I've started my two week selective surgery rotation in plastics. It was a hard transition from the ICU- which I really liked- I am much more of an internal medicine person than a surgery person. And I started my first day on service with 8 hours of clinic, which means I went from taking care of people on pressers and ventilators to looking at women's breast reconstructions. (Of course, most of their reconstructions were after masectomies from cancer so its all very noble and whatnot, but it just doesn't have the same feeling of excitement, you know?)

Now that I've been on-service for a few days, I've been liking it more. They round really RIDICULOUSLY early in the morning (6am on Wednesday Friday and 6:45 all the other days) but its only for two weeks so I can live with getting up early for a while. And I've gotten to see and do some cool stuff. Including:

- taking care of the burn patients in the ICU
- stitching together someone's hand after they sliced it open with a table saw
- stitching someone's hand after they punched a glass window (a surprisingly common injury- I've seen 5 in 3 days)
- popping open someone's blisters that had covered the entire surface of their feet (okay this was gross, but oddly satisfying)
- amputating someone's finger after it had become infected and necrotic (I only watched this one)

So, I did something a bit spontaneous over the weekend. Terry came down to Winnipeg on a medivac flight on Saturday night, and the flight nurse suggested that if I wanted to, I could come back on the flight with them for a visit.

So I did. This is me on the medivac flight up.

It was pretty much the most spontaneous trip ever. I left for the FRICKIN ARTIC wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a light-weight coat, with no other luggage. Not even a toothbrush. But you know, it was hugely exhilirating to be able to just take off and leave somewhere like that. I've always wanted to go on a trip completely spontaneously like that- Mexico was close- but this definitely fulfilled some sort of impulsive subconciousness that I have.

Anyway, Rankin Inlet was very different. It was pretty small- only 2000 people live there.
It was cold,but not too cold. Here is another landscape shot:
My pictures aren't great, because I was taking them with the camera on my palmpilot. Because, oh yeah, I had no luggage.

But everyone was very nice. We went over to the attending doctor's house for caribou dinner, and then I got to see the health centre the next day. Mostly we just hung out and watched movies.

The only slightly down-side to it was that I wasn't able to get a medivac flight back to Winnipeg, and so I had to pay for my flight back. Which was a bit expensive. Still, it was my chance to see the North. Good weekends had by all.

I looked into flying up to Rankin Inlet with aeroplan points, because lo-and-behold, CalmAir accepts them. And this is clearly the only way I was going to be able to travel up to Rankin- the cost for me to fly up- $2200.

So I called aeroplan today to reserve a flight- and immediately the lady on the other end was very sceptical about my request. "March 10th?" she said- "you KNOW that's Spring Break". When I politely tried to convince her that I didn't think Rankin Inlet was going to be the Spring Break destination that all the college kids were going to - she got all huffy and non-helpful. And then told me all the flights were booked.

Well that's just great.