Last Day at Work

December 23^rd . My last day of work. Christmas’ Eve is tomorrow, next Tuesday is New Year’s Eve and then 15 days afterward, I will board my plane. Another 30 hours, give or take, will have me landing in Melbourne, Australia.

I will be counting the next few weeks in terms of appointments and milestones as I rush to put together everything I need to leave with peace of mind.

I take a few minutes now to reflect on today as it was a strange day for me. I worked a bit and I packed a bit. Even though I will come back here in a year, I have to vacate my office for now.

Now, if I look over my shoulder I can see three piles which summarize my work life of the last few years. The first box contains things that have made this office mine. Next are two full bins of paper left to be recycled after shredding what seems to be an endless stack of documents. This really made me realize just how much paper clutter had crawled into my life. Finally, the last box contains my ergonomic equipment. This will go into storage until I come back next year.

The last few weeks have been hectic and it didn’t feel like Holidays at work. As I’m writing this, my day is almost over. I will close a few files and send an email to my colleagues. Then, I will log off my computer for the last time this year, grab my box of belongings and head home.

Not long ago I was mentioning how my last meeting with the board had made my traveling plans much more tangible for me. Well today if feel like I’m turning yet another page. I would say half of what I am feeling right now is exhilaration at the freedom ahead of me and the other half is sort of a bitter sweet feeling akin to nostalgia.

I had expected my last day to be similar to when I was back in high school on the last day before summer vacation. Surprisingly, it wasn't. Don't get me wrong, I am excited for sure, but I am starting to see that I have grown comfortable in my routine. I suppose it's a sign that I am slowly heading to another stage of my life. However, I am still thankful for this opportunity to shake things up a little. I'm not quite ready to settle down yet.

Vaccination

Despite believing that vaccines are generally beneficial, I too sometimes have my doubts. Not so much conspiracy theories or whether you can contract the actual disease from the vaccination. Yet, I am sometime weary of unknown side effects of new vaccination. I also often question myself as to whether a particular vaccine is really necessary – this, I ask myself more often considering how afraid I am of those little needles. Best example would be the flu vaccine: since I'm not in the population at risk, I skip this needle very happily. I'd rather handle the flu than its preventive needle.

This being said, with my plans of going through Australia, Indonesia, Asia, India and Eastern Europe, many vaccines were recommended. I found myself weighting the risks of contracting the disease and the effects of said diseases (some of which are just dreadful) against my fear of needles and the price tag attached to the said vaccines. Note : By price tag, I'm referring to both the price of the vaccine itself and the time taken off of work due to the post­vaccination run down added to the actual phobia reactions, which makes every single needle into a traumatic experience...

Considering my phobia of needles, why would I willingly have 8 immunizations, grouped into 4 different vaccines, for a total of 7 injected doses?

 Now, I don’t particularly feel like oversharing my medical history, but I do believe travel vaccination is a topic worth discussing. So I will share with you which vaccine I agreed to take and the justifications for them.


A bit of context: I already had my Hep B vaccination, so this allowed me to have ViVAXIM, the combined vaccine for the Typhoid Fever and Hep A. I also got the Adacel Vaccine, which targets Diphteria, Pertussis, Tetanus and Polio. These two were considered the bare minimum in terms of vaccination. They amounted to two needles and 210 $, which is much lower than the other two vaccines thanks to OHIP coverage. One way or another, as I walked into the office, I was set on having the Tetanus shot. I decided to go with the advice of the nurse and get ViVAXIM as well.

I gave more thought to the other two recommended vaccines: Ixiaro (Japanese Encephalitis) and Imovax (Rabies). So why was I more concerned about them? In all honesty, probably mainly because of the price tag and the fact they had not been labelled as the essentials.

The Japanese Encephalitis, which is present in the Middle ­East and South East Asia (India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Korea, etc), gets transmitted by mosquitoes (as does the Nile Fever here in Canada).

 Rabies was another one of those diseases affecting the brain. It gets transmitted by animal bite, such as dogs, cats and raccoons (not all of which will appear aggressive, some could be lethargic). The vaccine isn’t a 100% effective against rabies: if you get bitten you must rinse the wound for several minutes with clean water and soap and you have to get treatment quickly. Getting the vaccine doesn't mean you can avoid treatment, but from what I gathered it could lighten the treatment post­exposure.

As with any vaccine, these vaccines may not protect 100% of people who receive it. Really, to me, vaccines are about playing the odds. Looking back, if my private insurance hadn't covered the said vaccines, I might hot have taken the rabies and the ViVAXIM shot. I was set on getting the tetanus shot going in and I do believe I would have gotten the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine regardless.

I'm not pretending to be a doctor or pharmacist and know everything there is to know about vaccines. This information is about what I have understood of the process and the reasoning behind the vaccines I agreed to take. It's about the considerations that came into play when I decided to get travel vaccinations : health, side effects, costs and, in my case, fear of needles. I did go back to the nurse to ask why the rabies vaccine was recommended, if treatment was still required upon exposure. She answered that less vaccines post-exposure would be necessary and that hemoglobin wouldn't be required. This would be the main advantage, as hemoglobin can be hard to find depending where you are and not necessarily safe, since not necessarily tested the way HemaQuebec does here.

If you understand French, the blog Le Pharmachien has this neat strip about vaccination misconceptions. This is a neat blog I follow and I suggest you check it out : http://www.lepharmachien.com/vaccins/.

Other sources I have looked at are :

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155580.php

http://www.mayoclinic.com

http://chealth.canoe.ca/

http://www.cdc.gov/

http://www.nhs.uk

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm

Last Board Meeting

Slowly, but surely, I'm sorting through my life and tying up loose ends before leaving for Australia in January. It started to feel real when I bought my ticket last Saturday and it feels even more real now that I've officially turned a page of my life. After informing the other administrators during the previous meeting, tonight was my last Board meeting.

Collaborating with the CIPTO was truly an amazing experience. This non-profit organization strives to helps people struggling with drug addictions, homelessness and social exclusion among other things. It also helps people suffering from those issues to get access to the resources necessary for their recovery and social reinsertion.

I've been seating on this Board for about a year and a half now out of a two-year mandate. I learned a lot from it and it was a really productive experience. I have been blessed to see progress on different files and I'm a bit disappointed to not be around for some very interesting developments to come.


As an organization it does amazing social work and I count myself lucky to have had a chance to work with a team of such dedicated individuals. While I have tons of exciting things coming my way, I know I will miss my involvement in this great cause and I have no doubt I will want to look into contributing again upon my return.

For now though, my plate is quite full as I have many other things to take care of before leaving. Paperwork mostly at this point.

Creating a Will

If there is a topic that created almost has much waves as the announcement of the trip around the world, it’s no doubt the creation of a will in light of the said travel plans. This might seem like a needlessly gloomy topic, but it is a necessary one. Telling people about this – other than the one I was planning to name my executor – might have been a mistake, but I had been considering it since before starting to plan for this trip. It simply became a necessity for me now. Surprisingly and despite how smart producing a will is, the idea was sometimes met with an irrational reaction. Some people were under the impression that creating a will meant I thought I was going to die out there.

Truth is, if I was convinced of my impending death, I probably would not go on this trip at all. This is really just a precaution to protect my assets and make sure they go where I want them to go if something does indeed happen. Putting your head in the sand has never reduced risks or magically made problems go away.

More so, let’s consider for a second that life threatening accidents don't all happen overseas... That they can happen in your backyard, on your way to work, when you do sports, etc. I really should have created that document a long time ago. In fact, it was negligent of me not to do so before.

While creating a will is a smart move, the conversation that must follow is never fun. I suppose it has to do with forcing your loved ones and those who love you to consider something might happen to you. That you neither invincible nor eternal.

I don’t think anyone could blame me fore wanting to put my things into order before leaving for such an extensive amount of time. I just want to get rid of some of the clutter in my house, see people I haven't seen in a while and, yes, create a will.

The first step in this process is actually deciding whether or not you need a will. A will not only dictates the distribution of your assets, but names the guardians of your children, if you have some, and addresses how your remains are to be handled. There is also another document called a Power of Attorney that designates someone to take the decisions for you if you are incapacitated. In a Power of Attorney and in a Living Will, you can state what types of treatments you want or do not want to receive and you can name someone to take health care decisions for you in the event that you become unable to do so. Hard decisions, like whether or not to maintain life support, can tear a family apart. Those documents can facilitate such processes.

Now let’s say you have decided to create a will. Your next step will be deciding whether to write it yourself or to get counsel from a lawyer. In my case, I ended up deciding to go with a lawyer for a few reasons. First, I wanted my will to be done in a way that nobody could contest its content and second, I wanted my will to be easy to track down. Keeping a single copy in my safe at home, which nobody can access, would be quite counterproductive. When it came time to look for a professional, I received quotes ranging from $300 to $2500. In the end I decided to go with my family's lawyer, mainly so that the original document would be easy to track down. While this was a deciding factor for me, you have to figure out what is important to you.

To wrap up for today, I think there are few documents in adult life that are as important as a will. I’m still in the process of creating mine, so you can expect some more feedback in January as I will try to pass along other important information on the topic in case it could be useful to you.

Kickoff

At the end of September, I went to Ireland for two weeks. I would have taken more time, if not for obligations back home. Like most people I know, traveling for long periods of time is a luxury I do not have.

Also, it seems that, quite like my father, I am unable to cope with free time. I prefer an overbooked schedule to an empty one. It means leaving in the morning and coming back late at night almost every single day. It is also synonymous with exhausting weeks of running with a list of things to do that never gets shorter as I seem to get more and more creative at filling it up.

So on the plane back from Dublin, after a two week vacation, this crazy thought crossed my mind. I should leave, take a year off, pack my bag and be on my way. It would not have been the first time I dreamed of such a thing, but this time it was an unshakable thought. Two days after returning to work, I was submitting a request for leave without pay. This is truly one of the big advantage of my position, to be able to take a year off during my career and come back to work after the hiatus. It doesn't take away the insecurities linked to not having a paycheck for a whole year, but it's a safety net for when I come back.

The week after, I received the verdict. The request had been granted. It was now time to deliver the news to my family and friends. You can no doubt imagine I got mixed reactions on this. The most adventurous were excited and the ones who who were happy with their routine questioned the impacts this would have on my career path and on life plans in general. It got quite a bit of attention and, while I like speaking openly of my project, some opinions weighted heavy on my mind and made me rethink sharing the details of my endeavor.

Thankfully, now, weeks after the big news, the attention died down a little. I'm not saying this is no longer a predominant topic of conversation for my family and entourage, just that emotions don't run as high now. I can now fully concentrate on the adventure to come, which will start sometime in January. Of course, this doesn't leave much time for preparations, about three months give or take.

In the weeks to come I will journal the progress of my preparations and I plan on detailing the trip itself afterward. While traveling solo in Ireland, I posted daily on Facebook because I wanted to feel connected. I hadn't realized how many people were actually reading my posts until people started quoting them. So I told people around me that I was thinking of blogging along the way and this idea met with a lot of support. So here we are, me a part-time wanderer going on a full-time adventure and this blog which I hope will help me to feel connected even if I am alone on the other side of the world.