The Journey

I reach down and give the 20 months old girl a kiss on the cheek while she looks at me with a shy but warm smile. She’s sitting on her favorite mini-scooter and in her hand she’s holding a white and red flag. Her dad is instructing her on how to wave goodbye with it while the cars drive off. She’s not mine – obviously. I wouldn’t be leaving for Africa for six months if she were.

  

The essence of what I've been doing the last ten days

In the car with the girl’s mom I can’t help but tear up. I’ve been living with my friend and her little family for the past ten days because my departure date got delayed and if you’re not made of stone you can’t help but get attached, I’m going to miss my little adoptive family! I've simply had an amazing time staying with them. 

At the airport stress takes over, as my bag is about ten kilos over the weight limit. It’s insane – I’ve hardly anything that is of very big importance in it, and up until a couple of days before leaving my apartment I was sure I wasn’t even going to be able to fill the bag. How wrong I was! But as I said, it’s just filled with “junk” so it’s actually not that hard to start pulling things out. I take it down 8kg and then the man in the counter takes pity on me and lets me get the last 4kg of overweight for free. I guess the MSF T-shirt and my friends talking loudly about how I’m going to Africa to “save little children” helps.

  

The essentials for a first time missioner

Suddenly it’s time to go thru security and my three best friends who’ve come to send me off all give me hugs and words of encouragement, and I’m reminded why it’s been so long since anyone has accompanied me to the airport; I can’t handle it. All the nerves and scary feelings bubble up and I can’t imagine how I’m supposed to manage the (probably) hardest six months of my life without them. Just before I go to the gate I take a couple of minutes in the washroom to splash some water on my face and try some deep breaths. Still the image of Aarhus getting smaller and smaller seen from the airplane window is completely blurry with tears.

  

One last day in civilization as my sister calls it - touristing in Brussels 

In Brussels I sleep amazingly well at the hotel that MSF has booked for me. The next day I have my HQ briefing – a long and a somewhat frustrating day, as expected. I find out that I’m not leaving for the field the same night as I’d been told, as there were no flights available, instead I’ll be leaving the day after in the evening. This means I get another night in a hotel and a day to explore Brussels, since it’s my first time here – it's fine by me! Though it would have been good to know before checking out of the hotel the same morning and having dragged around my heavy carry on all day, or having left my big luggage in a 24 hour box at the airport. But anyways...

  

A nice lunch and a stroll in the sun, just what I needed before my 9,5 hour flight

Today has been good. I’ve slept in and had a long and calm breakfast. I’ve ridden the tourist bus all through the city; I’ve seen the Atomium, eaten chocolate covered strawberries and had a nice lunch in the sun. Now I’m at the airport way before I’m actually flying. I don’t think I’ve ever been this early for a flight before! Then again I’ve never had a whole organisation involved in my trips before, and if I have one motto for this trip it’s better safe than sorry. So here I am, at the airport, four hours before take-off – and even before the check-in counter is opened! I’m doing a lot of new things this year, I’m guessing being early for a flight is going to be one of the smallest ones.

  

All changed and ready to go - and the last bit of luxury, a chocolate eclair while sitting on the floor of the airport

Well, I wrote that yesterday in the airport but turns out Brussels Airport doesn't have free wifi - cheap much...? Luckily the hotel here in Addis does - so here it comes, but pretend you're reading it yesterday ;-

The rush

Adrenalin is an amazing thing. When I get a call to hurry over to a baby that isn't breathing I immediately feel the rush of it bursting through my body; my muscles tens, my heart rate increases and my breathing quickens. For a second all my thoughts get jumbled up in my head and I start shaking - but just as quickly I'm on my way, I'm moving and my thoughts form around one sentence; "all you need is air!" It's what I build everything on - the baby needs to breathe and so do I - everything else is useless if that first thing isn't in place. It makes this insanely stressful situation manageable because if you know the first step it leads you to the second and so on. I know what to do and the difficult part is always the start - once you're going it's like riding a bike (on a tightrope between to skyscrapers - but still...). After you're done and the baby is good and stabile the adrenalin level falls quickly and the resulting exhaustion is comparable to the feeling after a good and long massage. It might sound like a weird comparison, but you're so relaxed and tiered that you feel like you could just sleep for days. 

I love the rush of adrenalin in that situation. It gives me the kick I need to perform my best no matter what time it is or how long ago I've slept or eaten. The thing is, that's not the only situation in which I get that rush. Lately I've felt it in various mundane situations provoked by random thoughts - well maybe not that random... It happens every time I start thinking about going to an underdeveloped country where security is an issue and where I won't have the same means to work with as here. The problem is that I don't know what to do with my tens muscles, shallow breathing and beating heart when I'm sitting on a bus on my way to work. I don't have any release for it so it just keeps building and I'm left with shaky hands and jumbled thoughts. I've scanned and printed my papers, made important phone calls and written important e-mails (which incidentally aren't as good an outlet for the overflow of adrenalin as bagging a baby, in case you were wondering...) and now all I can do is wait. Four more days of medium levels of adrenalin rushing through my system followed by six months of probably pretty high levels of the same - I'm thinking I'm going to sleep really well in December.

In the meantime I'm trying my hardest to relax, enjoy the summer and charge my batteries as much as possible.

Moving out

I don't remember how many times I've moved since I moved out on my own for the first time a bit over 9 years ago. I could count but I'm to tiered to do it right now. I have a love-hate relationship with moving. Mostly it's on the hate-side, but there's also something fresh and new about moving into a new place, like getting a clean slate to start on. 

Today I'm leaving my apartment and if everything goes as planned I won't be back until december. My stuff is packed tight in the basement and the apartment looks white and clean - and empty. I still have my furniture, they'll stay up here for the girl who's renting the place while I'm gone, but it still looks extremely empty. I know it's a cliché and I know I say it every time I move, but it just hits me equally hard every single time - how is it possible to have this much stuff!? I feel like I haven't done anything but packed and stuffed and managed an advanced game of Tetris in my tiny basement this last couple of days. I can't possibly need that much stuff. I have these last couple of weeks gotten rid of six or seven grocery bags full of clothes and shoes and I could probably get rid of three or four more. It's shameful is what it is; all that space and all that money wasted on something I maybe used once or twice.  And don't even get me started on the books! My books will be my downfall, literally - I'm going to fall down flat on my face when my back gives up after carrying down 200 liters of books. I know it's a strange measurement but I have filled out over three boxes (of 65L each) with books and obviously I haven't weighed everything so that's my measurement and that's my way of saying - a lot!

Now I have one hour to wash the floors, dust the cabinets and carry the last couple of bags down, and then I'll take a loooong shower, slip into a cute dress and enjoy an evening with the best girls in the world. Cheers to a great weekend! ;-)

The chapter before the story can start

A little over two weeks ago I received a phone call that has started a huge chain reaction in my life. I'd been preparing for it, knowing it was coming but like with so many things in life you can't really imagine what it's going to be like when it finally happens. I had been matched with a mission. Despite the fact that I've been thinking about it for years and that it's exactly what I've been planning for, for months now it still came as a chock. Obviously I was happy, I kept jumping up and down and smiling while I got the details, but then came the nerves. I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut, like I needed to throw up. This was it, this was real and it wasn't just some dream or far away plan, this was going to happen - and soon.

I got the weekend to think about it but to be honest I didn't need it, I knew I was going to go, it's the perfect mission for me - I'll be working with babies, how do you say no to that? Well if you're me you don't. I was scared and that was the big hurdle, but once I talked to my family and they bombarded me with all the questions a loving and protecting family could possibly think of, and I had to answer them with what I know and try to calm them down, I found that the fear slowly disappeared. I told them that I felt safe going - and I didn't lie. Still, I was concerned and nervous about everything from cultural differences to my own competencies as a doctor, and the more I thought about it the more I got confused and blocked. It was just such a typical "me" reaction. I over-think and over-analyze everything and mostly the answer I find is that I can't do it. I'm not good enough or brave enough or whatever other reason I might come up with, and I end up not doing anything, just feeling frustrated and stuck. It's the story of my life - but I'm so sick of that story! So the evening after receiving the phone call I decided that not only was I going to go, I was going to kick ass. Yes, just that simple. I'm going to go and I'm going to do my very best and no matter how it turns out, at least I'm not going to be the girl who stands in her own way anymore.

This was cold winter ground in April, you forget how much can happen in a couple of weeks.

When the present turns to past

One click leads to the next and suddenly, without really knowing how, a familiar tune begins playing on my Spotify. Immediately I'm transported to another time, facing another screen, where words quickly and emotionally are tied up together to form a poem, a note or a letter. I can feel the teenage heart pounding in my chest and the deep sigh of relief when the words are out - out of my head and on "paper". Words that no one will ever see, but that still exist, as a proof of all the jumbled up thoughts that once lived in my head. Words I had forgotten but that are brought back by lyrics sung by Swedish boys. I can even now feel the calmness that settled after a good writing session. The song also brings up faces I haven't seen in years, names I haven't said in ages and emotions I'd even forgotten I could experience. Youth really is for the young - no one else has the energy to feel as much, have highs as high and lows as low as them. I always forget that I've had that range, that even now, when I freak out and tears are unstoppable, it's not a teenage-freakout, it's a grown-up-freakout - and those are far easier to handle, because no matter what, you know that feelings pass, times pass and suddenly you're not in this moment anymore, suddenly it's just a memory triggered by a song.

Who needs a time machine when you have music?

Finding your words

People say that the biggest changes in your life come slowly and you don't even notice when suddenly you're a completely different person. The big things are so big you can't see them until you get some distance. This has become surprisingly evident the last couple of days. 

Let's flash back twenty years; I'm an eight year old girl who loves school is good at it but never wants to say anything in class, horrified by the thought of everybody looking at her. We move up a couple of years; I'm now in eight grade and I write a story for my Swedish class that is about a girl dealing with grief. My teacher takes me to the side after class and tells me that there's an author hidden in me, that I have a way with words. I go home floating on clouds after that and it makes me speak up at school - I feel like I have something to say. We head up another couple of years; We're having a class in high school where we're supposed to talk for five minutes each about three things that has formed us in our lives. After the class the teacher writes a note to each of us, mine says; "you have a way with words, people listen when you talk - make use of this gift, it's rare!"

During my last couple of years of high school and start of university I slowly became more and more active during class, I figured out that asking and answering questions actually makes you better at the subject and nobody else knows better than you anyway. It became natural and I forgot that I wasn't always that way.

This week we had an exercise where we had to choose a leader of the class - and I was chosen, which in it's self was a surprise. Me - as a leader? Are you kidding me? The exercise was leading the rest of the group in finding a rope outside on the ground and then make it to a perfect square with all the participants inside - while everybody, including the leader, are blindfolded. It was quite hard and we were outside for an hour and a half! I was a bit embarrassed when we came back inside, partly for taking so long, for shushing people and at one point even yelling obscenities to the rope, but then something really interesting happened... I got really good feedback. Sure there were things I could do better - plan ahead, delegate and keep a distance as a leader as not to loose the overview, things I know I suck at. Most surprisingly though was the fact that people thought I had an innate authority, I was assertive and people felt safe with me. I was a leader - an inexperienced leader for sure, but still, a leader. 

As a little girl I always imagined talking loudly, speaking out, daring to, but nobody ever thought I could so I believed them. I was the quiet girl with her head in a book. It wasn't until I became aware of the fact that words isn't something that is only given to me from a book but something I can create myself - writing or speaking, that I can put something out there, and some of it might not even be half bad, some things might even be worth listening to.

You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone...

I have this feeling that something's off. I'm not quite sure what or why, but there's just something... I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. My head is too fuzzy and there's something I'm missing or forgetting. I have a lot on my plate right now and that's usually a good thing, but right now even when I finish one thing I don't feel like it's good enough, like I'm really done, so I keep going back and checking - and that's definitely not the way to get things done! 

Maybe I'm just having a weird day. I worked last night and despite of having been up between 3 and 5 in the morning I got to the gym after work this morning (I was very impressed with myself!). Then I was supposed to have a nice relaxed day - I made healthy pancakes (I'll get back to that - they deserve their own post) and started to read my book for this weeks course, but I just kept drifting off, feeling nauseous and unsettled. This evening has been a long walk back and forth in this teeny apartment feeling trapped and anxious. Maybe I'm going insane?

I guess I'll just go to bed and hope for a better day tomorrow. 

I'll leave you with the man I've spent my evening with - Bob

Some dudes marry dudes

Did you see this photo of Ryan Gosling? Like I wasn't crushing enough on him to start with... Now obviously I want a shirt like that too! I'm thinking this outfit and a night at a gay-club, that way it's all about the dancing and nothing about the dudes, except supporting them that is. 

The stuff can be found here. 

I love it

Let's see this pretty great sunday through my iPhone. 

 

The day started out sunny and with the promise of spring. I took my spring jacket on and headed out for a walk - and it wasn't even very cold! Though we do still have snow some places, but that's just part of a Scandinavian spring after all. 

 

When I got home I had all this energy so I started redoing the living room (as always!). I removed the carpet and moved the couch around a bit and finally took the TV down to the basement, it's been standing unused in a corner for a year now so it's actually time to get rid of it for good, but I'll get to that eventually. For dinner I had sushi and enjoyed eating it in my new favorite place on the couch! (I'm not even sure why I have a dinner table, I never ever use it for dinner...).

It's been a pretty efficient day, I've done things I've been meaning to do for months and months and it's all because of the sun and the up-beat tunes I've been blasting all day - one of them is Icona Pops "I love it" it totally makes me want to go out dancing, it's been way too long!

The L word

So how many hours are you allowed to spend learning to do the "cup-song" before you're officially a Loser (yes, capital L, preferably marked with a finger and a thumb on my forehead)? I've gotten the moves down pretty good and I know the lyrics, but my voice is so horrible I can't even stand to hear it, and also the combination of the two things (sing and beat) is so difficult that I keep accidentally sending my cup flying every which way. I seriously don't understand how I (on occasion) manage to walk and talk at the same time. Actually I don't manage that very well either - I think I've mentioned my ability to trip over nothing at all on a daily basis before, and right now I have a lovely scrape on my right knee as proof. 

Apart form adding sick cup-skills to my resumé I've been reading a pretty interesting book today (yes, I have actually done something a bit more intellectual than cupping this fine day, hmm... that sounds wrong... but anyways...) it's called "Thinking, fast and slow" and it's by Daniel Kahneman. So far it's really good. Apart from that one I have three other books on my nightstand that I'm reading right now - hopefully I'll get it together and finish one of them soon so I can start on yet another book that I bought in Sweden this week. I think I might need a pool, a sun-chair and some sun to finish all of them though. 

Source; 1

Taking a break

I'm really sucking at keeping this blog updated. There are just so many things on my mind that getting them down to words and sentences is just really hard right now. For example I've been staring at the screen for ages with thoughts just randomly dropping by and being pushed away by bigger and bedder ideas. I keep trying to focus on one thing at the time but everything gets jumbled up. 

Somehow I keep coming back to vacation, spring, light clothes and beautiful bags, yes it's superficial and irrelevant, but I suppose it's my minds way of taking a break. So here are the latest pause images in my head;

Everything is from stories.com

An extremely cruel unfunny joke

For as long as I can remember I’ve discussed aging and death with my father. We have very different views on it; something he thinks is explained by my young age and inexperience. He’s one of those who think that at some point we’ll find a cure for death (or aging) – and it can’t come fast enough! I’m one of those who can’t understand why we’d want to. Obviously I don’t “like” death, as you know I’m in the "cheating-death" kind of business. I do everything I can to prevent it, when that’s the reasonable thing to do, knowing that in the long run death always wins. In my way of thinking death is part of the deal, it’s natural and mostly not at all that dramatic. When you work with old and sick people death isn’t a far-fetched outcome, and as a professional you need to accept that.

The thing is I don’t work with old sick people. I work with young healthy people; kids and babies who aren’t even people yet – teeny humans who haven’t even gotten the chance to start. Here death as an outcome feels highly unacceptable, it feels unfair and like an extremely cruel unfunny joke – “here’s a new life, oops no, fooled you, I’ll keep this one!” Devastating and heartbreaking.

So having experienced that, can I still argue that death is part of the deal; that it’s ok and an outcome that you have to be prepared to handle? Of course I can, because that’s just the way it is, no matter how horrible and tragic it is when it happens, especially in a way that we normally would call prematurely and unexpectedly.

Ever since the first day I got called in to a complicated labour and felt the gut wrenching horror when a birth is accompanied by complete silence (and luckily quickly followed by a huge adrenalin kick on my part) I’ve felt an immense calmness when hearing a babies cry, a huge relief. It’s the babies way of saying I’m here and I’m fighting. That's the norm, that's the most likely outcome and it’s what everyone expects – but for me it’s a wonder, every single time.

People wonder how you can work in paediatrics having to accept that some children die. I always think that children die whether you work with it or not and not seeing it doesn’t make it go away. For me, the fact that some births are followed by silence actually makes the cries better, when one dies all the others that live feel like a huge gift. As long as that feeling can crawl it’s way through the “punch in the gut” feeling of loosing one I think I might be able to keep doing this job, that despite everything still is the most amazing, worthwhile job in the world. But damn, some days are hard.

Photos from here

In the mood

Can you feel your feet begging to move and your hands starting to tremble like the (in)famous jazz hands when you see these photos and hear the groovy melody of "In the mood" in your head? I know my hands and feet - not to mention hips and shoulders can't be still when I hear the music at least, so today everything I've done has had a kind of swing to it. 

 

We're in march people! It's official - spring will come this year too! I know I dance around most of the year, but it's like I truly can't help it when the sun starts showing it's face after three o'clock in the afternoon. Yesterday was all about the salsa and merengue (which is like once in a blue moon) that was the raging fashion in this apartment, but today I happened to come across a youtube clip of some gal's swing dancing in the 1940's and I thought to myself - imagine living thru WWII and still looking so ecstatic while swinging, it must be the happiest dance ever, and I should learn it! 

 

I know there're a lot of reasons why we live in the best of times - blogging and Instagram to mention two perhaps less important ones - genus classes at universities in Sweden and survival rates of premature babies at an all time low to mention two in my opinion hugely important ones. But I can't help sometimes daydreaming of living in an era of black and white, I know it sounds stupid, but I love the elegance, the smoldering looks and obviously the music and the movies. We should totally bring that era back, I mean without the war and the lousy conditions for everyone who isn't a white male, maybe just like a costume party... yeah, that would probably be enough for me.

For now I think I'll make myself a cup of tea and cuddle up with some dancing clips of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, maybe I'll pick it up just by watching and re-watching for a couple of hours.

Sources here 

Doing big things

So I had a meeting with MSF last Friday. We talked about how my recruitment had gone and the different steps there are in the whole process of being sent to the field. I'm now in the preparation phase and boy am I feeling it. There are a million things to do and I'm doing lists like never before, but that might be because I keep losing them... I can sometimes get overwhelmed by everything I need to get in order and my thoughts can't help themselves, they race off to a month from now, five months from now and a year from now - how do I want things to look then? I keep struggling with wanting to sit on two chairs at once. I'm highly devoted to my career here at home and I don't want to miss any chances, but I know that I can't do both things at once and deep down I know that there will be a job for me when I get back. But it's difficult to settle and be comfortable with your own decision when everyone around you are busting their butts to pimp their resumés while I practically take a year off and say screw it, I'm doing this for me and I don't care about the consequences. Because I do care!

Anyways, after I received a to do list from MSF themselves (which suddenly made my own list stretch over two pages...) I feel like I have something tangible to do. It always helps on my chaotic thoughts to have some practical stuff to do that I can check off the list after I'm done. Somehow taking some passport photos of myself is much easier to accomplish and therefor more satisfying, than the stupid "get the apartment ready for quick packing so that you can scram on a moments notice" task I have on one of my lists.

As I said, I know everything will turn out fine - better even! I know this is what I want to do and I'm actually kind of proud of myself for taking this year off the conveyor belt, I think it'll be really good for me, but at the same time I'm giving myself permission to be scared and nervous, it is a big deal and you're supposed to feel nervous when you're doing big stuff.

More than a thousand words

So it's been a terribly grey and uneventful sunday. One of those days where I spend the whole day thinking that I should travel more, like leaving tomorrow. It always gets me thinking about last time I went somewhere and browsing the photos I've taken on my (not that many) trips. 

Doing that I came over this picture and it's just the best photo ever. It might not be the best quality or lighting or anything - it's a pretty random shot taken with my phone. The reason why it's special is the girl on the lower left corner. This is the friend whom I went to Paris with last fall. We were looking around the Notre Dame on a rainy afternoon and like so many tourists got separated inside the big cathedral filled with people. I'm not sure how long we walked around trying to find each other before we both figured it was easiest to just wait by the exit. When I found her there I just couldn't figure out how she'd passed me as she was walking behind me and I was actually looking for her. Afterwards when I was browsing the photos I'd taken inside I found this one, with her in it, and I was so surprised. It's taken just as she's passing me without seeing me and I'm taking a picture without realizing she's in it. 

I have a tendency to take a lot of pictures when traveling, most of them are useless. They aren't particularly good and don't really say that much about the trip. This one is different, it has a story and a great friend in it.

It's in his kiss

In honor of this international love fest of a day here are some pics of happy couples smooching - or at least I choose to see them as happy couples and not some random hookups, but you know, whatever floats your boat...

So whether you're into the whole flowers, chocolate and hearts thing or you feel your gag reflex being triggered just by me mentioning them, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that kissing is a pretty good thing. 

I haven't always been a big supporter of Valentines day as I do think it's a commercialized non-holliday where the main goal is to get people spending money on silly things. The idea of first giving a girl chocolates and then a thong to hop into (or whatever lingerie the salesclerk said would be super flattering and sexy) is just kind of cruel don't you think? The result is as always with gift-giving-hollidays a bit of a letdown if you ask me.

But anyways, I've come around and I now feel like if one day out of the year we're driven to consumerism for love, at least it's a better reason than most other days of the year.

I like thinking about all the love floating around the world this day, from the stupid roses that are delivered in the High Schools to the (uninventive) proposals that are occurring in restaurants across the globe, I hope you're feeling the love. And if someone forgot to buy the overpriced flowers today and all you got was a kiss, I would say you're still pretty lucky.

Pic.source; My Pinterest board!