Wednesday, June 25, 2008
08:37 p.m.

And I'm Off

Since I returned from B.C. I've been riding every day. It'll suck not to see her for 3 months.

Yesterday went into that barn's outdoor arena for the very first time, resulting in Wavelet becoming all freaked out at the adjoining cow pasture and hot under the saddle and taking off with me. I pretended I had my instructor in my head yelling things at me ("Bring your hands up! Heels down! Sit deep in the saddle!") and managed to control her, then we did 10 min straight on trot/halt/back up, and tried cantering again. And yay, she was controllable!
Today I was emboldened by the presence of another instructor in the arena, and so I chanced a little cross-rail. Wave was good, cantered after the jump but under control, and then got hot again. My hands were literally cramping trying to not let the reins slip, something that always seems to happen to me. Stranger-instructor noticed and yelled at me to shorten my reins! Ah, warmed my heart, it was just like having my own instructor yell the exact same thing at me.
Wave was just really really strong today, but also mostly on the bit, head nicely down unlike yesterday. I could control her direction and everything, I just had a hard time slowing her down. She'd actually stop for me, I just couldn't get a nice slow trot.

I have to be out of here by 0400 tomorrow to make my flight. Mostly packed, just remembering odds and ends. I have a supply of various pills and patches that will hopefully prevent me from puking during the combat landing.

I'll have to check if I can post from over there.

Bye!

Monday, June 23, 2008
07:38 p.m.

When One Becomes Three

Can you guess where I'm going? Guess, guess!

Guess when I'm leaving!

Guess for how long!

Guess that it's over forty fucking Celsius there right now. And it's gonna get hotter.

Friday, June 20, 2008
12:02 a.m.

She Sees Dead People

My ER time has come to an end; tomorrow, I return home. Hopefully after a few more successful intubations.

Not enough trauma, or at least not major unstable trauma. It feels wrong to hope for some poor patient to be uncontrollably bleeding out, but there it is.
I saw some minor traumas, and a lot of medicine. Some pretty interesting cases actually, scattered among the oldies with chest pains and shortness of breath and possible strokes, the bread and butter of Acute.

One case was a young woman who OD'd on Benadryl, of all things. She didn't need intubation, she was already waking up by the time she got was brought in, trying to obey verbal commands. She'd need monitoring because these types of drugs can cause arrhythmias and seizures, but she was pretty stable. Mute for some reason the entire time I was there, but stable.
After a while she was able to open her eyes and sort of vaguely track me with her eyes. But she saw things, scary things. I could stand at the foot of her bed and watch her watch these things, things that hovered near her sides. It was pretty amazing, actually.
I've seen drugged-up patients hallucinating, agitated about spiders on their skin or whatnot. I've seen psych patients who heard other voices while I was interviewing them. Yet I was never affected by whatever it is they saw or heard, and frankly the druggies tend to be pretty tiresome. But watching this girl lie there so very quietly, staring in utter fear off to the side, was better than some great horror movie because it was real life. It was that raising-hairs-on-back-of-neck feeling, I could almost believe something really was there.

Thank you, random borderliner, for entertaining me during my shift. It was pretty damned freaky.

Gelato round-up

It saddens me to leave this place, because I think this might be gelato central in Canada. I've tried all of the following flavors, most as generous samples. Sampling rocks. I found some total favorites, some beautifully delicious ones, and the rest still very good.

Spicy Mango, Death by Mango, Indian Mango, Chocolate Chili, Corn, Lime Tequila Sorbetto (S), Cinnamon Mocha, Grapefruit Champagne S, Balsamic Vinegar, Lemon Ginger S, Peach Plum Jasmine, Lavender, Chocolate Basil, Coconut Red Rice, Wasabi, Rice, Sour Cherry Yogurt, Fig & Chocolate Shavings, Chocolate Sambuca, Hazelnut, Apple Walnut, Cranberry Rosemary S, Akbar Mashti, Spanish Coffee, Grapefruit Campari S, Green Apple S, Ferrero Rocher, Blood Orange S, Limoncello S, Bacio, Pink Grapefruit S, Frutti di Bosco S, Biscotti, Panna Cotta, Dolce Latte, Toasted Marshmallow, Pear Gorgonzola, Basil Pernod, Cranberry Vodka S, Long Island Tea S, Dragonfruit, and Pistachio.

Looking over the list, it's no wonder I usually don't buy ice cream. I adored the spicy offerings and the herbal ones. Cranberry Rosemary in particular, it had that gorgeous sweet-tangy taste of cranberries, but when I exhaled my mouth filled with the strong essence of rosemary. I'd have to buy a bigger freezer if I lived here.

Chocolate Basil is the only herbal flavor that didn't make the top list, and that's because I had to concentrate really hard to taste any basil. Chocolate is simply too overwhelming for basil. Ah, and I couldn't detect any trace of alcohol in the supposedly-alcoholic ones. And the rice gelatos in Korea were much better then the one I tried here.
Oh hey, the Balsamic Vinegar. Whatever vinegar they used must've been really good quality, because the thing smelled completely like vinegar but was...not horrible. I mean, it totally tasted like vinegar, but also sort of good, a taste you could acquire without too much trouble.

Damn, that's a lot of gelato.

Sunday, June 15, 2008
08:46 p.m.

Baby Beluga, in the Deep Blue...Aquarium!

Vancouver Aquarium has a brand-new beluga baby. She is unnamed as of yet, and 4 days old. How insanely cute is that?
First-time mom Qila apparently had no idea what to do and was ignoring the baby, so the decision was made to let her mom in with her to whip her sorry ass into shape show her the ropes. Grandma Aurora started bonding with the baby while Mommy Dearest watched from the sidelines, eventually trying her hand at the whole mothering thing.
Unfortunately Granny went all Hand That Rocks the Cradle when Qila tried to get in on the baby-loving action, and had to be separated again. None of this grandparents' rights nonsense at the aquarium!

Stopped by Mondo Gelato on the way home, giving their Green Apple another chance; sadly I remain underwhelmed. Also had a go at Ferrero Rocher, which taught me that while the best part of the chocolate concoction is actually licking off the covering and carefully exposing the hazelnutty center, the center itself just isn't that interesting. The Cinnamon Mocha was wonderfully balanced, the cinnamon easily holding its own and lingering on the tongue.
Also loved the Blood Orange for its very realistic flavor, and of course I had the Limoncello and Grapefruit again. Love you, Grapefruit!

Another stop at Chocoatl had me buying more bars of the Passion chocolate. I have tried it by now, and it's thankfully much darker and less sweet than the truffle. It's got a decent amount of spiciness for a chocolate bar, and it's harsher than the Lindt Chili bar; the latter has a beautiful warmth that gently heats the palate, but the Chocoatl version is more upfront about the spice.
Picked up a Lavender and a Matcha truffle. I've only tried the Fig one so far but it was very good, so no reason to suspect the other will be disappointing.

The guy at the counter let me try the Champurrado, a hot chocolate with vanilla, cinnamon and corn. The corn just thickens it so it had an interesting texture but, as with the African Dream, I found it hard to distinguish the spices.
Not so with the Aztec hot chocolate on which I eventually settled. This is a hot chocolate that virtually screams, "Hey, you're drinking chili!" I wouldn't bet money on whether the cinnamon and nutmeg listed are actually in there, but I sure as hell can tell that the chili is. Mmm, hot hot chocolate is love.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
06:16 p.m.

Dessert Day the Second

In the spirit of the Dessert Day we had in Korea, I hit the West End today. The sky remains overcast and threatens rain, but it's not really cold. A T-shirt with a windbreaker is adequate for the weather.
I overheard a local on the bus refer to this month as "Junuary", so I gather this isn't usual. But I expected constant rain as per the stereotype, so I'm not put out.

My first stop of the day was Mondo Gelato.
Yes, the quality was very good. Of course none of the flavors I really wanted to try were available - curse you, "seasonal" choices! But their Limoncello was very nice, tangy and very slightly bitter. The Green Apple was more bitter than the sour I expected.
Pink Grapefruit sorbetto was love. Absolutely true to life, a lovely bitter hit. The highly recommended Frutti di Bosco, a mixed berry sorbetto, disappointed. It's not that is wasn't good, but the reviews gave me very high expectations, and really it was just...good.
On to the gelatos. Indian Mango was so, so incredibly rich, both in taste and mouthfeel. Beautiful. Another inspired flavor was Biscotti, which tasted exactly like a biscotti does. Panna Cotta was nice but a shade too subtle for me, possibly because of the sorbetto hits before I got to trying it; I preferred Dolce Latte, a sweet, milky-caramelly concoction.

After I finished my cup, I wished I'd asked them to put the grapefruit on the bottom. I missed it and wanted more. I'd go back for that grapefruit.

But you know what? Still not as great as Solferino, damn it. It's not like I had one great experience there and got fixated, for crying out loud. I've been back several times, and their single-fruit sorbettos are beyond amazing. True, true flavor but somehow more vibrant that real life. I fucking dream about that sorbetto. I make up schemes to have them ship it to me in dry ice on a wholesale basis. I'd need a bigger freezer.

On the way to my next destination I randomly came upon Yaletown Gelato. I had a taste of their Green Apple and Sour Cherry, both a touch too sweet for me. However, the Toasted Marshmallow was delicious and really, truly toasty-like.
While sitting there peacefully eating my scoop, I witnessed a totally high and/or drunk girl being confronted by a security guard for smoking in a non-smoking area. She was apologetic in that disjointed, hopped-up, druggy way, and managed to drop her cup of coffee, shattering it on the ground. Then she started picking up the glass with her hands as the guard tried to shoo her away from doing that.

My next stop was Chocoatl, an artisanal chocolate boutique whose web page is "coming soon". You can, however, watch this little video that convinced me to go there: page with video!

I had their African Dream hot chocolate, a hand-mixed drink made with 71% cocoa, milk, cinnamon and cardamom. The dark and incredibly rich chocolate overwhelmed everything else while the thing was hot, but towards the end I tasted the spices more.
I wanted to buy the Passion chocolate bars, 71% cacao, cinnamon and chilies, but not before trying a bit of the chocolate. Not dropping $8 on a bar that might not even be spicy. They had no samples, so the lady gave me a free Aztec truffle with the same flavor profile, except that the truffle is apparently sweeter. It did have a noticeable hint of the chilies, so I got some of the chocolate bars as well as 4 more truffles: Kalamata/green fig, fennel, chipotle, and Turkish, the latter allegedly containing anise. The lady didn't seem to be sure and I wouldn't have pegged anise as an especially Turkish flavor, but we'll see.
On the way out I grabbed a little bag of Peruvian Apricot, dried apricots stuffed with coconut/rum ganache and then chocolate-coated.

The final stop on my increasingly expensive journey was the Ganache Patisserie, another place I found through online reviews. I need to stop reading those.
I picked up two little cakes, the Rose et Pamplemousse (vanilla-grapefruit parfait, apricot financier, rose crème brûlée, strawberry-rhubarb gelée), and the Chocolat Sichuan Poire (dark chocolate espresso mousse, vanilla Szechuan pepper parfait, gingersnap crumble, buckwheat honey pears). The latter intrigued me from the first with its pepper and honey pears, while the former was just the cutest second choice and the rose creme brulee sounded pretty interesting.

As a note on prices, the gelato was much cheaper than I expected. Curse you, Vancouver, for not being within walking distance from my home! The Chocoatl place was more pricey than I thought it'd be, and Ganache met my expectations pretty much to the dollar.

And that's all for now. I won't eat any of the stuff I brought home today because I'm too full from the gelato and hot chocolate, but eventually I'll get around to trying it all.

Oh, and my overseas stint might be extended. Might not. I heard about the possibility from completely unofficial sources a couple of months ago, and today from somewhat more official ones, but unofficially. Might or might not happen.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
09:32 p.m.

Gelato-Mania

I've just returned from La Casa Gelato.

Oh yeah!

Ok, so the "over 200 flavors" can mostly be explained by flavor combinations, like chocolate/something else, fruit/fruit, fruit/alcohol, and a billion different flavors of chocolate.
I might be off with my math a little.

But I did have generous tastes of their more unusual offerings, like the Pear Gorgonzola gelato. It wasn't horrifying, exactly; if you ignored the texture and the fact that it was freezing cold, it was just like eating some Gorgonzola with a pear puree, a good taste combination. I wasn't tempted to get a whole scoop, however.

Much nicer was the Basil Pernod. Sweet, herby and licorice-like; I wasn't familiar with Pernod liquor and had to look it up, and it does taste a bit like licorice, being made from star anise. But I didn't realize it was supposed to be alcoholic because frankly it didn't have that bite of alcohol.

It was much the same with the Cranberry Vodka and Long Island Tea Sorbettos. The flavors were fine, but you couldn't tell if they were actually made with alcohol.

I had some rarer fruit offerings like Dragonfruit (yay, seeds), and some classics like Bacio and Hazelnut, to decide on quality for myself. It was good, certainly better than most gelato-offering cafes of the neon-green Pistachio variety and any supermarket gelatos I've ever tried, but it didn't blow me out of the water. Now, Solferino for example does blow me out of the water.
Damn you for being so far away, Solferino!

I forgot to try Chocolate Fig, Red Bean&Rice and Corn. But that's ok, I will go back there; it's got flavors I can't get anywhere else, and I want to try many more.
Two I don't feel like tasting are the Garlic, simply because I'm not a fan, and the Apple Cheddar. Unlike the Pear Gorgonzola, it appeared to simply be Apple gelato with Cheddar shavings. Meh.

I finally settled on a 3-scoop of Spicy Mango, Chocolate Chili, and Akbar Mashti, a concoction of saffron and rosewater with whole pistachios in it, to cool me off.
And I needed it. The first two were spicy. I mean spicy. Not in a "Oh no, a pepper flake landed on my tongue, it's spicy" way, but in a "I recently came back from Korea, and trust me when I say this shit is spicy" way.

It's pretty cool today, it rained all day yesterday and this morning, and people are wearing jackets. And I walked down the street eating my scoops of frozen goodness, and I was warm. Very. very warm, and sniffling all the way.

Definitely going back there.

Monday, June 9, 2008
08:09 p.m.

Three Thousand Bucks a Day

Yes, you read that right.

This is how much is offered to civilian specialists like radiologists, surgeons and anesthesiologists to go on a deployment as contractors. According to one specialist who would've gone, had they not dilly-dallied with the dates.

He thought the pay was ridiculous, as in ridiculously high. I'm inclined to agree, given that they won't spend 10k on a sweet high-tech GlideScope for us to use, but are willing to drop 300k for one 3-month contract. That's not matching civvie salaries, it's not even doubling them; you're looking at tripling or more. I wonder if the specialists from other countries get such a sweet deal.

Re-acquisition of acute medicine clinical skills is progressing well. I no longer feel like a bumbling fool in the ER, although I still haven't seen much in the way of major trauma. But my old-vaguely-weak-people skills are returning quickly, and I'm developing shiny new crazed-drug-addict handling skills (thanks, downtown eastside!).

Was 3 for 3 in intubations today, an improvement over Day One in the OR where I managed to intubate the esophagus my first time out. But hey, at least I realized what I'd done, and the other 2 went off without a hitch.

One of the patients semi-woke during surgery. Well, not really woke, just sort of coughed and fought the tube a bit. The odd thing was that I was in charge of tracking the vitals, and nothing stirred just before it happened. Blood pressure and heart rate remained low and rock-steady, and usually increased heart rate (or breathing if they get to breathe on their own, which this one didn't) is an indication of distress.
Patient was quickly dosed with more meds, but relaxed faster than their normal onset so probably it was just a coughing spasm. The surgery was coming to an end and the paralyzing agent had mostly worn off, since we want them to start breathing on their own as soon as it's over. If they're not paralyzed they can cough.
What they can't do is lay down new memories. Ah, the joy of hypnotic agents; also the annoyance, as a freshly awake post-op patient will ask you if the surgery went well literally every 30 seconds, and will almost invariably claim that no doctor spoke to them post-op (both the surgeon and the anesthesiologist do).

I have researched several gelateries to try out. Today I went to BC Gelati, which has changed its name to Something-or-other Cafe. It is within close walking distance, and has amazingly good Pistachio. A nice light brown with obvious finely-ground nuts and a true to life flavor, none of that fake green nightmare. The Malaga is made with Marsala instead of rum, which unfortunately makes it too sweet and lacking the alcoholic bite. Pear, a flavor I was looking forward to, was sadly out of season.

Mondo Gelato comes most highly recommended, and I'm planning to make a daytrip of it on one of my off days. Licorice, Candied Chestnut, Rose and Rhubarb are on the must-try list, and since I have no freezer in my hotel room I shall just have to eat a lot of gelato at once.
Pity me.

La Casa Gelato seems to be a tourist attraction as well as a gelaterie, with 218 flavors available. The quality is not as good as Mondo's according to the reviews, but it's not bad either. They don't have a list, but I'm hoping for something spicy and/or really unusual; some reviews mention Dandelion. And Gorgonzola! Also a bit of a trip, just touching on the famed Downtown Eastside.

Am sad that esca and hubby are gone, for restaurant eating is far more fun with others.
Also sadly distressed that wine coolers made us too drunk for soju. Wine coolers!

Thursday, June 5, 2008
07:19 p.m.

Intubitate!

Arrived at the ER at midnight for the start of my overnight shift. Met the ER doc, changed into scrubs, looked around. It was relatively quiet.

Next thing I know, he summons me to the trauma bay. A middle-aged woman is on the middle stretcher, unconscious. I don't know the story, watch him do a neuro exam. Her reaction to a pain stimulus is puzzling.
Is she localizing? No. Withdrawing? Maybe?

It hits me. OMG, she's posturing!

I have never actually seen it before. Oh, I know what it is of course, and I've seen long-term neuro patients in the neuro ICU with contractures from it. But this was fresh, new posturing in a patient who came in only a while ago, stumbling and drunk, not quite coherent. She was bleeding by then of course, and was on a stretcher awaiting the CT when she went unconscious and was moved to the trauma bay.

I lifted her eyelids to see if she'd blown a pupil. She hadn't, but the right one was deviated; she was looking straight ahead with the left, off to the side with the right. She postured on the left.

"You're going to intubate?"
"No, you are. This is why you're here, right?"

Performance anxiety. My only intubations had thus far been done in the controlled setting of the OR, no icky secretions to obscure my view, no worries about a full stomach, no annoying faceshield that fogged up every time I exhaled.
I have never done a Rapid Sequence Induction in an ER setting.

There were a lot of secretions. I successfully suctioned them off, got a good view of the cords, got stuck passing the tube. They wanted a size larger than I'm used to for women. Oxygenated again, tried again, with the RT helping position the larynx for me.
Success!

Her CT showed bleeding on the right, with the beginning of a midline shift. She went to the OR with the neurosurgeons, to salvage what could be salvaged.

I spent the rest of the shift looking after chest pains. So did my staff. Chest Pain Night in Acute; Treatment was having Right Lower Quadrant Pain in Females Night.

Monday, June 2, 2008
08:38 p.m.

"You'll Make a Great Doctor"

First day in ER since, let's see, 2 years ago. And that was Peds ER, my last rotation, so acute geriatric medicine is even more remote.

I'm supposed to get trauma experience, but trauma's not made to order. If it comes in they'll call me, if it doesn't I'm seeing everyone else. And everyone else will certainly do much good for my general medical skills. It's been a while since I've seen serious congestive heart failure, strokes, seizures, hyponatremia, and elderly undifferentiated collapsing ladies.

But I've been out of ER for a long time, and went through the day with the family doc mindset, chatting to patients for a longer time than absolutely necessary to get the history, reassuring them frequently. It's not the most efficient way to operate in the ER and if we'd been swamped I'd have put us behind, but it was a slow day.

I introduce myself as a resident. My role is somewhat strange because when family docs work in ER, they work as ER docs, usually in smaller hospitals. I'm not staff, I'm technically being supervised and my name tag says "Clinical Fellow", but that's not right either.
So I call myself a resident, because that'll reassure the patients (at least it's a type of doctor!), but they won't wonder what's going on when the staff comes to question them. Today's staff at least trusted me enough not to repeat my physical exams.

One of my patients told me today that I'll make a good doctor :)

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
09:25 p.m.

"Stabbed through the Heart...

And I'm to Blame".

Another 11-hour day, but oh, so very different from yesterday.

The last 2 days of the trauma training course were all didactic presentations in PowerPoint format, 11 hours respectively, with yesterday's lectures running right through lunch. 11 hours of PowerPoint. 11 hours straight.

Ah, but today.

Today I repaired a beating heart.

We have moved into the hands-on phase of our training and started with the big guns. The wet lab.
Pigs look eerily like people when you focus on the chest and abdomen. They were under gas anesthesia and a vet tech was stationed at each animal, making sure they were in no distress. A vet was also present.
There simply is no way, not even with the best computer simulations, the best models available, to recreate the feel and reaction of real tissue, of a living body. The only thing better would be a human being, and, well, family doctors don't usually get to practice the kinds of skills they might need in a war zone on real patients before they deploy.

We started with the easy stuff, venous cut-downs and chest tubes. I've done both in a pig lab before, and put in a chest tube into a human patient once in a non-emergency situation. Today I did 2, quickly to simulate an emergency, and am grateful for the chance to practice this. I feel reasonably confident with them.

Then the trauma surgeon eviscerated the animal and had us practice damage control for bowel perforation, mesenteric bleeds, she showed us how to properly pack around the liver before transporting a patient to the surgery-enabled facilities. I have never done any of this before, most of the docs hadn't, and it was amazing.

Then we cracked the chest.
And saw the lung inflate and deflate, like pink tongues licking the steadily beating heart trapped inside the sheer membrane of the pericardium. I had done pericardiocentesis on a pig before, but it's kind of useless unless there is a tamponade, and normally of course there isn't. Not even in a wet lab.
There was today. The surgeon catherized the pericardium, filling the space with blue fluid. Blue fluid that I withdrew slowly through the long, long needle I threaded carefully under the ribcage and into the proper location. It was amazing.

Then she stabbed through the ventricle.

Arterial blood spurted out, soaking us. Not arterial. Ventricular. Under the highest pressure possible, right out of the pump.
And I fixed it. I stopped it, I put my finger over the hole and sutured it and it stopped bleeding, and it kept beating steadily. And kept beating, through 2 more stab-and-sutures.

Is this something I expect to fix in real life? I hope not, and truly expect not, because unless the injury happened right outside the hospital the patient would most likely bleed out on the scene.

But now I know what to do, and I didn't before. Now I'm confident in trying, and I wasn't before, would've probably stared in shock and horror if faced with something like that.

That's how it is over there. You try, you do procedures you'd never do incountry, general surgeons performing neurosurgery, family doctors stitching up guts and hearts, med techs doing crichs in the field. You do what you have to so your patient will live, you do what you've never done before.

But you do it because you're confident, not that you will save them every time, but that you will try, that you won't be paralyzed when confronted with a task far outside your normal scope of practice.
And days like today are what gets you there.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
09:40 p.m.

Sangria!

Ok, I'm a bit buzzed right now. We went to a wonderful seafood restaurant, and started ordering pitchers of Sangria. I don't know how much I drank, but I had at least one whole pitcher. Probably more.

The week is looking tough. Starts at 0730 and goes to 1800, and sometimes lectures run through lunch as well. That is because this trauma course is supposed to be 2 weeks long, so we're getting the condensed version.
I'm actually looking forward to the 3 weeks following the course when I'll be doing ER Acute shifts and airway management in the OR. Except for one overnight and a couple of afternoon-midnight ones, most of my shifts are of the 1000-1830 variety so I'll get to sleep in and do some running in the mornings.

The view from my little balcony is spectacular. I see the marina that's just a 10 min walk from the hotel, and further on the horizon are snow-capped mountains. My room has a king-sized bed, a fridge and microwave, and a nice work desk. Man, I love my room. And the front desk has a never-ending supply of apples, I love it when hotels do that.

I'm thinking of applying a good percentage of my per diem to full-leg and bikini line laser hair removal. Waxing annoys me.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
08:47 p.m.

Productive, Possibly Cancerous Day

I feel so productive.

And possibly poisoned.

I took Chibi to the vet for a check-up (diagnosis: she's old) and met my ferret sitter. I've decided to dispense with the boarding because, although they're really nice and play with her daily, at her age I'd rather she have her own stuff and constant access to outside the cage. I blocked off the walk-in closet where her cage is, so she has 24/7 access to that space as well as the ferret-proofed bathroom, and the rest of the bedroom when I'm there to supervise.
She now prefers to both sleep and drink outside the cage. Probably eat too, but the food is only in the cage.

Prior to that I cleaned the entire bloody apartment. Everything, bathrooms, kitchen, vacuum, swept, dusted, did laundry, sorted all the paperwork that was infesting my counter.

Picked up my cool Desert Warrior uniforms, and put them into individual baggies full of permethrin to soak for hours. Hooray, soaking in toxic chemicals!
Permethrin, I am informed, is not "currently" recognized a as human carcinogen. This makes me feel slightly better about those uniforms hanging in my bathroom right now, off-gassing.
I do have a headache, but that could be due to all the cleaning in relative heat. Ah, confounding variables.

Also, I was complaining about inadequate air circulation because my windows are all on the same side, and somehow I forgot that I have ceiling fans in all the rooms. Am I developing dementia, or just plain stupidity? Hmmm.

Excited about seeing esca and hubby so soon. Turns out they're coming to BC as well to see her folks, so we can hang out between my trauma shifts. Yay happy coincidences!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
07:21 p.m.

The Lake is Cold

Well, I'm back.

And in just over a week I'll be on my way west, where the weather is nice, and the hotel is nice and expensive and paid for by work.

My College is sending me frightening letters about having to notify them that I intend to change my practice. This is because I need a temporary license to practice in B.C. for the trauma training, all 20-odd days of it. And to get this license I had to ask my College to send a Certificate of Standing ("o hai, this doctor is not a serial killer as far as we know") to the B.C. College, and now they apparently think I'm moving to B.C.
If only.

I went to finally see the lake this past weekend. Really, it's mid-May and the damn lake is still frozen over. I'd be upset if this was my lake, but now I'm home and don't care about the lake or its frustrated locals.

Ugh. Endless over-40 medicals and long-term disability forms and pointless whining is over for now.
I was averaging 3 DREs (digital rectal exams) daily while over there. WTF were the other doctors doing? Every time I flipped to the previous physicals it said "deferred" for that part.
Seriously, you have to do them. If they develop prostate cancer and you've "deferred" the exam every single time, you don't have a leg to stand on in the inevitable malpractice suit. It's not like the guys even tried to refuse, so it's obvious the docs just didn't feel like doing it. I only skip it if the patient refuses, and I damn well document the refusal.

Blah.
I think the young woman with her pubic-area ingrown hairs took the cake. Ok, so she had ingrown hairs. Untreated for years, and because of the untreated chronic inflammation there was now permanent discoloration. Fine.
I told the idiot to just quit shaving for a while already, and prescribed a very mild steroid cream to settle everything down. She wanted a referral to derm, to treat the discoloration with lasers or whatever the hell they do. I'm sure there is some high-tech and expensive way to get rid of the blemishes.
I told her the army wouldn't pay for this treatment.
Oh the whining! But whyyyyyy? It's not a medical issue, it's purely cosmetic. Noooooo, it's all horribly infected and painful! Like hell it is. It crushes her emotionally when she has sex with her hubby! Good, the army does offer couples' counselling. Its not faaaaiiiiiir! No, I suppose not. It's also not fair that they won't pay for massage therapy or LASIK. Get over yourself and pay for your own spa work, for fuck's sake.

I'm not seeing patients again until I hit the trauma center. I bet those won't whine about their crotch hairs.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008
02:16 p.m.

Dubious Junkie Trauma

Last night, I dreamed.

I was in my office, interviewing yet another patient, when I saw the ambulance bay doors slam open and stretchers being brought in. The ambulance bay doors are in fact nowhere near my office, but hey, dreams.
I threw boring patient out and ran to the trauma bay. Or rather, little trauma rooms, because in my dream there were two, separated by long winding hallways.

One room contained my boss, who isn't here but who was our MASCAL leader on a previous exercise, so I suppose his dream-presence made sense. He was doing repetitive precordial thumps on a patient who was wide awake and sitting up.
Past him, another patient lay still and silent on a treatment bed. He could've been asleep, or comatose, or dead. No one working on him, and I didn't check him either.

I went on to the other room, which contained two junkies. It probably would've contained two soldiers, but thanks to checking out anti-drug posters online the faces of meth heads were apparently burned into my subconscious.

The male junkie seemed to be lacerated, and someone was working on him. He was twisting on his bed, but generally staying put.
The female was sitting quietly up in bed, unharmed at first glance. She was quiet but fully conscious.
I walked around her. She was wearing a hospital gown, open at the back. From flank to flank, extending across her lower back, a 2-3 inch thick strip of body wall was missing.
It was like a cut-away. It wasn't bleeding and I couldn't see her spine, but I did see intestines coiling inside, politely staying put.

I went back to the room with my boss, who was still thumping away on awake-and-conscious guy's chest. Possibly-comatose guy remained on his bed, untended.
We engaged in a long discussion on what kind of dressing would be best for my not quite eviscerated and unaccountably spineless patient. I believe I wanted nonstick Telfa and he wanted some kind of wet dressing.

Then I woke up.

Yeah.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
04:12 p.m.

Dreaming of Death

Yesterday I was taking a nap on the couch after work but before supper. I was mostly asleep, but it wasn't a deep sleep.
The pain started in my head, sharp and stabbing, and then my left arm went limp. I opened my eyes to realize that I had no vision in my left eye at all - and immediately snapped them shut again, recoiling from the sick realization that I was having a stroke. Wait it out, I thought to myself. You're mistaken, you're still half-asleep, if you just ignore it it'll go away and you'll be fine. I held still.

The pain stabbed its way into my left temple and down my face. It settled into my upper gums and grew and grew, until it burst. I woke up to the sensation of gushing blood filling my mouth, warm and metallic.

Fun, eh? I don't know exactly how asleep I was through this. When I "opened" my eyes and realized I was blind in the left one, I could see the chandelier in the living room of my parents' house instead of the ceiling of the room I was in. But the fear and my rationalizations felt real, like I was awake, although clearly not awake enough to tell myself the symptoms weren't making physiological sense.


Ah, but two nights ago I had a much better dream.
I dreamt that I killed the Bitch, the one whose fakery ended up with me being send here instead of on my course. I travelled home after work and went to her house, where I killed her with a single shot; I don't remember exactly where I shot her, or where I got the gun, or how I knew where she lived.
That wasn't the good part. No, the good part was that I also shot her fiance, who came home after I already killed her. I somehow knew he would come, and him I shot repeatedly. I remember standing over his body, shooting into his face.

I've never met him before and I don't have any reason to dislike him. In my dream I did this very deliberately, to make it look like he was the target and she merely collateral damage, wrong place wrong time.
I assume I dreamed about using a silencer.
And about disposing of evidence. There was a lot of stuff about that, but it evaporated quickly when I woke up.

The dream wasn't good because I shot some guy I didn't know, it was good because of the L&O-like nature of it. It was literally like dreaming in episode format. There was an announcement about the death(s), shock and some sadness among my colleagues at the clinic, an investigation during which I realized that my plan worked and that Bitch wasn't the focus. I remember talking to the cops and it was pretty relaxed, they just wanted the basics about when and where she worked, if she ever talked about anyone threatening her or her fiance.
I knew I wouldn't be caught.

I felt pretty accomplished and proud of my dream-self.

And this is what two weeks of anger combined with compulsive watching of police procedurals and reading of true-crime books will get you.

Sunday, April 27, 2008
03:00 p.m.

Post-Birthday

Wave escaped!
I turned her out today and stepped a little bit away to take pics of her trotting or cantering freely into the pasture, leaving the gate open because no other horses were nearby. Wave, however, had other plans.
She promptly went for the open gate and escaped to...ummm, the dirt road, where she slooowly walked around looking for grass.
Recaught, she did trot, but of course I was no longer in a good position to shoot.

And OMG, I finally went on a little trail ride with her yesterday! I tried one before, but the horse of the girl I was going with started freaking out and I abandoned the attempt. Wave will trail-ride, provided there's a calm lead horse for her to follow.
She was so good! Went through giant puddles without hesitation, didn't even blink when cars passed us. Only shivered in place when a bird burst out of the underbrush. She did slow and seem unsure whenever the lead horse, a very curious gelding, stopped to investigate things, but she was under control and even walked in the lead for a little while.
But man, when we turned to go back she had a beautiful walk. If only I could get her to walk forward like that in the arena.

For my birthday 3 barn friends took me to this place, where we had wonderful Martinis and wine and ordered lots of appetizers, since those are both huge and more interesting than the mains. I had the Bouillabaisse and the Brie, but we also ordered a couple of the Chevre dips that could have been meals by themselves. Man, total cheese overload!
And chocolate ravioli for dessert. How cool is that? They also gave me some vanilla bourbon gelato with a sparkler in it for the occasion, yay.

Hm, and I got a dressage book. They will not succeed in their vile underhanded attempts to turn me into a dressage rider!

Friday, April 25, 2008
09:06 a.m.

Wave and I Share a Birthday

Well, the same month, if not the day.

I am as of now no longer a nubile young 20something.

Although are 20somethings "nubile"? Or is that just for teens?

It's snowing. Again. Conveniently in time to cover the roads that have just barely cleared from last weekend's blizzard.
I'm driving home today.
Why does Nature hate me? Is it all my remarks about raping her for oil? About not bothering to recycle if she's going to be such a bitch to us? What is it?

I want cake.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
03:18 p.m.

"You Know It's Bad When You See the Docs Pushing"

I didn't even try to get my car out of its parking spot this morning. I knew I was stuck when I drove in there yesterday, and I was just happy I made it all the way to my accommodations.

I swear we had over 20cm of snow in the last 2 days, if not approaching 30cm. Another 5 to 10cm expected today. This base does not have its own snow removal and relies on the town, and therefore tends to be the last to get its roads done.
The main roads have now been cleared, although the snow won't let up. It's the parking lots and entrances/exits to them that are getting people stuck. I had already changed to summer tires in expectation of going on course and not needing my car for a month, so you can imagine the general inability of my poor Camry to dig itself out of this situation.

Further down south by the Saskatchewan border the accumulated snow is expected to reach 60cm.
We are, according to the weather reports, blaming Montana for this.
In any case, we 3 docs (a civvie contractor and an MO from Ottawa who was also royally fucked over by being send here) met in the mess in the morning and took the MO's rental to the clinic. Predictably it got stuck in the clinic parking lot, but it's a tiny car and therefore fairly easy to push around.
The med tech privates and corporals, arriving at the same time in various 4-wheel drive trucks, were highly amused to see 2 docs heaving at the itty bitty car while the third uselessly leaned on the gas pedal.

It's a funny story, but I'm not having fun. I'm depressed; laymen's depressed, not DSM-IV depressed, but still. My sleep cycle is completely fucked even though I don't even have internet in my room to blame. I go to my suite and fall asleep in front of the TV, then wake up in the late evening and read until the middle of the night. I wake up tired in the mornings. I don't go to the gym.
Just another army-induced self-destructive little pattern. It'll pass.

Friday, April 18, 2008
12:14 p.m.

Hopes Exist To Be Crushed

Or so I told my follow military doc, whose hopes are being crushed as we speak. Different situation, same shitstorm.

This is a lovely base. I'm staying in the hotel-like accommodations, a suite with living room and connecting corridor to bedroom, 60 channels of cable TV, daily maid service. As long rumored and now proven true, air bases also have the best messes. The clinic is very nice and very busy given their clinician shortage, and that makes the days go by quickly.
In other words I'd have been more than happy to come and work here at any other time of the year.

To be completely honest it would've been better for them to cancel my month overseas instead. Yes, I'd be pissed off and venting all over the place, but in the end that wouldn't affect my career progression at all. Going over there for a month is a little bonus, a kind of recce before the full deployment. Losing the course might end up delaying my planned residency and, provided I do lose that in 2010, quite possibly ending my career in the Forces.

I found an email from The Bitch herself, send to the clinic coordinator here after she went crying to her docs and got herself taken off this tasking. Mind you, she's been manipulating the system since she got here in the fall and she certainly knew what she was doing, and yet this is what she wrote:
"Hi there,
I have been taken off the tasking (as far as I understand anyway)."

As far as she understands, indeed. "Oh goodness, I think I might have been taken off that tasking. Oh my, I'm not even entirely sure, tee hee".
Bitch bitch bitch bitchbitchbitch!

The emergency shortage of doctors here, btw? It's because two docs went on mat/pat leave, not exactly acutely unforeseeable circumstances, and the last was send overseas! For a month just like I will be! And this was somehow green-lighted while they knew they would be losing the other two, thus leaving them with no doctors whatsoever. OH SUDDEN UNAVOIDABLE EMERGENCY!

This kind of mismanagement makes me want to punch things. The Forces is spouting all over the place about its much-improved doctor retention rates, but what they're not telling anyone is that the retention isn't happening at the GDMO (family doc) level. Yes, doctors are happy to stay - as long as they can specialize. Specialists get higher pay, work almost entirely civvie-side, and their deployments are planned far in advance. They are never jerked around like this and send all over the place on practically no notice.

Monday, April 7, 2008
08:21 p.m.

Food Tourism

Ah, the weirdness that is the food esca subjects me to, having already done various kimchis, squid jerky and silkworm pupae on previous trips.

So this wasn't actually strange at all, but we did Dessert Day, the Saturday when we went to Apgujeong-dong and ate sweets and cafe drinks. We had fig brick toast at one cafe, and then we came across the Haagen-Dazs cafe. Not Korean in the least, but freaking Canada doesn't have them, we don't even have a lousy HD franchise store.
You have have already read my whinings on this particular topic, so I'll spare you.

But the place had a twist on the Korean dessert of patbingsoo, shaved ice with sweet red bean and, usually, fruits or gummies or condensed milk. This was winebingsoo, with the beans replaced by Chilean red.
We also had the choco-macademia rolls. Pretty, pretty choco-macademia rolls. The Haagen-Dazs TV was advertising Panna Cotta Raspberry, but they didn't have that flavor :(

Incidentally, the first time we came to Apgujeong-dong it was in the morning, and the place was utterly dead. We wondered what the hell people were talking about when they told us to check it out, but it doesn't start getting interesting until the evening, with many cafes, soju bars, small galleries and nightclubs and painfully hip people everywhere. Apparently celebrities go there a lot.
That first time we called it Plastic Surgery Station, because there were clinics as far as the eye could see. esca told me that there's a saying in Korea, that you should have a little plastic surgery as basic common courtesy to your fellow man.

I finally had the dog stew! If I had to compare it with any other meat I'd say mutton, that kind of rich flavor. Certainly nothing like beef or pork, and not at all similar to "game" meats like bison or caribou either.

The barking dog as the server went out to make our dish was a nice touch. It was still barking when we left, most likely a pet of the restaurant owner.

We had seagull grill too. It was very good, definitely a dish I want to eat over and over again. Very dark meat, tasting somewhat like a richer, moister version of dark turkey meat. Mmmm, seagull.

We found a favorite neighborhood soju bar. We tried two others before settling here for good, and there are dried chewy fishes that are our favorite alcohol-snack. We have thus far tried lemon soju, our old standby, plum soju that I quite liked but esca did not, grape soju, peach soju and "yogurt" soju. The latter isn't so much actual yogurt as the exact flavor of those little Lotte "yogurt" drinks that I've never been convinced are actual yogurt, and the soju cocktail isn't milky at all.

Now for the really good shit: live octopus! I'm living out CSI: NY here.
The octopi in our neighborhood restaurant are fairly large, so they're cut up before serving. There are restaurants somewhere that have tiny octopi that are eaten whole.

Nonetheless, the diner is presented with a plate of wriggling, fighting tentacle pieces that cling to each other, the plate, the teeth, tongue and roof of the mouth. I insisted on ordering Coke, having been told that if they do get stuck, drinking Coke will get them to unstick; we did not need to test that theory.

Wooden chopsticks had to be used for the extra traction they allowed while fighting to get the tentacle bits off the plate. Held up with the chopsticks, the severed tentacles reached desperately for the heavens, inspiring quasi-horrified giggles.

None of my friends have food stories to beat that!

Thursday, April 3, 2008
07:55 p.m.

Templestay

We have returned from Templestay at Silleuksa Temple in Yeoju.

esca found the bestest monk in all of monkdom! He loved talking, we were told by the organizer that because there were only the two of us we wouldn't be able to do some of the activities, and that was fine with us. But the monk did it all, and more.

They took us to the nearby Mok-A museum, a museum of Buddhist sculpture, and gave us a private narrated tour. This was not in the Templestay program schedule. Once there, the son of the museum's owner invited the monks and ourselves to ginger tea in his beautiful house on the museum grounds.

We did the prayers - well, we followed along with the actions, stand, bow, kneel, bow to the ground, stand, bow, kneel...the constant movement is great for keeping you alert and warm when the service is at 0420. We saw a female monk at the morning service, but she wasn't with the two monks who took care of us.

The bestest monk in monkdom was an engineer and ex-Christian who at one point considered becoming a priest. His companion was a monk trainee who at times appeared exasperated with his (superior's? mentor's?) chattiness, especially when they had actual services to conduct. He kept glancing at his watch a lot.

We made paper lotus lanterns, lit them and walked around a sacred pagoda that may grant us a wish. We ate deliciously seasoned vegetarian meals, all of which had some version of caramelized roots. The monks arranged for a cultural guide to come and take us around the temple grounds, explaining the history of the region. They had tea with us, not only at the Mok-A museum but at the temple as well, 1 1/2 hours of conversation and three different teas and, towards the end, a lot of glancing at the watch from the trainee. Then, as if all that wasn't enough, they drove us to King Sejong's tomb after the official Templestay program was over and gave us another guided tour.

It was an incredible experience. I think the monks usually have visitors that are already Buddhists, or at least more knowledgeable in the religion, and perhaps they enjoyed talking to complete noobs who were there for the tourist aspect. Or at least talking with esca, who had to interpret everything for me. But we still managed to have long conversations about Buddhism, other religions (the bestest monk studies what I suppose is comparative religions), politics and why it's bad for religions to meddle with them. He told us we're not the types to seek enlightenment in this life at least, but gave us rules to follow to live a good life; there's always time for enlightenment later. He himself believes he's lived some thousand lives.

It's a beautiful religion, and if I was in the market for one I'd choose this. But I suppose I'll remain secular in this lifetime ^__^

I want to write more, about what he told us, more detailed impressions, but right now this rough regurgitation will do.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008
12:17 p.m.

San Francisco and Korea

San Francisco was fun. Not so much the conference, which was largely irrelevant to my practice, but I got to meet an internet friend. We went to Pier 39 to see the sea lions - I thought there'd be a couple of them out far on some rock, but you could practically spit on them - and to eat some delicious seafood that underscored how crappy my beloved Red Lobster is in comparison (I won't abandon you, Red Lobster!), and then we went drinking.
We couldn't drink at any bars because I'd neglected to bring along my passport, so we went to this chic, purple-lighted little place called Lime. They made delicious, really strong Mojitos, and "Irish coffee" that was mostly whisky and temporarily woke us up via the sheer burn of alcohol, rather than through the infusion of caffeine.

It was a lot of fun.

The next day I departed for Korea on my beloved Singapore Air. Their coach is indeed comparable to Air Canada's domestic Business Class, in fact is better, but to be fair I've never flown Air Canada Business internationally.

Today is my third day in Seoul, and still the effects of jetlag persist. We're waking up at 5am to aimlessly wander the neighborhood, where nothing is open at that time. We intend to correct this with a night of hard drinking and cute snackies at a soju bar that'll put us back on a proper vacation schedule of getting up closer to noon, but tomorrow we're doing our Buddhist temple stay and those damned monks wake you up at 3am to chant. Best to stay with this schedule until that's over.
Also probably best not to curse monks.

Today in our search for food places open for breakfast we found one that specialized in "hangover soup". There are lots of perfectly nice bakeries, especially a chain called Paris Baguette that have nicer baked goods than anything I've seen in Canada, but bread isn't food in Korea. Soups and stews are.
So hangover soup it was. esca asked what was in it, but was told that she wouldn't eat it if she knew. Color-wise it looked like liver, but the texture didn't match. Texture-wise it could've been fungus, but color was iffy and taste non-mushroomy.
We arrived at clotted blood through the process of elimination, and turned out to be correct. Some kind of Korean version of blood pudding. I had boring beef soup, but kept stealing bits of her blood; it was quite nice, and a good match to the spiciness of the soup.

I feel like such a food tourist this time around. In the near future there will be dog soup and seagull meat. Many delicious snacks from street vendors, my current and nostalgic favorite being firm rice cakes in a spicy sauce.
I have already tried sweet potato, squash, black rice and white rice gelato. This country rocks. White rice gelato is sooo good!

Have acquired relatively vast quantities of my favorite tea on earth, omija or "five taste" tea. It's supposed to be sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spicy; it is all that except spicy, although the salty phase lasts only a second when the tea hits the tongue.All about temples and early chanty mornings next time!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
12:40 p.m.

Missed My Flight

My fault. I'd gotten too used to domestic flights and their lax check-in times, and procrastinated instead of getting there early.

And because it's still Easter season as far as travel is concerned, all other flights to San Francisco were booked today, until I asked them to check Business Class.

Ok, so procrastination finally hit me in the pocket book. Hopefully I can pawn the ticket difference off on my medical association as educationally related, but I also get to experience Air Canada's Business Class at last. I do not expect it to compare to Singapore Air's, but I hope it will at least compare to their coach.

Also, airport lounges continue to rock. And because of my SNAFU, I get to experience this one for a couple of hours.

Monday, March 24, 2008
04:28 p.m.

Ready To Leave!

Well, almost.

But I dealt with paperwork organizing today, and that's what always holds up the rest of my house-cleaning. The apartment's small, cleaning it is a breeze but for the randomly scattered piles of papers to be looked through, dealt with and filed.
I temporarily lost my T4 slip, but semi-panicked rooting through the aforementioned piles turned it up. Tax stuff has been dropped off and will be picked up tomorrow, at which point I'll know how much of my RRSP's I have to use to avoid paying anything on my not-yet-taxed secondary income.
Also found my leave passes for San Fran and Korea. I technically have to carry them on me, but I thought I lost them a while ago.

Also did my annual bra shopping. The army will pay for four bras per fiscal year at no more than $40 each, double that if you're deployed. I got two sports ones and two regular ones. Yay free bras!

esca booked us an overnight stay at a Buddhist temple. The day there starts at 3am, what we'd call "oh-dark-stupid" in the military. I hope I don't fall back asleep during the chanting, that's probably considered rude.

In horsey news, this weekend I had two major breakthroughs: I cantered without stirrups, and did a flying lead change (with stirrups). Wave does auto changes with an experienced rider on her, but I was never secure or balanced enough at the canter to do it. The few times I tried, she dropped to a trot.
But yesterday there were just these two really fucked-up strides when I thought everything had fallen apart, and then she was cantering happily on. I surmise the fucked-up strides is what a lead change is supposed to feel like, since my friend said she did it really well.
The cantering without stirrups was also at the urging of a friend, who kept telling me that I'm secure and to trust my seat. I held onto the non-existent pommel of the dressage saddle as I asked her to canter, but within a couple of strides I just held the reins and rode. It was great, and (like everyone kept telling me) does actually feel easier than sitting the trot without stirrups. But it's also fast and scary!

I'm so ready to go now - ok, after I finish packing - but there's still work tomorrow. Or rather, there's still tying up loose ends tomorrow. My mental health screening to see if I'm really ok with deploying, follow-up with immunization lady, bra claim, conference claim, check up on the progress of that whole trauma training module...lots of running around, in other words. I will have only two workdays between vacation and my course, and a weekend between the course and trauma training, there's just not a lot of time left to get these things done.

I wonder if I'll have any time to color my hair.

Thursday, March 20, 2008
08:18 p.m.

Happiness!

I am so freakishly thrilled. Everything seems to be working out as planned: I have been confirmed on the dive medicine course that is a vital prerequisite for the Master's/residency program I hope to enter in 2010, and will be flying out a mere four days after returning from vacation. Following the course I will have a weekend at home, and then will fly my ass right out again for a month of intense trauma training, after which I have a couple of weeks to gather my shit together and depart for...the big hot A! Only for a month, but I hope to do a full deployment next year and will treat this as a sort of recce.
The deployment I hope to be on is now confirmed, since Parliament voted to extend our mission. I have been told, unofficially, that I will most likely go.

Yes, it's busy and I won't really be home until late summer, but that's the kind of thing I wanted when I joined. Good courses, good medical training, going overseas, not twiddling my thumbs in a field out in Nowheresville hoping to beat yesterday's record of two patients seen.

Everything is falling neatly into place. It's almost too perfect, I keep waiting for someone to yank the rug from under me and consign me forever to some kind of eternal field exercise instead.

Sunday, March 16, 2008
07:35 p.m.

Satellites and Field Lobsters

We made it back in very decent time yesterday. After some confusion about magazine counts, all was sorted out and we were cut loose to enjoy not being in the field and in each other's space.

I lived in the UMS (unit medical station), with its trauma stretchers and many panniers holding something occasionally useful. Nobody actually knows what's in which pannier, nor does it make any sense in terms of organ system, urgency, alphabet...it's just all mixed in randomly according to the list cranked out by a bunch of crazed monkeys in Ottawa. On a previous exercise I tried to rearrange at least the ones containing medication, so that I could find it without looking like an idiot, but the senior NCO yelled at me explained to me that it's important that all panniers across the country are stocked in the exact same way, so that a medic can be parachuted into any unit and be familiar with the layout.
So basically no one across the entire country knows what's in those things. Now I just take out the meds I'm most likely to need and put them all in a milk crate on my table, and almost never have to look through the panniers.

We brought a TV and satellite with us, and managed to have a few channels, as well as plenty of DVD's. There were frequent "medical resupply runs" into town as well.
It's a hard life, being a medic in the field.

Many of our medics went crazy from boredom and started crocheting blankets. The disease spread from the initial crochet-familiar medic (patient zero) to the rest of the female group, and they were impressively far along by the time the ex was done.
I remained immune, possibly because I didn't sleep amongst the diseased.

I managed to witness a life-fire assault assault on an objective (a yellow cardboard vehicle-thing). We were standing a bit down the road as a bunch of infanteers stormed out of the woods, shooting machine guns.
And I got to ride in an armored vehicle, sticking out of a hatch.

On Thursday we got lobster! I think it was a crayfish of some kind actually, but it came with melted garlic butter and was referred to as Field Lobster.
As in, "That was good lobster." "No it wasn't." "It was good Field Lobster."
You know what? It was good Field Lobster!

The night before the road move home we were supposed to stay in shacks, but the Reserves booked them already, and this is a tiny base without an abundance of available shacks. It's not even a base, it's a detachment. It normally has under 200 people, and we had nearly double that out on this exercise. The only place left was a big building referred to as the Shit Shack, due to the prior discovery therein of an ancient toilet containing an equally ancient turd. It had no running water.
So we medics decided to "stage out of" the base clinic, to which we had a key because that's where we went for shower/internet runs. We weren't authorized to sleep there and the MPs drove by a couple of times, but in the end they left us alone, and clinic hallways beat the Shit Shack hands-down. Plus we had three washrooms and a shower all to ourselves!

And that concludes my field time for a little while, I hope. If all goes well I should be field-less until fall, but "all" and its general wellness is currently very much up in the air.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
08:55 p.m.

Day After Tomorrow

The day after tomorrow, we get lobster and beer. And steak, but we've had steak already last week.
I dislike beer, but that's why I have Bailey's with me.

The day after the day after tomorrow, we break down camp and move into shacks for one night, the sooner to hit the road back home on Saturday morning.

So really it's only tomorrow to survive, long boring tomorrow, punctuated by breakfast, and lunch, and dinner.

Toe Guy's toes still look like shit. Or like baby aubergines, really.
He claimed to feel nothing when I touched them, so I brought out a big honking needle and poked him. Hard. I made him bleed.
Seriously, he feels nothing. No pinprick sensation, but he does feel deep pressure.
Poor dumb Toe guy.

Sunday, March 9, 2008
08:07 p.m.

Toe Guy

A week to go.

We've settled into a comfortable routine. As long as we're up and dressed by 0800, all is well with the world. Most of our nights are undisturbed; the field is a great time to catch up on sleep, unless you're attached to some crazy infantry company like some of our medics are. But those of us in camp are max relax.

Last night admittedly I was up from 0400 to 0600 ministering to some sad frostbites and assorted minor injuries. The frostbitten guy (known as Toe Guy) got taken off duty and out of the field, and is to be kept indoors.
I wasn't actually sure if his toes were black (necrosed) or purple (venostasis) until we rewarmed him and they started looking reassuringly purple. Poor Toe Guy. He'll be getting punished by his superiors for not wearing his winter boots; buddy went out in the normal combat boots, which were soaked right through when he limped into our medical tent.

Still, Toe Guy-like nighttime excitement aside, it's boring. We measure times by meals, dinner meaning we can watch a DVD and rack out. The time between lunch and dinner goes by the slowest. Curse you, endless early afternoon!

Thursday is supposed to be an R&R day in the nearly city. We medics may or may not be involved in this, and I hope we are. I don't really want to sit in camp and await drunken infanteers - if they're in the city, let them call 911 instead. Ideally I'd like to be drunk too.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
06:50 p.m.

Cold and Flat

It's cold and flat in the prairies.

Cold.

Flat.

Cold...

They just started heating the dining tent for today's dinner. Before that the food got cold before we could eat it, and our hands slowly froze as we ate our cold food. In the flat land. Cold, and flat.
Bacon gets cold the fastest, followed by pancakes. Potatoes keep heat longer, almost as long as eggs.
Beans and peas stay warm the longest.

I'll be having a shower soon. Yay after-hours access to the base clinic!

Monday, March 3, 2008
07:24 p.m.

I Bought a Jag!

Yes, truly, a real Jaguar.

Yes, of course it's a saddle. Jaguar makes them, and they make them expensive. Wave is now officially worth less than her tack.
I will definitely have to buy black stirrup leathers, I cringe every time I put the light brown ones on that saddle. I may or may not get a black bridle to match. I will be tempted to, I know that much.

The saddle makes it possible to really enjoy the canter, and to bend her around my inside leg at the canter when I notice she's bulging, rather than just to hang on and hope she doesn't spook. She did spook at some random noise today, and my position hardly shifted. Yay dressage saddles!

Tomorrow morning I'm off to the windswept flats of Saskatchewan, where the weather is in the -20's for now, but expected to improve. As far as the long-term forecast can be trusted, of course.
Which is to say not at all.

Last week's ex wasn't bad, just boring. The view was gorgeous: we were camped in the foothills of the Rockies, after all. Not something I can expect from the upcoming ex in Boring Flatland.

It's amazing how fast you move when it's time to go home. Reveille on Friday was 0600, and by 0613 (I checked my watch) I was dressed and had packed up my personal kit, including disassembling my sleeping cot. By 0740 we had torn down and packed up the entire medical facility, including its two trauma stations, all the medical panniers, the heater hoses and generators, and of course the 4-section mod tent with liners and flooring that housed it.
Nothing like the thought of a hot shower to motivate the troops. None of us had had one since we got to the field; it's a good thing God invented baby wipes.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
07:29 p.m.

Melting Warrior

Off tomorrow for some random small town 3 hours from here, for a week of "winter exercises". Great. We had biting -40C weather for longer than my delicate south-eastern Canadian self could handle, and now that we're well above freezing we're going to play in the snow melting slush.

Whine whine whine wet field exercise.

And rations on top of it all. Why rations? Rations are more expensive than a field kitchen, and cause constipation. I always buy a bunch of those Fruit Source bars when I know I'll be on rations.

Ah, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying a Jaguar dressage saddle for Wave. This saddle is black and therefore matches none of my current tack that I just finished expensively coordinating. I've ridden in it a couple of times and cringed inwardly at pretty black saddle with equally pretty yet inappropriate light brown stirrup leathers.
The leathers, at the very least, will have to match. I'll live with my beautiful Italian non-matching bridle until the tack shop has another sale and I peer-pressure myself into getting another one in black.

But in happy news, I can totally do the sitting trot in that saddle and Wave is relaxed and keeps her head down when I do it. She's even in the general vicinity of being on the bit, all without me doing anything with the reins to achieve a headset. She does it just from the seat alone, and in that saddle I can actually use it effectively.
My instructor did mention that the same could be achieved by riding without stirrups in my jumper saddle, but that's very uncomfortable for both of us, and scary if she spooks. This way will eventually achieve similar results at the expense of my wallet, not my bones. I will continue lessons mostly in the jumper saddle, and alternate saddles for practice. I might also pick up the occasional lesson from the dressage instructor who comes to the barn.

Yay for cross-training!

Thursday, February 21, 2008
06:44 p.m.

Sad...Happy...Sad

I'm sick.
I thought I'd managed to avoid the sickness carried by half the snotty kids I saw last weekend, but apparently I was wrong. Have been sick for two days now, and my chest and throat burns when I cough. I bought Cepacol lozenges with topical anesthetic, but they only help the throat pain. For my chest I've resorted to choking myself to prevent coughing fits.
Today I was getting chills alternating with hot sweats, in spite of the Advil. That was entertaining. And now I have a rash all over my torso. At least it's not itchy, most of these viral URTI-related rashes aren't.

I'd have given any patient in my situation excused duty for a day or two, but alas, there have been important meetings scheduled yesterday and today. The last one is tomorrow morning so I can at least escape by noon.

But! Today I got a package from the parents, filled with nice clothes and more of my favorite Lindt chili dark chocolate. Yay package! Especially cute is a fitted green shirt with a V-neck and lace over the V. Too cold to wear it right now.
Mom shops for bargains in stores that take samples after filing insurance claims, so when she's lucky she gets brand-name pieces at ridiculous prices. For example, I have a cashmere Neiman Marcus open sweater she got for under $20, and a whole lot of stuff from Talbot's. Sadly I'm not exactly sample size, so it takes some serious hunting to gather clothes for me.

Tried to go on a little trail ride today. My mare will follow another calm horse but resists going by herself.
Sadly, the horse I was going to follow was being a dork and kept spinning until my horse got nervous, so I abandoned the attempt and rode a bit in the arena. I'm getting better at the stirrup-less sitting trot!
But mare was either completely lazy or off, I couldn't tell. Tomorrow my instructor will take a look.

I want to eat ice cream and sleep.

Thursday, February 14, 2008
09:59 a.m.

I Don't Know, Could I?

Met with financial advisor yesterday about RRSPs, and we did the standard net worth/retirement planning thing since I haven't seen them since 2006.

If I continue working with the army for the full 25 years or more, my pension will probably be in the six figures, and whatever home I'd have would be paid off. I see retirement savings as a nice extra.

Finance guy crunches the numbers and asks me, "Could you live on $100k a year?"
OMG, could I? No, he wasn't kidding. For a second I considered freaking out and crying about my future poverty, but I was afraid he'd take me seriously.
Then again, when some doctors discuss installing retractable roofs for their seawater swimming pools in the context of "making ends meet", I suppose his question wasn't that crazy after all.

In other news, I might go to the 'Stan after all this year, just as a one-month relief. In order to do this I will have to start doing 2-3 ER shifts a week to get back into the trauma side of things. Yay residency maintenance of clinical skills!
I might lose my career course for this. I'm somewhat conflicted; I would give it up for a full tour no problem, but I didn't intend to do so for a short relief stint. I might be able to swing both, but the timings will be very hard to manage.

I can always pick up the course later, true. Probably not next year since I should be training for my own tour then, but the year after. Course runs every year.
But I want that course.
I also want to go over there, to see what it's like before next year comes, kind of as preparation.

Sunday, February 10, 2008
07:20 p.m.

Can't Wait

Yes!

Flights to San Francisco and Korea have been booked, and esca has already taken care of hotel reservations.

End of March will be Happy Fun Time in Places Warmer Than Here!

There's a possibility that we'll get to spend an overnight in a Buddhist temple. Korea has a program for spiritual (or in our case merely curious) tourists; I just hope it's not a summer-only program. We haven't done it before because there was so much else to see in Korea, but by this trip we'd already hit all the major tourist attractions in the country except for the DMZ, which doesn't really interest us.
So we'll be spending our time in Seoul, drinking, eating weird spicy food (dog! silkworm pupae! mysterious ocean goo!), relaxing, and maybe doing the temple thing.

But first I must survive the winter field exercises. Three weeks of them.

And sort out the ginormous fuck-up they managed create with my pay. Hey, my January pay slip shows my Jan pay and nearly all my 2007 pay as well! Clearly I make over a million a year, no idea how that escaped my notice.
Idiots. Tomorrow is serious memo time.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
03:00 p.m.

*Boggles*

Tax time is approaching, so I'm trying to sort through my stack of seemingly-random papers before my appointment with the financial advisor.

In doing so I learned that looking purely at gross earnings I made more in my moonlighting/secondary job this past year than the mean annual salary* of a veterinary assistant, preschool teacher, pharmacy technician, teacher's assistant, home health aide, just about any type of cook besides a chef, cashier, child care worker, ambulance driver, drycleaner, hotel clerk, and just about any traditional tipping profession.

Apart from the very occasional weekend, my secondary job consists of a 3-hour evening once a week, when I happen to be in town and not off on some tasking or course.

*US Bureau of Labor Stats, 2006 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

Sunday, February 3, 2008
03:58 p.m.

Snowy Ponies

The cold is breaking at last. It's up to -20C this weekend, and yesterday I was actually sweating at the barn while doing my chores. The always-dubious weather forecast teases me with predictions of above -10C temps midweek, but I'm not holding my breath.

Nevertheless, I shall bring my tack back to the barn and finally ride. My Hawaii vacation important medical conference was not approved due to on overload of taskings during that time, but I will be able to go to San Fran instead and go on to Korea from there. This will conveniently knock several hundred off my ticket, as the round-trip to San Fran will be reimbursed. Huzzah to well-scheduled conferences!

I was hoping to take a pic of my horsie running to me in desperation when I call her in for food the night. She hangs around with her "boyfriend", a Warmblood who's higher than she is in the pasture hierarchy and protects her, and they usually come together when either is called. But yesterday the lousy bitch knew I had my camera she was ignoring me and he came running over, so I took him in, figuring I'd go back out and call her again.

Of course when I was done putting him in his stall and came back out for her, she was standing at the gate, pawing in impatience. Truly the beast has something against photo-ops; the one and only time she took off on me was when I was trying to photograph her outside with her new saddle.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
10:58 a.m.

Lip Unicorn

It's 11am and -31C right now, -43C with windchill.

My car barely started this morning. It was plugged in of course, but the engine still made whiny high-pitched noises of protest. The wheel didn't want to turn either, and the little red exclamation point that my car manual tells me means "go to your service center now OMG" was lit the entire time, but it does that whenever it's ridiculously cold. Clearly my car is malingering.

Wave has a bit of a runny nose, no big deal in itself but it resulted in an inch-long icicle sticking straight out of her upper lip when I went to bring her in yesterday. Heh, lip-unicorn. Sad, pathetic lip-unicorn that ran straight to the gate as soon as she saw me.

I'm feeling a bit better about my work situation. It looks like I might see home for the second part of March after all, unless some unexpected tasking comes up. And I might get my educational leave too, if not to Hawaii then at least to San Francisco just before my Korea trip.
Sometimes this "on the bus, off the bus" army thing works in my favor. I just hope I stay off the bus for now.

The high for Saturday is supposed to be -19C. What balmy, longed-for weather!

Sunday, January 27, 2008
02:41 p.m.

Hell on Earth

Anti-hell? Hell frozen over?

Today I awoke to a lovely blizzard. Driving visibility was less than 100m, cut easily in half by the constant gusts of snow. Some people were driving around without their lights on, making them pretty damn invisible. I wish it were legal to drive idiots like that off the road, but I gather that it isn't in spite of their obvious deathwish. Plus they're all in SUVs that would probably crush my little Camry if I tried. Life just isn't fair.

I was forced to brave the road conditions because it's my morning to feed and turn out. Silly giant warmblood was silly about his blanket again; I wish I were mean enough to just throw him out without it. Then he appeared afraid to step onto the ground outside his stall because some snow had blown there. That horse has serious issues.
Wave was very, very displeased to be ridden. She usually just stands there in apparent resignation while I put the bridle on, but today she actually backed into her stall twice. She's never done that before. The arena was filled with wind-induced rattling of the fans and she was acting a bit spooky, but following my trainer's advice I kept hitting her with my inside leg to keep her attention on me every time she looked towards the noise and we ended up having quite a decent ride.

Temperature is -22C, -34C with windchill. We have an extreme windchill warning for tonight when it's expected to fall to -41C and it's supposed to stay like this all week, finally breaking by the weekend. I thank the powers that be that I don't have barn duty this week, and hope that it will be our last deep freeze this winter.
I have rescued my lovely tack from its storage locker and I'm keeping it home this week. I won't be riding in this weather anyways.

Ah, yes, I was pissed off all weekend about being jerked around by work. Basically after being pulled off my course I won't see home from the last week of Feb to the end of March. There will be some weekends for unpacking/repacking, but that's it. One of the exercises legitimately needs a doctor, but the other one does not and the medical coverage for the second part of March should be filled by the brigade doing the actual training, not by us just because we're conveniently located. My Hawaii trip most likely will not happen because of all this, but I hope to connect a trip to San Francisco with my already approved leave instead. Hawaii will just have to wait for the next fiscal year.

I'm currently just annoyed and resigned, having vented to all friends and random acquaintances who had the misfortune to cross my path over the past two days. Venting is good for the soul, I tell you. Being posted to a non-field unit would also be good for the soul.

Thursday, January 24, 2008
10:00 p.m.

Winter and How to Escape It

I bought my condo in the summer of 2006, with 5% down.

As of today, I have paid off half the principal on my mortgage. It will be paid off completely by early to mid-2010, a full year or more before the maturity date, and the bank will get as little interest out of me as possible.

In not-so-happy news, I was pulled off a career course in order to be available for winter taskings. I'm not crying over the course, I didn't want that one anyways, but being stuck with three separate taskings to podunk towns all over the northern prairies in winter is actually worse than death by PowerPoint. At least the course offered fairly cushy accommodations and an excellent mess.

To make myself feel better, or at least warmer, I'm considering going to the Big Island (Hawaii) for a conference in March. My previous conferences were all either pretty local or back east where I could also visit family and friends, but I think it's time to hit the big cushy ones. A colleague has been to Hawaii two years in a row now, and another went to the Bahamas. Screw the local shit, bring on the luau.

Sunday, January 20, 2008
07:36 p.m.

Spending Money

I have caved to barn peer pressure and bought the beast a new bridle. It is so soft and wonderful and matches the saddle and it's designed to have no pressure points on her face.
It was not on sale.
It cost $400.

I have also ordered a sheepskin halfpad and new paddock boots.

Every now and then I go on these shopping sprees. I don't know what sets them off and they don't affect my financial position, but I know my tack is worth more than I paid for the horse. Then again I was offered $10k for her, so perhaps horsey prices are just higher in the west. And in that case the horse is still worth more than her tack.
But not by much.

Friday, January 18, 2008
07:33 p.m.

End-of-Week Roundup

Bored at work. At least one of the other docs called in sick and they gave me her appointments, otherwise I'd literally be doing nothing all day.

It was -20C here in the morning, -14 by noon. I was on turnout today for the three horses, and the gigantic neurotic Warmblood is getting on my nerves. He's 17 hands and solid, and afraid of everything. You can't touch his ears when putting on his halter, he'll run backwards and bang his head. He seems terrified of his blanket, which is what gave me trouble this morning. I always move very slowly around him and let him smell the thing and pat him for a while and usually he's fine after that, but today he was spooking inside his stall, running from corner to corner.
Or rather trying to run, because it's a only stall after all and he's huge. But the prancing made me nervous enough to almost abandon the blanketing. Being stuck in a small space with a spooked 17 hand animal isn't for the faint of heart.

Wave, I can fling her blanket over her head while jumping up and down, she won't even bother to raise her head from her hay.

We uniformed docs are having a dessert potluck this evening. I made Tiramisu again, for it involves no baking. Pricey cheese, but no baking.

A friend is up from Ontario for a conference, we'll try to meet up this weekend. He's offered to fly out here before to meet me, and I strongly suspect that I'm the reason he chose this particular conference.

Monday, January 7, 2008
06:23 p.m.

Hi, Frozen North! Bye, Frozen North!

I arrived in the Land of Permafrost today to find a skeleton crew of 15 and no one expecting me. Turns out this was supposed to be a 24-hr notice-to-move tasking in case the jets came up from Cold Lake to do jetty things, which they didn't. And won't.
Somehow wires got crossed and instead of treating it as notice-to-move, which basically means continue as normal but have your shit packed and ready to go, I was simply send here to do, errr, nothing. A few interesting phone calls ensued and I was duly ordered to get my ass back home asap.

That'll be Wednesday because tomorrow's flight is full. They just extended my holiday! I have a patient population of 15!
Today I toured the town of Inuvik and saw the Igloo Church and the beginning of the ice road into Tuktoyaktuk. I wish we could take a trip there, but some guys just went yesterday so standing on the ice road will have to suffice for touristy purposes.

Oh, and it's not really night here during the almost 23 non-sunlight hours, it's more of a twilight that shades into night around 4pm.

No aurora and there'll probably be none because it's overcast and has been for weeks. Last really nice auraro was apparently seen in October.

In a possibly gut-disturbing aside, I forced myself to eat nearly 5lbs of tangerines and three large pomegranates yesterday because I thought I'd be gone the full 2 weeks. That, my friends, is a lot of fiber.

Sunday, January 6, 2008
12:04 p.m.

InuWHUT?

Yes, I'm flying to a little crappy town north of the Arctic Circle tomorrow morning, latitude of 68°N if you're interested. For two weeks, although I hope someone freezes and they let us come back earlier.
They're up to an hour of sunlight a day now, and by the time I'm scheduled to leave it'll be creeping up to almost 4 hours, woot!

The last guy who went up there in November averaged 2 patients a day. And since the patients are flight crew and I'm not a Flight Surgeon, they'll mostly be treated like pregnant women: plain Tylenol, plain Tylenol and more plain Tylenol. Anything else will automatically ground them and require me to contact the nearest Flight Surgeon to unground them.

The temperature with wind chill is currently in the negative mid-thirties Celsius. It is capable of going into the negative 50's in January.

The army has issued me a ridiculously warm winter parka ensemble that weighs almost as much as I do. I'm trying to decide if I really need it or if layering everything else I own might be enough, because I think everything else still manages to weigh less than the parka-thing.

**** edit ***

Ah, just spoke to someone who was born there. Today was the first day the sun came out. For 3 whole minutes, you guys!

Saturday, December 29, 2007
05:52 p.m.

Lalala Holidays

Xmas is over.

My technology has been upgraded once more. I now have a Sony photo printer that talks to my Sony camera, courtesy of esca and hubby. I have a long and fractious relationship with printers, but perhaps a photo printer will have a nicer personality.
I have alcohol too, both in normal and miniature format. The miniatures are staying behind with the rest of the collection, waiting until I 1. move someplace where they can be properly displayed, and 2. find a way to transport the collection safely.

I have 10 bars of my current favorite chocolate with me as well. It's Lindt's dark chocolate chilli, not the one with the chili/cherry filling. Just a dark chocolate bar with a beautiful, warm, spicy finish. I can't find it in Edmonton at all, once the filled one which is crap in comparison. Even in Toronto my dad could only find it in the actual Lindt store. Mmmm, spicy dark chocolate.

Hated SIL got a Celtic harp from the boy. She does not play the harp. She does not play any musical instrument. I'm not sure why she wanted one and IMO she may have tried a few lessons before settling on an expensive instrument she may or may not like, but then again my opinion wasn't requested. SIL has in the past blown through many potential hobbies, most abandoned while still in the "This seems kind of interesting" phase.

I'll be spending New Year's in Ottawa. Currently esca and I are hanging out at her house, drinking vodka coolers, reading and surfing. The previous week was taken up entirely with various eating-related engagements with family and friends, and it's nice to just do nothing. After all, we are on vacation.

I am bringing back two 500ml containers of kutia, my favorite poppyseed dessert. Before eating cream or milk is added to make it less dense, so it ends up being more than the 1L. I will hoard it in my freezer for months like I do every year, and eventually eat it and then crave it until next Xmas. Ah, poppyseed desserts. I could learn to make them. But I won't.

Oh yeah, we saw Sweeney Todd yesterday.
According to esca's hubby, she and I scared off half the theatre by laughing maniacally at all the blood, but he's wrong because I know I heard other people laughing. It's a wonderful movie experience that no one should deny themselves.

Saturday, December 22, 2007
09:20 p.m.

Flying Home

Finally en route, currently awaiting my flight in the Maple Leaf Lounge. I had to get a specific credit card and pay for an access card to get into this damn place, but it's so worth it. While the other coach passengers are scrunched into hard airport chairs or lined up at Starbuck's, I'm surfing the internet in my very own business cubicle, stuffing my face with cheese and liquor.

It's a night flight, so I intend to stay away from the cappuccino machine and load up on rum&coke and Bailey's to knock myself out. Maybe some hot chocolate too. Hot chocolate with Bailey's!

I wrapped all the gifts already. It was probably not the brightest idea because they're getting mildly squashed in my suitcases, and the packaging is so pretty! I bought large pillow-boxes, and many of the gifts managed to fit in them.

Can't wait to get home and see the tree. I have a tiny fake one, maybe a foot tall, that I put on my coffee table to make my apartment festive. I love real trees, and my parents always have a real one.
And I can't wait for the food, damn it. The wonderful traditional food that I refuse to learn how to make myself!

Friday, December 21, 2007
06:42 p.m.

Pre-Xmas Wrap-Up

Today was my last day of work; civvie clinic work, army vacation started last weekend, or really the weekend before that since the last week of "work" was composed almost entirely of semi-mandatory and mandatory parties.

Clinic work was mostly boring as usual, bunch of Paps and colds. A few unhappy pregnant girls, horrified at being pregnant - what? sex without protection can lead to what? - and seeking abortion. All appear to be safely within the clinic's termination timeframe by dates, confirmatory ultrasounds are pending.
One patient I'm actually worried about, an over-50 male with a 2-month history of change in bowel habits.
Patient: "Not constipation, but now I go 4 times a day when before it was once, and I feel like it's not all getting out."
Me: *uh-oh*
Patient: "Like, they're very thin."
Me: *oh no*
Patient: "And I've lost some weight, and I'm tired all the time."
Me: *noooooooo*
Patient: "Family history? Well, my uncle died of bowel cancer."
Me; *fuuuuuuuuck!*

Patient gets urgent referral to GI. It will probably end up being nothing and we'll all be happy, but he's just hitting so many red flags. Ugh, worrisome patients, making me worry before the holidays.


Had one last lesson before I fly home. 45 min of mostly walk, some trot at the end, working on getting her on the bit. I did lots of lateral bends with her outside of lessons, and today for the first time I was able to get her into a frame at the walk and actually keep her in it through the trot transition and for a full trot circle, yay!
Before she'd go into frame and then her head would pop up as soon as I asked for the trot. My initial problem with the transition was that, like most new riders, I'd ask and then lean back, grab onto the reins for dear life and yank on her face. Being a good lesson horse she'd still trot, but she'd take the bit in her teeth and brace herself to prevent getting hurt.
So then I began to overcompensate in the opposite direction - I'd ask for the trot, then throw the reins away. That way I wouldn't yank on her mouth and she was more willing to trot, but I also gave away any chance of maintaining contact and a frame.

My instructor is finally somewhat satisfied with my hands and my ability to keep them relatively soft and quiet, so I get to work on keeping contact through transitions. And it's hard work, because while Wave is now willing to drop her head onto the bit, she employs evasion method #2, slowing down. Forcing me to constantly squeeze with my legs and cluck like a demented chicken to keep her going.
But it's worth it at the end; her trot when she's relaxed and on the bit is actually very very smooth and comfortable, and I don't think I've really felt that before today.

Flying home tomorrow. Still not packed!

Sunday, December 9, 2007
09:48 p.m.

Technological Incompetence Strikes Again!

Aaaaaaaa! I failed to charge my handheld on time, and it died. It died, and with it my various passwords, my medical programs, the history of the special taskings I did at work that must be collected and bragged about in writing at the end of the year, my contact info, my various calendery reminders...

Could this have been avoided? Why yes, apart from charging it I could've bothered to sync it with my new laptop, thus storing all my info safely. But that would have required loading the program onto my laptop, and then syncing, and, ummm, that's it.

*headdesk*

I have been working to recover my passwords. I recovered all the ones I remember having had (thank you, "Forgot your password?" function), but the list is shorter than before. Only I don't remember what those extra passwords were for! I had more passwords, why did I have them!?!

I am currently eating Brazil nuts to make myself feel better. They're actually incredibly fatty. Mmmm, fatty.

Thursday, December 6, 2007
02:01 p.m.

Happy Money Matters

Sometimes, just for kicks, I play around with those online Retirement Calculator things.

Factoring in my pension, they tend to come up with advice such as "Amount you still need to save: -$25,800".
I don't know why any doc would leave this work. Sure, it can be annoying and you have to look elsewhere to keep your clinical skills current, and being away from home almost 50% of the year sucks ass, but that last part gets better as you gain rank. Or at least the places where you spend your time away get much better.

But what other job allows you to retire fully with a 6-figure income before you hit age 50?

Edmonton finally got a post living differential (PLD), some money every month meant to level the difference in cost of living across the country. Ours is a bit over $200, which isn't bad. And Toronto's got cut a touch, about time - at the highest rank and deending on exact area, they were getting $1400. I'm sorry, that's not a PLD, that's your fucking rent.
Then again maybe I shouldn't rock the boat. If my residency plans work out, chances are excellent that I'll end up in Toronto after a stint on one of the coasts.

Thursday, November 29, 2007
05:26 p.m.

On The Bus, Off The Bus

About 36 hours, I got the message that I will be deploying to Afghanistan in mid-January.

I immediately put myself on the 9mm range and in for the gas hut. 9mm range is not the funnest thing one could be doing in -25C weather, frozen metal grasped by gloves that had to be thin enough to perform the weapon drills. My toes still have that deep, unpleasant ache of near-frostbite.

I won't even discuss the gas hut. At least the decontamination drill was "dry", because otherwise I'd have whatever soap solution they use in the training decon kit frozen to my face.

But some minor paperwork aside, my readiness level was high and so was my excitement. A full tour, with people I know, without the overly long and often pointless work-up training. I was wondering if my Xmas vacation would be cancelled so I could somehow fit in the trauma training.

An hour ago I was told to stand down. The position was already staffed and had been since the fall, offering it had been someone's oversight.

On the bus, off the bus. I'm disappointed but hardly surprised; there's a reason my family and friends weren't informed of the sudden deployment. Don't make plans until you have the message in writing, and don't believe you're going until the plane takes off.
Still on for 2009!

Monday, November 26, 2007
07:14 p.m.

30 Days of Night

You think I'm talking about the movie based on the graphic novel.

You're wrong.

I'm talking about Canada's northernmost town, located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, just 100 km from the Arctic Ocean. It too experiences 30 days of night, mostly in December, as well as 56 days of continuous sunlight in the summer. Its touristy claim to fame, besides its insane location, is a building called the Igloo Church. It is not an actual igloo.

Its coldest temperatures reach -56C (-68.8F), and the coldest month in January.

And guess who was just chosen for a January tasking there. Just guess.

Saturday, November 24, 2007
06:39 p.m.

Lifestyle Upgrade

Hmmm. My grocery bills have risen quite sharply since I decided to quit worrying about budgeting - mom taught me well, and it served me during my schooling years - and just buy whatever the hell I want. Goodbye to whatever wholegrain bread happened to be on sale, bulk marble cheese, Philly cream cheese spreads, squeeze-tube honey, nut mixes with "50% cashews", and 100% frozen orange juice from concentrate. Hello artisanal breads, Romano Pecorino cheese, fancy tomato&chili gnocchi, star anise honey, fresh figs, sorbetto, Macadamia nut spread, raw Brazil nuts, and 100% pomegranate and aronia juice. Food is exciting and filled with deliciousness!

The Italian market I finally visited today in our tiny Little Italy carries the only fresh figs in the city, as far as I've been able to determine. Mom gets them from the Asian grocery stores back east but none of the ones in Chinatown here carry them, hence my extensive search. Mmmmm, fresh figs ^__^

Also, Lindt's new Chili dark chocolate makes me happy. Although I'm still bitter that I can't get Haagen-Dazs' chili-laced Amazon Valley Chocolate here in Canada. Or its Caramelized Pear & Toasted Pecan, for that matter.

Monday, November 19, 2007
06:01 p.m.

Of Mice and Men

I have a little mouse.

It is tiny, and bright-eyed, and curious. It is grey with a long, delicate tail and fine twitching whiskers. It apparently hides under or inside my radiator, coming out at night when it thinks nobody's about.
I saw it last night for the first time, when I lay reading quietly on the couch with just a small lamp behind me. A movement caught my eye and then the mouse was perfectly still, straining in my direction, quivering its cute little ears.

I think the barn still has a sack of those strychnine-impregnated grain pellets we used to exterminate the prairie dogs.

Goodnight, tiny mousie.

Saturday, November 17, 2007
05:28 p.m.

The Future of Moviemaking

Saw Beowulf today.

It was pretty decent, with some spectacular effects. Fucked with the actual poem's storyline, of course, but I can overlook that in Hollywood movies.
But the decision to use all motion-capture and "paint in" the actors' faces seriously detracted from the film. The faces, although beautifully rendered - ok, beautifully rendered for the main characters, at least - still came across as terminally botox'd, the only moving parts being the ones that were meant to move for the scene, the speaking mouth, the brows drawn into a frown. So very different from real human expression.
The clothes looked too stiff pretty much across the board, especially the women's flowing robes.

It was fine for Angelina Jolie's character because she was a demon, and magical. It was, of course, more than fine for the monsters.
But using it on all human characters, even minor supporting players where one could tell the details were not so lovingly rendered, was distracting as all hell. I sometimes felt that I was watching a well-made cartoon instead of a movie with "live" actors.
The animals were horrendously done. The dog in the opening scenes, fighting with some guy over meat, moves in strange jerky motions that almost resemble a fast-forward effect. And I wanted to cry every time the horses galloped, and from behind their back legs just sort of lifted up and down and, errr, that was it. Poor fake horses.

In conclusion, the future of moviemaking is...in the future. Because judging from this movie it certainly ain't now.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
05:58 p.m.

Car's Dead

I killed my car.

Well, I came back home to find my car dead, making a kind of depressed "trrr-trrr-trrr-trrr" sound when I tried to start it. Dad thinks I must've left something on and the battery drained, which is plausible since I was in a rush and angry at my cab being late, and moved the car to another parking spot just before I left. Of course I fiddled with the knobs when it wouldn't start, so it's too late to figure out what it was that I left on.

Still, it means I don't get to see Wave today, booo. I had an apple for her and everything!

Home sweet home. The lady who lived here and took care of Chibi while I was away made up a lot of complicated games for her, games involving boxes and pens. Games that now litter my bedroom. Apparently she was researching ferrets online to find how they like to play.
She called today to see how Chibi was doing, and to tell me which games she likes best, and to say she misses the creature. Clearly the poor woman has snapped somehow.

Also, there's a gelato place in Toronto that mocks me. It serves the best gelato I've had the pleasure of tasting, all made on-site from scratch with fresh ingredients; for example, the pistachio is made out of toasted and ground nuts, not the scary bright-green...stuff that many other gelateries offer. It has new temporary flavours every time I go there, which is every time I'm in the neighborhood. This time of course there was pumpkin gelato, in honor of the season.
So Shell notifies me of the new flavour even before I fly out east, we make plans to meet, and I threaten her with pointy death if the pumpkin should no longer be available by the time I can get there. Yesterday we finally meet, run some errands, eat dinner, and head to the gelato place - to see that pumpkin is still on offer!

Unfortunately we see this through the window, the shop having closed inexplicably 3 hours early. There was a little notice saying as much on the door. It mocked my pain, knowing that I was flying back west early the next morning.

Seriously, I'm contemplating the logistics of having the owner ship some batches to me. They're a small operation, only one shop, but other places ship icecream to customers. Surely it can't be that cost-prohibitive.
I know he did chili-chocolate once, although I missed that one. I'd order that, and the pumpkin, and his amazing avocado, and saffron, cranberry, lulo, champagne - holy fuck, I want them all! I seriously need to find out if this would be feasible.
I let Shell live, so she may investigate this for me.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
09:37 p.m.

Hellomoto

I have a cellphone.

Ah, cellphone. I might've been the only doctor left in my province, nay, in all of Canada, without a cellphone. I was special and unreachable.

But then, woe and gnashing of teeth, esca and hubby arrived and brought me one. It's a CRZR from Telus, and I spent my precious time trying to load mp3's onto it by roundabout methods because my Mac isn't compatible with its sync software. Oh, it claims to be compatible on Mac's own website, and the computer recognizes the cell and happily tells me just what it is, but also claims to be incompatible with it. Lousy technology.

My sweet life of privacy is therefore over. Now people can reach me, and I can reach them. It's horrible.

In non-technological news, I've mapped out my career path in the military, including courses and deployment, up until the fall of 2010 when I hope to enter the Hyperbaric Medicine residency. It's currently in Texas, but apparently moving to Duke in North Carolina.
It's a good plan.
I have no doubt that it won't survive past the planning stage.

Thursday, November 1, 2007
07:08 p.m.

Getting Narked

Today in Dive Med we did our pressure tolerance test, a 100 ft (30 m) simulated dive in the chamber. Before that, we saw a video of one of the staff going through the same dive, laughing his head off.

Sadly, apparently none of us are as susceptible to nitrogen narcosis as he is. I was really looking forward to the uncontrolled laughter, but what I experienced was mostly a feeling of lightheadedness. The chamber grew quite warm as we "dove", but they vented the hot air. There were voice changes too, kind of like your voice sounds on helium, except that we were breathing air; the change came from compression of the vocal cords.

The course is quite enjoyable. My future plans are slowly becoming less murky, and I think that after my deployment I'll end up doing the Hyperbaric Medicine residency in the US, a combined Master's of Public Health and Hyperbaric 2-year program. I'm also aiming for the Aerospace Medicine residency, but probably much further in the future, with the eventual goal of setting myself up as an environmental/operational medicine consultant. Maybe I'l even get to go to London to study NBC defense.
Eventually. There's still deployment, and at least a year of the administrative horror of being a Base or Brigade Surgeon in my nearer future. But it's nice to have something to aim for.

Aha, and today I ran 7km, wheee! I'm aiming for 10km by the end of the year.

And tomorrow I see esca and escahubby, and we will drink soju!

Saturday, October 27, 2007
03:36 p.m.

Sweet Civilization

Back in civilization! Sweet sweet civilization, with its real-internet, its TV, its couch...its lack of people I'm fond of but was getting ready to strangle in their sleep.

It's amazing how living with people in cramped quarters, working with them 7 days a week in the same office, eating every meal with them and sharing a bathroom can drive you mildly loopy.
My colleagues are perfectly nice people, we happen to share a similar dark and often medically-related sense of humor, and overall I believe we kept each other's spirits up during the last two months. But sometimes I swear it was like sharing an office (and its only computer) with my younger brother. The urge to slap them violently upside the head became almost overwhelming, and I'm sure they felt the same.

A little alone-time goes such a long, long way.

Still, at least we all still like each other, occasional frictions notwithstanding. It'd suck if we didn't manage to get along, and now I understand why we get so many fake medical and psych problems on these exercises - people who just can't tolerate their fellow troops 24/7 are looking to get the fuck out of that situation and get back home.
And sadly, making up fake medical issues isn't the way to go about it. If you're going to be a soldier, you have to be prepared to deploy and live in close quarters with people who aren't necessarily your bestest buddies. You don't get to choose your section or your company, and if you can't handle it you should look into other career options.

Ah well, tomorrow morning I fly out east, for my hard-won course and visits with family and friends.

Thursday, October 25, 2007
11:26 a.m.

This is Your Brain on Trauma...Maybe

"Don't worry about my fucking name!"

The medic on the other end of the phone was, to put it mildly, rattled. We received the 9-liner CASEVAC message initially as a possible concussion with an ETA of 30 min; I finished my run, took my shower and strolled over to the clinic.
The follow-up call was almost frantic, swearing, yelling in the background. The patient was posturing!

Posturing, in the context of a head trauma, tends to indicate severe brain injury and increased intracranial pressure, quite possibly the beginning of brain herniation/coning - this is where your brain decides to vacate its cranial vault and take a stroll into the spinal canal.

The patient comes in. I take the report from the medic; posturing of the left side, pupils unreactive, "steady deterioration".
I start the trauma survey on...a completely alert and oriented patient, with what appears to be a muscular spasm of the left hand, complaining of headache and neck pain.
The mechanism of injury isn't enough to crack a spine, but would be adequate for a concussion. His pupils react just fine once the light is dimmed and they're allowed to dilate in the first place. He has tingling of both upper extremities, probably brought on by the panic-related hyperventilation in response to his apparent imminent braindeath.

I did take him for XR because of the tingling, but it had resolved by the time we got to the hospital, as did his panicky breathing. He was fine, a relatively minor concussion and the scare of his life, mirrored this morning by his chain of command after he missed a timing and failed to answer his phone.
I have him an OTC muscle relaxant last night, and he slept thought the noise. Humorous, really; his boss seemed to think I was a bit cavalier by not keeping him under observation all night long, and I'm sure he at least partly suspected that he'd be found dead in his room.

Meanwhile, in another part of the base...
"We received reports...the Malik of Rawanay was killed?"
"This wasn't scripted! Was it scripted?"

The pre-deployment training for Afghanistan doesn't consist purely of battle training. It's a complex set-up consisting of the fake KAF, as well as the fake PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team, a civil-military partnership) site and many fake FOBs (Forward Operating Bases). IED strikes and assaults of various scale do take place, but an integral part of gameplay is making diplomatic contacts with the "locals".