This is for Joelle's comment that Calgary doesn't have any cows...or whatever it was that you said over facebook, Cheese.
Purple cow!
Bart Simpson cow.
Alberta landscape cow
HOLEY COW!!
It's not called cowtown for nuthin'.
I heart Alberta beef.
Kananaskis, I've come home.
I've really missed seeing the Rockies and yesterday's horseback adventure ride into the mountains was beautiful and so...adventurous. We ended up at an altitude of 4060 ft. It's never felt this good, cantering through alpine meadows and racing through forests when you don't know where the next tree branch is coming from (ok so the second was not so smart...). At one point my ribs hit straight into a branch - luckily the rotten wood gave way before I did. A punctured lung would not have been quite as much fun. My horse, Nebraska, got little too excited and started doing some hopping and bucking midway through one of our meadow races. Needless to say, we lost pretty badly. He went skittering again when he spooked at a piece of tarp that was blowing in the wind. Silly monkey. We also got a little soaking wet (a little? soaking wet?) splashing around in Three Points River. We got halfway across when some genius decided to flick some water around. I'll spare you the details but it got COLD. We all learned that being wet in mountain air was not so fun. We ran into a few bear tracks, but old ones (we hoped), hopped a few fallen logs...oh almost cracked my head open jumping over a log when I didn't see the other tree a bit above it. I'm never playing a game of follow-the-leader ever again. Although the other "leader" didn't do so well either. She led us through a bog as a "shortcut" where we ended up sinking in almost to the horse's belly. The mud and guck was so deep, our feet were grazing the ground. We were jokingly throwing around the idea of tying a rope to each horse and rider so that if one of us disappeared, we'd be able to pull them out. Don't know how feasible that would have been. All that fun comes with a price though. I was so sore this morning I could barely get out of bed. I was moving in slow motion all day because my muscles were screaming at all the hard riding I'd done the day before. Was it worth it? Definitely.
Breathtaking scenery, although Nevada was unsure about the hill we were standing on. He was asking me why I was walking him off a cliff...
One of the meadows we were racing through, pockmarked with gopher holes. The big tree on the far right was one of them I almost killed myself on. They just kind of pop out of nowhere...
My mother would kill me if she knew what I was up to.
Relaxing for lunch on a sunny hillside, after which we climbed the mountain in front of us.
A photo of accomplishment. We almost made it to the top of that mountain. Wish we'd packed some rock-climbing equipment!
Nevada's also taking in the great view.
Going down was twice as rough as going up. At one point it got so steep and slippery with so much shale that we had to get off and lead the horses down the trail. At the end, I felt like a nice hot tub and a good massage.
What a day...
Coming into Alberta. The crazy weather is partly due to the clouds that blow over the Rockies.
At Ken's place on Friday night. He has one of those sinks that looks like a glass bowl and sits on top of the bathroom counter. Such a nice place.
Their version of "24 heures" with a nicer Sudoku page. I think Billy would have the most appreciation for this.
Just messing around. Jon's trying to push us over and Mel's kinda looking a little confused...
Going out to horseback ride in the mountains tomorrow. Having a blast!
It's interesting to be back in cowtown again. There's not so much "cow" in the "town" anymore, nor is it even really a "town" anymore. It has grown a little more metropolitan. A little more diverse. There are mixed feelings. I feel like I've never left, like things are exactly the same. Yet, so much as happened that I feel like entire worlds have passed me by. I'm still trying to reconcile these paradoxical sentiments.
I think the thing I've missed most about Calgary are the people, how friendly they are. It's so comforting once again to be able to have a long conversation with a complete stranger in the drug store or, like on Thursday, with the owner of a jewelery store. I'd noticed that he was playing a Christian radio station (yes, they have those here) over the speakers in his store and we spent the next half hour talking about the Christian faith and what it meant to us. The bus drivers are so jolly and wish everyone a nice day. The sales clerks are genuinely friendly and make small talk about things other than whatever they're selling. Calgary is beautiful in its people.
I played beach volleyball in Millenium Park with a bunch of friends today, in a rainshower. Another unique feature of Calgary: living at the foot of the Rockies does things to the weather. It was hot and dry yesterday, desert weather. Then today sunny but cold, sweater weather. And a random cloud had decided to cover only the downtown area where we were playing volleyball so amidst a big blue sky the one dark cloud was raining on our game.
It feels so familiar to be sitting in small group with old friends yet so disconcerting to be caught up on the change that has taken place. The marriages and disappearances and breakups and makeups and all the drama that has gone on over the last four years. It's good to be walking downtown where the people are relaxed and laid back with a ready smile on their faces.
It's good to be back.
Barbeques (or as Selig says, “bee bee cues”) are the lifeblood of summer. Great weather, delicious food, good company, they are the epitome of what summer is. Such was the one last night with amazing fruit salad and sausages, sporatic games of basketball and badminton, satisfying conversations, random revelations and a lot of laughter. As the sun set and the citronella candles were coming out because the mosquitoes had started biting, I was getting ready to head home. Unexpectedly, my friend Angel told me that two of my guy friends, Posner and Amos, were taking me home; Amos was already jangling his car keys and heading toward the driveway. It wasn’t as much their chivalrous manner that made an impression on me but the simple act of kindness because I knew that they were heading right back to the BBQ.
Acts of kindness are interesting things. It’s like catching a glimpse of a rare bird in the deep forest. A flash of bright plumage, a gasp of wonder and it’s gone. It seems like they are a dying breed, as we watch on the news all the wars, bomb scares, school shootings, homicides, suicides, and petty court trials that are deep-seated in our culture. A culture that seems to be getting colder over the years. A gentle word, a brief touch, a kind action warms the heart in a powerful way. The love that fuels these acts of kindness, like a simple candle, does not diminish or extinguish by passing on its flame and indeed, as more candles are lighted, the world gets that much more luminous.
Light a candle today.
There are some summer days that are made for the picture frame.
Yesterday was one of those days. Not that we did anything exceptionally special. All we did was sit on a faded blue towel on the grassy waterfront in the Old Port in Montreal and have take-out lunch, joke around and strum some tunes on my guitar. We tanned, we made random comments, we watched the people biking, rollerblading, walking, listened to the teenagers behind us laughing and chasing each other with water. It was a combination of the sunny, cloudless day, idle ambiance and company of good friends that made it so golden.
Don't we chase after this in life sometimes? Or all the time? Isn't this what the American Dream is about? Being happy? I'm not going to write about something that's already been written about in Mikhail's Exospective. As my good friend so eloquently stated, "here is nothing and there is something". We can't make those Kodak moments last for longer than they do. We may forget about them a month, a week, or even a day after. I've discovered that happiness doesn't live here in this world we inhabit. It's not something that can be tasted or called upon but something that comes from elsewhere. And if we contend that heaven is imbued with happiness then we agree that we taste heaven when we are truly happy. So, then, I often find myself re-examining the priorities that our culture has impressed upon me and reject the way of thinking into which I've been assimilated.
Maybe we try too hard to find happiness in a place where it cannot be found. Maybe we need to start looking elsewhere and believing that it lies there.
Hospitals are kind of like washing machines. Everyone goes through the cycle sometime, some less frequent than others, all in hopes of coming out clean. Some are a quick in-and-out job, just a spin and dry cycle. Some get the whole works, the bleaching, the rinsing, the fabric softener. Some come out looking different than when they went in. A bleach mark here, a stretch mark there. And some of them get lost in the machine, never really making it out.
I wish it were as simple as that...but human lives are never really simple. There are too many factors to consider, many of them non-tangible. Psychological. Social. Spiritual. On this last day of internship at the Royal Vic, I reflect on the past six weeks with a fair amount of nostalgia because, even though losing patients has been hard, making a life-changing impact on a person's life resounds deeply within the human heart. Everything happens in hospitals. The mundane, the funny, the crazy, where people "get hearts" and "change kidneys"; birth, life, death. Some things take a long time to happen. Some things happen within the time it takes to blink an eye. I'm glad that I've confirmed my calling to myself. This is where I want to be.
Cute ER intern brought me coffee this morning. I never gave him my phone number.
Summer
begins
now.
ER is still utter mayhem.
Crazy-Vietnamese-lady on a stretcher in the hallway was screaming all day...in Vietnamese. Meanwhile, I was trying to ambulate not-so-small-Greek-lady. This Greek lady had come in for intractable left knee, hip and lower back pain and so I needed to get her to walk to determine if she needed to be admitted or if she could go home with some morphine and extra help from the CLSC. Then Greek lady started yelling because excruciating pain would shoot up her leg every time she bent it (bending legs is required in walking) so I was starting to go deaf. I put the lady back into her stretcher, which was not easy because of her not-so-small-ness, did the paperwork (recommending admission) and went to find some sanctity in a linen closet. Where I bumped into cute-ER-intern. He was also hiding from the zoo that was ER so we settled among the isolation gowns and washcloths to have a chat. Which is where uptight-Indian-nurse found us a few minutes later. And now she started on whatever Indian niceties were in her vocabulary. He went back to doing his new consult, I went back to doing mine. Who says the hospital isn't a multicultural experience?
On a more unfortunate tack, a girl was rushed to ER today with a subdural hematoma. Only 19 years old and had just given birth. Sometimes this happens. When the abdominal muscles are contracted, pressure increases in the veins. During contractions in labour the increase in blood pressure in the brain can burst a small blood vessel, causing a bleed, which accumulates and presses on the sensitive and soft brain tissue, damaging it. The CT head on her showed the hematoma to be cerebellar, where muscle movements are controlled in the brain. Muscle movements include those involved in respiration, heartbeat and gut function. Crash cart has been sitting beside her bed all day. Newborn's in neonatal care. I hope she lives.
Flight to Calgary: Thursday June 21st, 9:30 am
TBD road trip to Kelowna, Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam, Nanaimo, Tsawwassen, Salt Spring Island
Greyhound to Edmonton Sunday July 8th
Internship in Edmonton (Capital Care Norwood, Royal Alexandria Hospital): Monday July 9th - Friday August 17th
Post-internship relaxation (tentative): NY Sunday August 19th-Sunday August 26th. Puerto Rico Monday August 27th-Thursday August 30th
