Where are all the freaking MOOSE?

Ok, northern BC. I have a bone to pick with you. I have gone:

• from Coquitlam to Prince George
• from Prince George to Barkerville AND BACK
• from Prince George to Dawson Creek and back to PG and BACK to DC by different routes

I've seen two black bears and several deer but NOT ONE MOOSE. This is extremely upsetting. That is 2361 km of driving on buses and in trucks at various times of day. Why, moose? Why you gotta hide like that? I'm terribly worried that the first moose I'll see will be a dead one. I've been warned this is a possibility.

This is the ONLY moose I have seen so far.

This is his chum, the bison. There's a little museum here with a
 big thing for taxidermy

I ended up going home really quickly to see my wife this weekend (quickly as in only saw him quickly; it's a 6 hr bus ride each way, and I got there at 4 pm and left at 9:45 am the next morning, but it was much needed!) For some silly reason, they insisted on stopping in Mackenzie for a half hour lunch break. Subway must be doing really well out of this deal, because it is the only restaurant close to the Greyhound station (it might be the only restaurant in Mackenzie, as far as I can tell. I exaggerate, but not by much.) Wish I'd taken a picture so you could see how incongruous it looked! Anyway, here's Mackenzie:

As you can see, it's erm....well....not to mention....exactly. That pretty much sums it up.

And in case you don't understand entirely yet, below is Mackenzie's claim to fame: THE BIGGEST TREE CRUSHER IN THE WORLD!

Epic, I know. Do try to contain yourself. 

Below is just how all the hills look now that it's winter. Not the best photo, but you can see how they're all spotty.

So now I'm just going to squish in a bunch of photos of the area around Dawson Creek that I think are neat and that don't actually have much of a story behind them.

I just thought it was cool how we were driving above the
 treetops at least 50% of the time

There's a lot of old buildings mixed with new. These guys
were clearly using 100 year old barns in addition to their nice
new ones.

Your average DC sidewalk. This one is actually
reasonably flat.

Oh, northern accomodations.

The Dawson Creek Mall!

This Chinese food place is in EVERY small northern town.
Am too afraid to try to it find out what the appeal is.

Just a street in DC.

I really like this picture for no particular reason.
It was taken at 6:30 PM late September, and I was impressed
at how high the sun still was.

The view of Dawson from my preceptor's house.

A more viewful view from my preceptor's house.

Just pretty.

On the way up to the (very teeny) 'ski hill' *snicker*.

This is a really good picture of Dawson Creek coming from
Bear Mountain .I like how it's this little town surrounded by
 tons of farms.

The teeniest hospital (almost) ever.

Ok, as promised, time to talk about CHETWYND.

Chetwynd is this little bitty town about an hour and a half or so south of Dawson Creek. There are two RDs in DC, one of which does the inpatients, outpatients, and diabetes clinic. The other (who happens to be a fairly recent grad) is mainly a community dietitian who does a bit of outpatient counselling too.

Since my preceptor is just so nice, she decided last week I should go with the other RD just to see Chetwynd. The community RD goes about once every week or two to see outpatients or even to do home visits. She also goes to Tumbler Ridge, which is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous (sadly, no patients to see while I'm here. Sad panda.) So anyway, the RD, the occupational therapist, and I all climb into a Northern Health vehicle and go on our merry way to Chetwynd. The drive is beautiful:

When we finally got to Chetwynd, this was the 'main drag' of sorts. This should give you an idea of how little this town is.

Part of the highway and essentially main street.

 Below is this huge hill that sort of dominates the scenery. We had a patient who apparently hikes up there regularly but tries to avoid the resident cougar. The resident bear is considered less of a threat.

Apparently they have wood carving contests every year. Here are the few I took pictures of; naturally, I didn't realize there were a bunch further up, so I only got the sort of creepy ones. There was a fantastic one of a mermaid curled around a column and about a dozen others. Oh well, the massive praying mantis was still impressive?

And last but not least: the hospital!

Yes, that's all of it.

 Apparently they have about 7 long term care pts, and usually a handful in emerg. We talked to the kitchen lady (yes, that's singular, she had a sweet kitchen though), who said they had 13 at the moment which was considered quite a lot. There did seem to be some outpatient action: We only actually saw 3 patients (apparently they don't always all show up, so that was nice!). The RD and OT both do a lot of home visits, and we rode back to DC with a commode in the back seat. Good times.

This is where I first started to see that outpatient counselling is a lot about knowing where the resources are. You can't really tell people what to do: they don't hear or don't remember. All you can really do in most cases is introduce new ideas to them and hope something catches on, and provide support and lots of information that they can choose to or not to look over. I also sometimes forget how much of this is sort of engrained into us. If you're having trouble keeping track of calories or a weird reaction, of COURSE you'd do a food diary! What could possibly be more straightforward?

Then you ask someone for an example of a protein source and they say, 'Carrots!' Oh, right. Apparently I needed a little reminder that not everyone enjoys spending 90% of their time thinking about food.

Did I mention my preceptor brought me her own bike?

I think it's about time for an explanation of why Dawson Creek is so awesome.

The people here are so nice. SO NICE. Like, go wildly out of their way to make you feel welcome and awesome. 

To start?

Without my asking, my preceptor found me a place to stay. When I got to said place (the lady is a retired RD herself), turns out they weren't really planning on charging me rent, despite the fact that I was going to be here for 3 weeks. When I asked her about it (and she'd already been super flexible, since I got here a month early after a last minute schedule change), she waved her hands and said, 'We can talk about it later. You can be my guest!' And it never came up again.

Cue jaw drop. I really can't see that happening in the lower mainland. They treat me like their kid. I eat dinner with them every night (which is delicious!), they always ask about my day, they make mashed potatoes without milk for me, gave me an old pair of sunglasses when I said I love them, took me around town to see the farmer's market and other cool places, and the lady even came in today to tell me she washed my sheets and towels (I'd already done them this weekend, but whatevs!) They even put my bike away if the shed is locked and I can't get in.

The farmer's market was awesome. I got free tea and free fresh-roasted corn. I also bought a jar of crabapple butter, because let's face it, it's apple butter but BETTER.

Ze Swiss bakery

Dinosaur footprint!

We went to a pioneer village, but it was closed.
Up here, that doesn't mean you can't go in. It just
means you go peek in all the windows at no charge.

Which leads to how super nice my preceptor is. I mentioned I was going to see if I could borrow a bike from someone, and this weekend, she came by with her bike, bike lock, and helmet and said she'd pick it up in 2 weeks when I left, took me up to see the wicked cool windmills, and took me home with her to feed me dinner.

There's like 32 of these windmills all lining the top of a hill, maybe 100 m apart from each other. We went for a walk up to see them in the scorching sun; until today it's been 25-27 degrees Celcius everyday. It falls to about 2 degrees at night, the range is just bizarre, and yet when I go running at just over 0 you can't feel the cold. What everyone says about dry vs wet cold is totally true.

Being the only intern at a very small site has some serious perks, too. Today, my preceptor had a 3 hour meeting, and there was no point to my going. Did she give me set tasks? No. She basically said 'you have your own patients or you can help in the diabetes clinic. Go to.' True enough, I have 3 of my own patients already under way, and am doing chart reviews for 2 more which will also be mine. Most of my patients are in reasonably good shape (nothing too confusing for my first few), although I just had one go from a bit stubborn and totally with it to completely non-responsive and potentially palliative in under a week. I also slipped into the DEC for a bit just to help out since the actual RD was in said meeting. The diabetes nurse is fantastic, and asked me everything she'd normally ask the RD, always checking first that I was comfortable handling it. My preceptor, of course, has to sign my charting, but she just goes up later, checks it, and signs. It is partly to due with the fact that I know my way around a hospital, and partly due to the fact that she's supervised me a lot already with these guys and knows what's going on, but it's nice to be trusted :-)

That said, I did manage to tick off, annoy, or frazzle a unit clerk, a nurse, and the kitchen staff all in one day. The worst part? It was a totally legit reason to be mad in each case; I should have done something differently. At least now I know, and when I got home there was this lovely pooch to give me some love and furry cuddles:

Lola

Next time: CHETWYND. Also, the lovely husband of the lady who agreed to take me flies his own little plane, and wants to take me up maybe this weekend. Cool and a bit scary.

Dawson Creek and the Beginning of Clinical 1

Ok, so kind of seguing off of 'how we got to Prince George' and such for now, because I just finished my first week of clinical in Dawson Creek and that's rather foremost in my mind right now.

I luckily caught a Northern Health Connection to get up here, which is glorious because it's free if you have a work-related reason for going. Otherwise, it's $70 - each way. Ugh. Boyfriend isn't getting any visits until Thanksgiving where I've begged a free ride because it's in between placements. Unless you have a valid reason for travel, you're out of luck.

Here are some pictures, mostly from the bus. Forgive any blurriness, this is only maybe the 3rd camera I've ever even held.

I know this one is a bit blurry, but you can see the pretty backdrop.

This river went on forever. Guessing it's the
Peace River?

Lots of tall skinny trees the farther north you go.

We stopped at this little inn/restaurant/
gas station/rest stop on the way,
maybe 1/3 of the way to Dawson.  This
very small sign was across the street.

The fantastic view behind the rest stop.

Said multi-purpose rest stop. Lots of fishing
and hunting paraphernalia inside, and it
actually advertised 'Clean Washrooms'.
A claim to fame, apparently.

Hills and trees and the sleeve of my
stripey sweater.

So I got here about 4 hours ahead of schedule, since we only stopped at Windy Point and Chetwynd (which will be a whole other post since I went back to do some counselling at its THIRTEEN BED hospital.)

Here's a look at Dawson Creek Hospital, which was the first thing I saw:

The front of the hospital. (That little bit to the left is the Health Care Unit, part of it but a separate building.

The hospital from the back (where the action happens!)

 Lucky me, the hospital is only a 10 minute walk from where I'm staying. By lower mainland standards, it's teeny. Only 3 floors, with the first floor being mostly outpatient as well as the large psych ward, the second being inpatients, and the 3rd being admin. Upstairs they have maternity, surgical, and the medical unit, which is actually 75% people waiting for a bed in long term care. Downstairs as an education  room (mostly for diabetes, but other stuff too), a huge rehab area that is always empty, and all the usual ambulatory care/emerg stuff (oh, and also ICU right off of emerg. Weird). So far I've been in the DEC (diabetes education centre) and with the long term guys, doing lots of assessments and following some of the ones with poorly managed diabetes, poor appetites, all that good stuff. My precepor has been working here for 8 years, and been in this position for just over a year. It's busy, she does inpatients on Mondays (and Tuesday?), DEC Wed/Thurs, and LTC folks over in Rotary Manor on Fridays. Rotary is the nicest government subsidized care home I've ever seen. They even have resident cats, everyone has their own room, and it's done up like a home, very de-institutionalized. I would happily be old there. Outside everyone's room is a collection of pictures from their life, lost of wedding pictures, graduation photos, any cool stuff they've done.

Yeah. I'd live there.

The view from the manor.

I've started assessing a patient there whose blood sugars are pretty good, kidneys are still working, but he has chronic disease anemia so his hemoglobin is in the basement. Not much you can do about that, unfortunately. The whole place is surrounded by these gorgeous wheat fields, you can't actually see any other buildings. The picture is just of the home, there's also an independent living building and an assisted living building, which is great because if your spouse is worse off than you, you can still live close by and see them every day.

One of my patients was an older farmer type, who was heading towards 80 but was itching to get out of there to start harvesting. He was so active his diabetes was barely manifesting, staying at reasonably normal levels without him even trying. Then we'd get some slightly younger gentleman who still ate like he was in college (weiners and beans, anyone?) and whose blood sugar was, ahem, slightly higher. Also people coming from all over with gestational diabetes with a range from people who totally control it with diet to someone whose blood sugar was all over the map despite insulin and whose baby was almost a whole pound bigger than it should be (babies + high blood sugar is bad, folks.) More on Dawson and Chetwynd later!

How Awesome Craig's List Really Is

Right. How to rent an apartment without ever seeing it (or your landlord ever seeing you.)

Step 1: Good grammar. If your initial email looks like 'Hey i hurd u hav an apt 4 rent', your odds are slim. Use grammar and eloquence. ELOQUENCE. 

Step 2: Have really, really, ridiculously good references.

We actually really lucked out. Early in July (because I was all antsy and wanted this sorted asap), we found a few places on Craig's List and emailed them. The lucky part was that our first choice emailed us back right away, and even said she'd hold the place till September so long as we gave her a deposit and our references checked out. Naturally, our references hailed us to the skies, so we were in. Before signing a rental agreement (on the computer! Oh em gee, turns out there's this tablet thing that actually lets you sign something on the computer. Took about 20 tries to make it legible, but still awesome), our wonderful landlady even took a video tour and posted it on a private YouTube link just so we could see it. K is seriously awesome as landladies go.

I tend to have really good landlords. For an example of a bad one, this one's bad news:
The Landlord

Landlords here seem super nice though. I emailed another one before our place was settled, and she emailed me back to say they wanted someone ASAP but would keep me in mind in future. And then, she actually emailed me when something else came up. (The end must be near!) And so I emailed her yet again to say I already had a place, and she emailed me back to say thank you for letting me know. Vancouver, this isn't.

I asked our landlady how she ended up in PG since she's from the lower mainland herself. This is what she said:

'I decided to move because I was working full time (for my dad who is probably the worst employer on the planet) and doing the CGA program correspondence (which is hard enough as it is basically full time as well). Basically, was so stressed I was having breakdowns and panic attacks where I hyperventilated until I passed out. When my mom remarried she had moved to PG, so I wasn't totally alone. I moved in with her, continued with my studies and took a couple of months to look for a job in an public accounting firm. I am still with that same employer. I absolutely love my job.

 As for PG.....well the 8 months of winter suck a bit. But, it is a dry cold so sometimes it doesn't even feel as cold as Vancouver because you are not wet. It might be -40 but it will be clear and sunny 85% of the time so it is just gorgeous (the -40 only usually lasts a week or two, its usually between -10 to -20). The summers are good, lots of sun, averages between 24-30 degrees. Housing & property taxes are cheap, groceries are a bit more expensive because everything gets trucked in from Van. If the Enbridge pipeline goes in as proposed, there will be a lot of jobs popping up, I think the town will boom a bit. Downtown PG looks a bit rundown...but they have been fixing it up for the 2015 Winter Games. Lots of potholes because the cold winters with snow scrappers and then hot summers are murder for asphalt. The university here is new and pretty amazing, great sports facility on campus. There are never ending outdoor activities here, hiking, biking and swimming and lots of mountains, trails and lakes are a short drive away. Favourite summer activity around here is floating down the Nechako river in a tube. When its not -40 the snowboarding is awesome...even my brother who is the biggest PG hater had to admit that when I took him out when he was here visiting.

 I would have to say the number one downer for PG is the air quality. When you first get here you will think the town REALLY stinks....give it two months and you won't smell it anymore.'

May I just say, we've only smelled the pulp mill once for about five minutes since we moved 3 weeks ago.

Introducing, Mr PG!!