I had a busy Sunday on call as the weather was really cold on Saturday (even for here) for details please refer to previous blog post of Taloyoak Terrorist. So when the sun was shining and the temperature up from -56 c the population started moving. And everyone who had been unwell since Friday and found it too cold on Saturday made their way up over the hill to be seen. For an on call session this was my personal best to assess and treat ten sick kids in less than five hours. Now clearly if you're doing the math that's half an hour each but remember we're not doing sections of jobs as in physician tasks and nurse tasks. We are finding their chart, making a CHIMIS (paper which captures the visit for coding) head to toe assessing the patient, treating them, perhaps calculating and dispensing a medication (or a bag full by the time you add advil, tylenol, anbesol, an antibiotic etc. to the party bag) giving instructions, organizing a recheck and then fully documenting the encounter using SOAP notes. I had a nice chat with a grandmother (who has adopted one of her grandchildren - a common situation here) and she was telling me that it was terrible to be having menopausal hot flashes. Now I thought the north would be the best place for those - you know self heating but she told me that with the water and sewage being trucked it was really awful to have to shower twice a day and that you have to tear your outer wear off quickly when entering buildings as the moment you heat up it's game over. Never considered that, dear dear. Glad I've avoided that pestilence. I was pleased to make it upstairs to eat my leftovers before the evening sick clinic started.
Had an interesting evening and managed to pull it together with my boss as my backup second on call. Then i get a call from a lady who I'd met earlier in the day with a grandchild and this time she tells me that she's cut her hand with her ulu (woman's knife) and can't get it to stop bleeding. I tell her to come up and I'll have a look at it (we both know which way this visit is going) and she tells me that it'll be about a ten minute walk. She arrives and of course has a deep slice which is about four cm on the palm of hand. If you were trying to convince yourself that glue and tape would work, you would just be fooling yourself as this is someone who will use the hand so…..I freeze it with 1% lidocaine and put in seven 3-0 prolene sutures. I am getting a bit faster but more importantly I am getting neater. Due to my slow speed we have a chance to get to know each other better.
http://watchersofthenorthblog.com
who had created the iglu and that they were limited by the building materials as the snow wasn't exactly as it used to be due to climate change. Here is a link to the local area with a bit of history:
http://www.nunavuttourism.com/taloyoak.aspx
My new friend told me that she was born in an iglu and that her family lived 'out on the land' not really belonging to any community in the nomadic lifestyle of the 1950s before flight opened up the north to southern ways. She remembers the first constructed house (Hudson Bay Co. housing) she was ever inside of, as it smelled different "like wood" when Spence Bay was only a few houses (it was only created in 1948) with the RCMP way over to the east and the Hudson Bay Co. and a few small places. There was no health centre until she was a teenager so before that the RCMP had medicine to distribute and even gave needles. Her mother died when she was really young and her father sent her to residential school in Inuvik before she was nine, as she had an older brother and sister and a younger brother so her sister had to sew the clothes for the family, they received family allowance if one child went to school and this made it easier. They were only allowed to speak English and she didn't speak the language so it was very difficult, she spent the first month just observing and not talking. Her English is very good now of course. In the 1960s there weren't many jobs here and people left to find work so she and her husband lived for a while in another community, there weren't many houses to live in and she 'adopted out' several of her children. Now one grandchild lives with her and another is visiting as her daughter attends school in Cambridge Bay to learn to be an underground miner as there is no work for her locally. They enjoy going out on the land and have two small camps which they visit in spring, summer and fall by four wheeler or skidoo. A tetanus booster, blood draw so she doesn't have to return for a routine visit which I centrifuge as she slips back into her parka and out into the frigid air for the walk home. Pinch me, am I really living like and doing all this?
Today was a busy beginning to the workweek and the Dr. who is responsible for this community is in doing his clinic. He had quite an adventure travelling up as his connecting flight 'went mechanical' out of Yellowknife and he hadn't thought he'd make it last night. However Canadian North put a charter on and after multiple stops and much later than planned, he was deposited at the airport. He called the health centre to announce proudly "we made it!" and I assured him that Nellie was there waiting for him - probably didn't want to get out of the vehicle until she had to. I told him today that he likely used the same enthusiasm when announcing the birth of his firstborn and he agreed.
So, time to retrieve the laundry from the dryer - not that anyone would steal anything (even a duvet) from me here - apparently it's easy to apprehend anyone lifting stuff as there is no way to escape - well at least not far. Unless I guess it was small enough to get on a plane with. Oops gotta go, second on call and the phone is ringing. Later
So, time to retrieve the laundry from the dryer - not that anyone would steal anything (even a duvet) from me here - apparently it's easy to apprehend anyone lifting stuff as there is no way to escape - well at least not far. Unless I guess it was small enough to get on a plane with. Oops gotta go, second on call and the phone is ringing. Later
