the Josephine County Health Department trying to keep a stiff upper lip once I saw all the small children waiting for their shots too.  The health department lady was sweet enough but I am sure at some point in her life she had to have been a used car salesman.  An hour later and a few hundred dollars poorer I limped past the kids with four Snoopy band aids, two on each arm.  The only solace I had leaving was I did not have to take one in the butt for the PHH team. So tonight I am feverishly writing motivated by pain, with a small dose of Yellow Fever virus cursing through my veins...

Friendships Begin to Form

Part of the experience in any new out of country adventure is meeting the rest of the team members that will be traveling with you.  Into my life e-mails begin to flow from the nice sounding lady who books all the travel arrangements for Project Helping Hands including our Bolivian mission.  While I bragged to her about some of my past exploits she informs me that her young son has bravado too.  Elizabeth shares his powerful letter with me.  After reading the heartfelt letter written home to his mom it in fact helped jolt me back into realizing I needed to get back to writing on my blog again...
Elizabeth writes.  This is Spencer’s first email from Uganda – January 2011.  Enjoy...

This is Spencer.  This picture makes him look
taller and more handsome then in real life.

Sorry, I've been bad about communicating.

So, today... I got to do a lot more than I honestly wanted to ever do on this trip. Gideon (the only African on the team, a giant Kenyan dentist who I assist) is somehow very confident in my abilities already (Dental school here is three years long, right after high school). I follow what he tells me and I have developed a pretty neat and sterile system in which to work. I was happy reloading syringes and disposing of sharps while working the sterilizer and fire. We had about forty patients waiting just for dental when we arrived at 8:30. One woman was an albino, who was about 60 or so. She was very interesting-looking, with all the African features minus the pigment. Her blood pressure ended up being about 230/140 so we couldn't remove any of her teeth because the local anesthetic (locaine) contains adrenaline. Also, it affects the turgidity of the womb in pregnant women. blah blah. About the tenth person in,

My mentor Dentist Gideon

Gideon motions for me to come over and says, "Inject him." I immediately started shaking from all the adrenaline in my blood stream. As to not absolutely freak out the patient, I tried to stay calm and make fluid motions, but it was very difficult as I grabbed the syringe, not feeling confident at all. Gideon turned around to help another patient and left me to inject without any supervision... for the first time in my life. SHIT. uh... okay, I remembered what he said about the depth of the needle, location, volume, etc. Time to do it. I'll transcribe a little of what I wrote from my journal here: "He was a guy about 20 years old, well-dressed, but had a quite unsalvageable upper molar. I grabbed a syringe and adrenaline surged through my limbs. "What the Hell am I about to do to this man?" The needle trembled and dripped locaine, also sharing my adrenaline rush. All I could think was 1/3rd length of the needle on the outside with 2/3rds the volume (1.8 mL), and the tip into the inner with the remainder. I was quaking uncontrollably. The patient cocked back his head in the old red and gold overstuffed chair we have been using for extractions (probably overstuffed with the usual tropical treasure trove of bugs). It was difficult to pull back his lips enough the tooth was so far back in his mouth (the last). I should have worn a second glove. I stuck it in. The resistance from the syringe was surprisingly intense, so the shaking became much more apparent. The inside of the gums. Much harder to shove liquid into that type of tissue so close to the tooth. He was a good sport, as I Robot-ed over to the sharps container and faintly apologized a couple times. Ten minutes later, Gideon says, "Now you put your strength to the test." OH. My nerves glowed with epinephrine and my pores burped out everything good in the world, including a sweat that when mixed with 98.61% DEET stung like Hell. Choosing the tool. I picked right. I wish I hadn't, seeing as how it only convinced Gideon further I was to be trusted with another humans mandible. Crooked forceps in my grip. I dug into the gums around his green and black enamel and clenched so hard my hand cramped. His gums turned white with the pressure, then flowed red. Oh, boy. Then began about the longest thirty seconds of my life. Gideon was there at least. Left, right. Left, right. Holding the man's head became a two-man job. This was the same kind of tooth that blew up yesterday, so I was very careful not to make a bomb out of his upper row. Finally, it begins to wiggle. My knuckles were white beneath my neoprene gloves, I'm certain. The left, right begins to prove very effective and eventually a noise both completely terrifying but oddly relieving, because this experience was to pass. It raises slightly above the level of the other calculated teeth. Circles. Circles! They work, too! Another bitter-sweet sound. If I were adventurous with my onomatopoeia I would name this sound "Sklake" with about seventeen A's. Violently, the tooth flies into space. I look. It's still attached to the forceps. I dump the tooth in the dirt bucket and instruct the man to bite down on some gauze. He walked out. I wanted to fall on my face and bring Gideon down with me. I pulled eight teeth total today and anesthetized more."

Spencer's Dental station

I walked back from the clinic with Gideon today. We are becoming good friends. I'm glad I have been partnered with the only African on the team. He is definitely one of my favorite people I have ever met. We shared a sugar cane (which looks like six feet of Chinese bamboo) on the way back and he laughed as I struggled to peel the bark with my teeth. The people on the streets shout "Muzungu!" which means Gringo roughly. They treat the whites like celebs though. Gideon walked on and looked exactly like a Giant Panda. I remembered halfway through with my sugar water encased in fiber that I was told not to eat ANY street food, so oops.



The Sudanese election is tomorrow, so things might get a little hairy.  I'm told things should be fine, but it's going to be historic nonetheless. One bad thing I learned today was that the security with AK-47's outside of the clinic... don't actually have them loaded, so if shit gets hot, they're probably gonna hop on the back of a Bota Bota (motorcycle cab).

I hope you and Dad are okay by yourselves in the house with no kiddies. I love you and miss you both so much. Know that I am finding myself here and this trip has been the best thing to ever happen to me, no matter what.

Thanks Spence for your words.  It will be interesting to see what awaits our own Project Helping Hands team in the Bolivian Highlands...

Billy Blaze Re-Booted



My pretty grand daughter Ka'mya



It has been nearly a year since I have last jotted down words on my blog.  My personal situation has changed greatly and made many sharp turns during this idle story telling time in my life.  I have lamented long on how I could continue writing down my new stories for you Ka'mya without offending personalities in my past.  I finally decided if I offend some who reads my rantings maybe they could solve the problem themselves by not reading about my adventures and clicking to another web site...

Again I am a single man with the wind firmly blowing at his back.  Once again I am earnestly looking ahead for what exciting adventures lay before me.  During this past year I have lost some of the simple pleasures of life like having the "fake" grand kids hanging around the house due to my new non-marital status. This past month I have struggled to understand why we had to help lay to rest a young fireman friend taken to early in his life due to some silly mistakes he knew better then to take.  Lately I had the unfortunate luck of experiencing a hard drive crash on this very same typing machine, but thanks to another friend who helped me work through the problems of reloading my written life.  Please do not fear for me though.  I have not truly felt this alive in many many years.  I have already began laying the ground work for my next grand venture and the story begins now...

I have lived a fortunate life and have long desired to join one of those renowned international rescue teams that scour the planet helping their fellow man during their most dire of times during a disaster either natural or man caused.  I am nearly at that long awaited time in a man's life called "retirement".  Those of you who know me the best know retirement is not a word in my vocabulary.  I have always wanted to work hard, play hard and live life to the fullest until I am called for my last alarm.  I recently have stumbled onto a humanitarian group called Project Helping Hands.  This non-denominational group of volunteers travels the planet doing heath care work for the more unfortunate indigenous people living at the remote corners of the earth.

                                             http://projecthelpinghands.org/ 

I have been accepted for the Bolivian Mission headed into the mountainous, high elevation region in South America this upcoming March.  Over the next few months my plan is to let my readers know what it takes to plan for an adventure of this magnitude, tell of my time while in country and then to give you my blunt opinions on if we should be investing our time and currency in these foreign lands. Many of my friends think we should be concentrating our efforts on our own under privileged citizens right here in America.

For those of you who have followed along with my past romps, hang on tight, grasp my hand and join with me on my new adventure.   Take a deep breath we land at 13,500 feet in La Paz Bolivia, lets get going gang...

Keep a Theme Song in your Heart

I have been asked often to go places and do things that scare the hell out of me.  I have found it important to have a good theme song playing in my heart when I am frightened while dealing with some of the stuff I have seen on the firefighting / rescue side of my life.

 

I think I will use this song the next time I'm not waiting.

Alone in Alaska Tests a Man's Mettle

Many of you who are following along with my blog are probably wondering...  billy blaze, who did you get that natural poetry writing talent from.

Ka'mya these poems were written by your great - great grandpa Buster. 

The above hand written poem from grandpa Buster proves one thing for sure.  Bitter cold and loneliness can drive a grown man to write some crazy stuff.  I'm still trying to figure out what drives me to write about the crazy things I drivel about.

My own scribblings would probably resemble this if it were not for the magical world of spell checker and the computer.  I was about ten when Grandpa Buster passed away.  My memories of grandpa were cut short by his early death but I remember him as being a very hard worker.  I think he would be very satisfied to know all the guests that he has hosted on the "home place" or as we call it now Beaver Hollow, appreciate his hard work attaining such a restful place for them to enjoy these many years.  What a thrill it would be to have him tell some of his tales around a campfire at the Hollow.

The Fort Lives On

I have always dreamed of myself as being a bit of an adventurer.  I have climbed to the top of several mountain peaks through the years, hiked many miles over backwoods trails, simply stomped out through the brush from point A to point B when I worked for the Forest Service and bicycled thousands of miles all over Oregon.  I too have always been intrigued with the great expedition Lewis and Clark made across western America in the early 1800's.  Since I had never visited the far northwest corner of Oregon, where the mighty Columbia River surges into the Pacific Ocean I thought this writers weekend / mini vacation would give Larrieann and I an opportunity to see some of the country that our brave early explorers visited over two hundred and five years ago. 

On a worn piece of elk hide I ogled the rough drawn fort that Clark left instructions for his troops to build while he was away studying and mapping the northern Oregon coast line.  I had to giggle to myself because it resembled the simple drawing I had drawn just before starting the grand kids tree house last spring.  Some statistics you may not know about:  Cost for the Lewis and Clark expedition, $2,500.  Cost for the grand kids tree house, $2,500.  The site where the original fort was built in 1805 was later logged and turned into a potato growing field.  The few rotting logs left from the original fort site were burned by the farmer to make way for a bigger field.  The land where the fort used to sit was farmed for almost fifty years before the Historical Society bought the land from the farmer and reconstructed the old fort using this original map for details.  The reconstructed Fort Clatsop accidentally burned down in 2005 after a candle making demonstration went awry.  The third Fort Clatsop we visited this weekend is surrounded by a massive forest with no indication that a potato growing field had ever been present.

Writers weekend statistics; only 2% of all the books written are ever published.  I did take a third place in the poem writing portion of the conference. 

Traveling north to a writers weekend at Ocean Park.

It was a journey into the land of Lewis and Clark.

Knowing before hand the new scribes would have a religious flavor.

Which was definitely a topic I did not want to savor.

I gleaned that publishing a profitable book was a myth.

Which was a thought I did not want to be left with.

Can you believe I took third place for that whopper.  Wait till you see my sique.

So you think you are a writer?

Many of you who have been following my blog these last several months know I have been toying with the idea of writing a book about my adventures during the thirty years I have served in the fire department.  I have gotten pretty good reviews from my friends and family who are traveling along with me so I thought I would take it to the next level.

I decided to attend a writers conference held at Ocean Beach in Washington State this last weekend.  {Note to self: If a conference is held at a church camp it probably will be attended heavily by religious people.} I thought I'll go find out what some real writers and editors think about my scribblings.  As you can see by all the corrections and suggestions made by one gentlemen on a single page of one of my stories, he quickly stops, puts down his pen and says "I think you are more of a story teller then a writer".  Laughing out loud to myself, I think whew!  A story teller can wave his arms around in the air, make funny faces and shout when a story needs emphasis.  No more worrying about if I got my adjectives in the right place, if the spelling is correct or if I've used the same word too many times.  What a relief, a Story Teller I will be.  Secrectly I enjoy telling tall tales while warming ourselves around a campfire at Beaver Hollow more then I like writing anyways.

The weekend was not a total loss by any means though, I did win the "Best Opening Line" contest while attending.  The instructions for the twenty five attending scribes was to write the worst opening line you could think of...  "The bright red light on the cardiac machine blares a flat line as your eyes meet the infant mothers and you both know a miracle did not occur here tonight".  I remember that night clearly still.  It was one of the worst things I ever had happen to me.  Writers are a strange breed though.  What amounts to one of the worst things to ever happen to me, they see it differently.  They say the aforementioned sentence was the best opening line because it draws a new reader into the book where they would want to read more about the story... 

After that terrible night long ago, I didn't want to know anymore about the story, I just wanted to go home and cry.