My last post was Tuesday, when I was worried about Wednesday, which now seems like a distant memory. Fortunately for me, only half of our patients showed up. This means that at the time of their appointments the little ones were not in any pain, otherwise they would have shown up. Unfortunately, the pain will most definitely return. By then a new dentist will be in town and will have to take care of it. Our day went as smoothly as it could considering we what we were doing. After we saw our patients it was time for me to shut the clinic down, which is quite a large task. Wednesday afternoon we headed over to the Gjoa Haven Airport to catch our little plane to Kugaaruk.
Kugaaruk
After a two hour flight we arrived in Kugaaruk, where Jackie was waiting for us from the hotel. Kugaaruk is very beautiful with pretty, snow covered rocky hills and still frozen water surrounding the town. The people are also very friendly, always saying hello when I walked by. I didn't get much time to enjoy the scenery before we arrived at the hotel though, dropped our bags and walked up to the health center where we had a small dental room. I spent a couple of hours there setting up for the next day, while Terry had gone back to the hotel to watch the very important hockey game. Since we were only there for one and a half days, Thursday was going to be a long thirteen hour day.
I arrived at the health center the next morning to meet the nurses, one of which I had already met at the Yellowknife airport. Her name is Aileen, she has been coming up North for the past 23 years and now lives in Cambridge Bay. There were only four nurses who were working for the health center, all on contract and coming up from the South. They are extremely busy dealing with everything from mental health issues to the flu. There are rarely doctors in these communities, so the nurses are nurse practitioners with extended duties, they are able to prescribe medications and preform a lot more tasks than they could in the South. You can imagine how hard it would be for them to return home and lose so much of their responsibilities, so many of them make a career coming up here.
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| The Health Center! The second floor is the nurses living quarters. |
I met my new translator/clerk, Bonnie. She was so much fun to work with! She has worked with Terry before, and she wasn't afraid to poke fun at him. She lovingly called him "Melbourne", not Dr Mebourne, just "Melbourne". I told her I thought it was hilarious that she was calling her boss, who is also a doctor, by simply his last name, as if they were old college buddies. She didn't seem to understand why I thought it was funny, which I found even more humorous. Bonnie and I had fun together when we didn't have patients, we learned about each other and asked questions about our different cultures. Before I knew it my thirteen hour day was already over.
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| Typical Street in Kugaaruk |
By the second day I was starting to realize that dental health was a little better in this community. Patients were keeping more of their teeth and we even had a few opportunities to do some cleanings. This made me very happy. Between patients I had Bonnie call a local artist to stop by. It was my mission to buy something locally made in each community. The artist was a younger woman who carves ivory into beautiful pieces of jewelry. Normally I would not buy something made from ivory, but up here I know that they respect the animals that they hunt and let nothing go to waste. I bought a seal pendant and some pretty earrings, I can't post a picture though, as Bonnie and I decided the earrings should be for my Mom. Mom already knows that I bought them for her, because I can't seem to keep a surprise to myself, but she has no idea what they look like. :)
After an exhausting two days, it was almost time for us to head out to the airport again. But after all of that I decided to treat myself to some pizza that the hotel was serving for lunch. I had two slices. Two slices that cost me $21.00!!! It was worth it though, my freeze dried food is barely edible anymore. The cost of food here is ridiculous. I bought a 1.5 L bottle of water for $8.00, and a can of soup for $5.00. It's a wonder how people can afford to live here.
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| Doggy I ran into while I was exploring before work. And no, I did not go up to pet him, as tempted as I was. |
Yellowknife
There was a minor complication with our flight. They were unable to land at the first stop, Gjoa Haven, due to bad weather so our flight was now overbooked and two people had to be kicked off. We waited for two hours before they could finally get two people to stay behind. Our supposed to be non-stop flight to Yellowknife then decided to try landing in Gjoa Haven to get people home. We landed safely, just before the fog rolled in again. I should mention that up here there is no radar landing, it is all done the old fashioned way, by eye, so weather is a major factor that can really ruin travel plans. Since the fog had just flown in, the second and last flight of the day was unable to land and pick up it's passengers. This caused for another two hours of waiting at the airport so those passengers could transfer to our plane. Eventually we were able to board and take off to Yellowknife.
We finally arrived in Yellowknife, for our one night stay. We only went down because there was nowhere to stay in any of the communities, I know this seems like a huge waste of money, but it was our only option. I was glad to have a fancy hotel for the night though, and Terry was glad to go to the Black Knight Pub for a beer. I got to my room with just five minutes to spare before room service closed. I had to make a quick decision of what to order, my eyes quickly scanned the menu to zero-in on a desert called "chocolate three ways" - perfect! It came to my room, in all of its chocolaty glory, with a sprig of mint, a fresh strawberry and strawberry sauce. Delicious!
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| View from my room at the Explorer Hotel. This is the hotel where Prince Will and Kate will be staying!! |
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| Heaven. |
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