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!