And so opens the first sentence of the first page of my first blog.....
A week tomorrow (1 April 2009) I leave for a five week trip to Namibia to work as a medical volunteer with Gap Year for Grownups. It's all coming around very quickly and as I sit at my desk and scan my 'to do' list I feel a slight sense of panic that those 7 days ahead of me will be gone in a flash.
Yesterday evening I checked through my paperwork for the trip. It's quite a bundle now, information about flights;accommodation;training and of course my medical records to show the (many) innoculations, vaccinations and tablets that (hopefully) will stop me getting a variety of rather nasty illnesses and diseases. I'm safe from Hep A, Hep B,Rabies, Typhoid, Malaria etc etc etc. I feel rather like a human pincushion just now and I'm far more familiar with the inside of my doctors surgery than I ever hoped to be. But rather safe than sorry, though I am rather sorry about the corresponding hole in my bank account. No one told me quite how expensive non-prescription medicines can be.