Saturday March 2

The team has assembled and we are at JFK Airport awaiting our flight. Everything has gone very well so far, which I hope is a harbinger of things to come. We ended up checking 18 bags, 12 of which are filled with medical supplies, and because we had been granted an excess baggage waiver by Delta, there was no charge for the extra bags. We are tremendously grateful to Delta for their support of our humanitarian mission. In those 12 bags we have a variety of supplies, some of which we will use during the 2 weeks we are at JFK Medical Center, but mostly they will be used after we leave. The supplies include everything from surgical gowns and scrub brushes to baby blankets. We are very grateful to everyone at Waterbury Hospital who saved supplies for us, as well as suppliers who provided material for us to bring. The team members are : Dr Santiago Arruffat, a former resident at Waterbury Hospital and currently a colorectal surgeon on Evansville, Indiana. This is his third trip to Liberia with us; in addition to being a superb surgeon and friend, he is an accomplished runner of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; Dr Dimple Amin, an anesthesiologist who did med school and residency in Miami and is now in practice in Evansville; Ms Kenna Besing, a CST (Certified Surgical Technologist) from Evansville who went to Haiti with Santiago after the earthquake; Dr John Dussel, a surgical resident at Waterbury Hospital who came with us to Liberia last year; Dr Nathan Lafayette, who is also a surgical resident at Waterbury Hospital; and myself. I want to thank all of the people who have been so supportive in so many different ways as we embark on this mission. While it will be my 7th visit to JFK and Liberia, there is still a certain amount of anxious excitement about what I will be writing and feeling in 2 weeks at the end of this trip.