Last Days in Salluit

It is Tuesday night, just got home from my walk and realized that I need to do a final blog as I leave Thursday morning.

Rather than go on and on, I thought I would list some of my favorite things about Salluit:

The smiling Inuit people of the arctic.

Interprofessional health care.

My sweet apartment with the view of the mountains.

Making Kamiq.

Potlucks.

My father's arctic parka.

Huskies.

The extreme weather.

My laptop.

The mouintains and the Hudson Strait.


Here is what I am looking forward to having again.

Alex, Claire, Sam, Ed, Hector and Joey.

Hockey.

Wine.

My friends.

My kitchen.

My pillow.


Thank you Salluit for giving me this adventure, I look forward to seeing you in the spring.

Making Kamituinaq

A couple of times a year the elder women teach the younger women how to make kamituiaq or kamiq for short. These are the boots made out of seal skin or caribou skin and their fur. The men and children are not invited to this teaching and it takes place over a number of weeks.

I was invited to go and watch with my friend Kelly and they let me take some pictures.

The men hunt the seal and prepare them for the women who either dry the skins with the fur on or take the fur off and the inner layer of fat off. They dry these skins also it is time to sew the pieces together they chew on the leather to make it soft.

There was a big bucket of raw seal in the room for when the women got hungry and sometimes they ate it with bread.

The women use a traditional knife to skin and cut the seal but I can't remember it's name. They sharpen it often with a bigger knife and don't even need to watch what they are doing. It is very sharp and they always have a box of bandaids available.

The smell in the room was very strong.

Kelly was very brave and ate three pieces of raw seal but I wasn't so brave.

It was very special to be invited to watch.

This time is an important time for the women and for teaching.

NASA calls Salluit

I forget to mention that the International Space Station called Salluit last week. The elementary school was chosen by NASA for a phone call from space. It was a very big event and the community was very proud. We all went to the school at 8 in the morning and waited while mission control in California called and got everything set up. There were a couple of NASA type people from Ottawa there choreographing everything including showing a couple of videos ahead of time, sound checks etc.

The children had obviously been preparing for a long time and had decorated the entire school with various space related crafts and projects.

I think almost everyone from the village was in attendance.

Contact occurred around nine and 15 children had been chosen to ask their prepared questions. It was really cool and the astronaut gave us a live feed tour of the space station - floating about the entire time.

One interesting fact:It would take 2 minutes and 17 seconds to fly from Salluit to Montreal in the space station, that is how fast it is travelling.

Sunday Brunch

Was invited to Sunday Brunch at Kelly's apartment. In attendance were the nurses Kelly, Mirianne, Rene, and Andre Luc and the doctor Annie with 5 month old Maxime. We had a huge spread of smoothies, bacon omelette's, bannock, french cheeses, fruit, cinnamon buns, brownies, lattes - the best food I have eaten so far!

We all arrived in our pajamas - all flannel pj's.

After Andre Luc took me for a snowmobile ride up one of the trails through the mountains - terrifying and so much fun! Next week he says I will drive it myself.

Making friends here is similar to going away to camp. By necessity you spend alot of time together and become quite close - and then you say goodbye till the next session.

The Health Centre

Quiet week on the midwifery front - one call out to assess abdominal pain and saw some northern lights on the way back home at three in the morning.

The students practiced their iv techniques as you can see in the pics. Lucky for me they decided my veins were't good enough. Unlucky for Jonassee as he had nice big fat veins. Jonassee is the office manager and pretty much runs the health centre.

Got invited to go kite skiing this weekend with the nurses. We'll head out on the snowmobiles to the middle of the Hudson Straight where there is some good wind. Hopefully no polar bears.

Maggie is going to drop off an arctic char this weekend from her husband's fishing trip. Hopefully it will be cleaned and ready to throw in the oven.

Lab Monday

Today I had two students with me for the entire day. I am slowly figuring things out clinically. The students like to see me fail first and then help later. They seem to think it is funny. I am taking it as a good sign that they are starting to accept me.

After lunch I took a call from a mom, whose 4 month old was having a seizure. She put her baby into the hood of her coat, hopped on to her snowmobile and made their way down to the health centre pretty darn quick. I helped triage the baby whose temp was 41, heart rate 240, and clearly very uncomfortable. They recently had to medivac four babies to Montreal with meningitis so they were on pretty high alert for this little girl. So incredible watching the nurses and the doctor all working together as a team, blood work, an iv, O2 sats, antibiotics. One nurse was even giving the baby a cool sponge bath. They were all so sweet to the baby and so respectful to the mom. Seems by the end of the day they were happy with her and diagnosed a probable urinary tract infection, to be kept overnight and treated locally.

It was a good day and went by very quickly.

I will get some pics of the nurses and the doc soon.

Valentine's Day

Have not made it up the mountain yet. Instead went for a long walk in to the village for some provisions. $64.00 worth or provisions: bagels, pasta, cereal, milk, peas, ground beef, a movie, bag of chips.

Absolutely beautiful day here today, I think it is about -20, no wind, sunny. It is actually impressively sunny given that the sun never rises higher than about my shoulder.

Look out my window every night in hopes of hearing and seeing some northern lights, but nothing so far.