Dr. Joshua Weil reveals some of what makes him tick when he shares that he once plotted to spend his life plying the seas.
It wasn't an idle ambition. As a younger man, the 49-year-old son of a filmmaker and a historian sailed extensively as a crewman.
Harkening to the moment he changed course and chose to become a physician, he said, "I literally decided the day I turned 25, on a sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."
Today he's an indoors guy, a husband and a father of three. He works long hours as an emergency-room doctor and administrator at Kaiser Permanente's Santa Rosa Medical Center.
But Weil still gets out. He flew Sunday to a typhoon-ravaged region of the Philippines for his latest international relief mission. Even as he prepared on Saturday, he couldn't be certain of where he and the team of Kaiser volunteers he directs will be stationed or how they will connect with Filipinos in need of medical attention more than three weeks after Typhoon Haiyan struck.
"It's still very fluid, even after all this time," the Santa Rosa resident said. Owing to difficulties with logistics and transportation within the country, he said, "It's been challenging in the Philippines to find a location and a scope of mission."
What he knew for sure was that there will be many people desperate to find medical care for themselves or their loved ones, and that the conditions the Kaiser workers will encounter will be tough.
Weil's experience with volunteering at massively destructive and deadly natural disasters includes his journey to Haiti following the earthquake of 2010, to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and to Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2004.
Asked what those humanitarian journeys left him with, he considered and replied, "You don't remember sleeping on the ground and not eating well ... Well, you do."
But mostly, he remembers some of the many people he treated, among them the Haitian girl of perhaps 10 who'd suffered a grievous injury that exposed the bare bone of her forehead. He recalls the smile she wore when she returned a week or so after he'd tended to her, with the wound healing nicely.
"There," he said, speaking of Haiti, "everybody is appreciative. They have so little."
As with the Haitian mission, Weil and Kaiser Permanente are partnering in the trip to the Philippines with the non-profit Relief International. He is in charge of coordinating the efforts of about 300 Kaiser volunteers, most of them from northern California.
The former world sailor acknowledges that taking part in far-flung disaster relief and reconstruction efforts feeds the vagabond in him.
"I have kind of an adventure mentality," he said. "It's exciting to be in those environments and do that kind of work."
Beyond that, there's the satisfaction he derives from giving back at times of enormous suffering and deprivation. Weil said he couldn't do it without the cooperation of the Kaiser colleagues who fill in for him in the emergency room.
And he certainly wouldn't be volunteering far away — again — if he didn't have the support and encouragement of his wife, Claire Mollard, and their children, Sydney, Caleb and Sophie.
"They don't like to see me go, but they understand," Weil said.
Something the eldest, Sydney, said has him feeling that he's charting a reasonably good course.
"She told me the other day I'm her hero," the doctor said before flying off to help with the healing and mending in the Philippines.
(Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.)
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: