Moonlighting for Extremities

-
I have a titanium screw in my toe. There, I've said it. It's out in the world. Judge me for it if you must.

This toe is primary digit of my left foot. Not the film My Left Foot. Mine. My actual left foot. I seem to have picked up a habit of damaging said recalcitrant foot every now and then since the first "incident" almost exactly 11 years ago in August 1999.

What happens when you damage your foot?

You go to the podiatrist. 
What happens when you keep damaging your foot?
You get to know your podiatrist pretty well. 
What happens when the podiatrist you now know pretty well does medical missions to Vietnam?
You find a way to help.

Bruce Lehnert in Can Tho, Vietnam
The International Extremity Project is a group of pretty amazing people headed to Can Tho, Vietnam in November for the group's sixth mission. They'll be there for about two weeks and do 40+ surgeries while they're there. They'll correct deformities that have prevented kids from having normal lives -- walking, playing, going to school. They'll change lives.

My part is simple: build a site, manage a blog, do a little editing, and a maintain a Facebook page. Oh yeah, and have great respect for these people who do oh so much more than sit behind a checkbook or a keyboard to take part in the world.

"Like" the Facebook page. Give 'em some FB love. Read the posts from the 2007 trip and see what it's all about. And stay tuned as they're getting ready for November's trip.


My screwy titanium screwed toe (say that three times fast) has given me more than an amusing x-ray. It has given me the opportunity to be a small part of a pretty amazing thing. And I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cancer Is a Narcissist

-
I am angry. And I am sad. But at the moment, it's mostly anger. Keyboard and reader beware. That androgynous, faceless, scourge with too many names and ways of wreaking havoc.  That invisible stalker that sneaks in at the cellular level, latching on and demanding attention.  That predatory visitor that remains unseen until  it's too often too late.  It wins again. Today, cancer won again.  It won this morning, taking a young woman barely 30 from her world, her family's world, our world, this world. Quickly. Aggressively. Ruthlessly. I want to scream at cancer, cuss it out, kick it where it hurts, be heard. But cancer is a narcissist. It doesn't care that I'm angry. It knows nothing but itself and how to propagate until it wins.
Read more

The Consumerization of Popcorn... and IT

-
Image
Technology continues to change not only the tools we use  but the language we use to describe it. Wikipedia describes  consumerization  as: …an increasingly accepted term used to describe the growing tendency for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business and government organizations. Consumerization absolutely affects technology, but confining the definition to information technology too narrowly defines it. The etymology pins the emergence of the term itself as early as 2001, which is a long time in  dog years  and at least a half century in technology. But the concept goes back far before Y2K. I could delve into Eli Whitney’s  cotton gin , but I’ll stick to less distant history. Before we get to IT, consider the impact of consumerization on time and choice. Consumerization & Time In some ways, our experiences with consumer technology have changed the very speed at which we live our lives. We ...
Read more

Raising a Son in a World of Brock Turners

-
Image
This whole Stanford Rapist Who Can Swim thing has been everywhere this week, and I haven't tried to escape it. I've read the letters, read the articles, and shared in the discussion. I found myself wandering between disbelief and outrage. It was strange to realize I've been in the courtroom of the judge who sentenced Turner to the prison equivalent of cleaning chalkboard erasers after elementary school. He annoyed me then. He infuriates me now. At first, I didn't talk about the Stanford case around my son. I didn't want to talk about rape. I didn't want to explain what Turner had done. I didn't want to talk about how a young man smart enough to go to a university as prestigious as Stanford could also be as vicious as to attack an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. But then, I did. I am raising a young man. I wanted him to see me angry, astounded, and affected by the case. My son can go toe-to-toe with me about how unfair it is that I limit his s...
Read more