The ship that was my home and office, CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, carried several rescue specialists who tend to the bumps, scrapes and sometimes more serious ailments of general shipboard life. For the Arctic patrol a medical officer was added – a healthcare practitioner with experience being the medical lone ranger.
In my case, swollen calves (mine, not bovine) led to visiting the ship’s medical officer. My simple self-diagnosis was that my malady stemmed from writer’s butt – lengthy sitting before a computer until blood no longer circulates to the brain (although, sadly, that sometimes produced my best work). Wrong! Apparently, besides simple edema, it could also be caused by a blood clot or heart failure – neither of which sounded appealing, nor suitably exotic.
This is where southern and Arctic medicine drastically diverges. The quickest way to rule out all the potentially-lethal causes (which could be really bad for the rest of my expedition) was to have a chest x-ray, ECG and ultrasound. No problem, just go next door and take a number – except that I wasn’t in the land of Starbucks any more.
Unfortunately for me (and everyone who lives in far north communities), Kugluktuk has the typical Arctic health centre, staffed by nurses, and equipped with a mix of old and new gadgetry. They could perform the ECG (machine was new, just out of the box), but not the x-ray (machine didn’t work), but the nearest ultrasound was a two-hour flight away in Yellowknife.
Now, is it just me, or is it actually ironic that in order to test for potentially-lethal blood clots in my legs, I had to sit in a cramped aircraft for nearly two hours? If the DVT didn’t kill me on the way to get the test and treatment, surely the airfare would. Everyone in the Arctic who needs more involved healthcare faces the same dilemma, because all the really cool equipment is somewhere south.
Upon arrival at Yellowknife’s hospital I was greatly comforted by the feeling of being in a big-city facility – the required paperwork before I could get past the dotted line, the hour-and-a-half wait in emergency, being forgotten in an exam room for nearly an hour – ahh, the joys of civilization.
Eventually I saw a young doctor, fresh up from the south, who followed a textbook-style examination. Then, in came the real doctor – one who looked like she’d always been practicing in the far north, but actually outside – and maybe not just on people. The burly medico did all the tests everyone else did, plus a few additional pokes and prods of her own, then looked longingly into my eyes and said, “So, why are you here? There’s no need for an ultrasound because you don’t have heart failure or a blood clot.” So, I tried my worn out, unanswered question on her – the one about the odds of simultaneous blood clots in both legs – and she just rolled her eyes, smiled, patted my pudgy ankle and said, “Have a nice flight.”
Trouble was, my flight back to Kugluktuk didn’t depart until the next day, and my getting back aboard Laurier was entirely dependent on the weather being good enough for us to land. Any delay would leave me stranded beyond the reach of Laurier’s helicopter to retrieve me. In the meantime, I needed a place to stay overnight – the airport not being an option because it was locked up during the midnight hours. So, Super 8 it was – even with a discount my $50 overnight bunk in Yellowknife cost $160. As my luck went, for my ten-hour layover I ended up with a suite to wander around – it being the last room available. To add insult to injury, my late-night supper in that big city was the dregs of soup and sandwich minutes before the adjacent Tim Horton’s closed.
Reassurance or false alarm? I dunno, but either way it was a $1,000 trip to the doctor. At least I didn’t have to bend over and cough – or, did I?
Think of our Arctic Canadians’ healthcare tribulations when next you visit your doctor or walk-in clinic, or lay before the latest beeping, blinking gizmos. That drastic comparison is one of the many reasons why we want to finds ways to improve their quality of life.
Please feel free to donate or volunteer to our endeavour. Every penny and every person brings hope – and there can never be too much of that.
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