back in k-town

to anyone concerned about the lack of posting i'll try and fill you in on the past few weeks...

i did indeed make it back to canada safe and sound. i dropped in on classic kim from dal in calgary and we had a fun couple of days although i was pretty pooped after an 8 hour all-night bus ride and 9 hours of plans... calgary is an interesting city, very spread out and the train service is wonderful (although upon my return to calgary a week later the trains were down in the city centre which was a huge disappointment) but the lack of trees is very disorienting. and the bow river is only like 2 inches deep! that was pretty out of the blue. but kim showed me around and i was able to have thai and indian food for the first time in a long while (like 7 months) so i was pretty happy.

then i flew back to cranbrook for a week of debriefing with the rest of the interns. the little jaunt from calgary to cranbrook is neat - a 12 seater that barely made it high enough to get over the mountains. they made a call out that we were making our approach into cranbrook and would be on the ground in 6 minutes... that was kinda funny.

tracey met me on the ground, a few minutes late because she had forgotten about the time change (good thing i hadn't), and whisked me away to kimberley and the good ol home hostel... the place was as comfy as ever and the other interns (except for alec who came a bit later) were still sleeping, but woke up when i announced my arrival.

anyway... skipping ahead we took off for this cabin in the woods that was really quite beautiful but far from pretty much everything and required a 20 minute drive to get to the nearest phone. we did some hiking, some reading, some game playing and such, but mostly we just relaxed and did not much of anything.

i will say as well that i don't have rabies... that must come as a relief to all who were worried... i got back to calgary and phoned the people there who had not replied to my email (to the health hotline thing on their website) and they were busy so i had to wait a couple of hours to get a response which basically said that i would have to wait till monday to start treatment - that nothing was available on the weekend. they also said that i should take responsibility for my situation as rabies was life threatening, and cancel my trip to cranbrook. i told them that they had a lot of nerve telling me to wait three days and then criticizing me... the coup de grace was when they asked me to fax over the form that i had from the hospital in guayaquil that listed what vaccine i had been given down there... when i said that i didn't have a fax but could scan the slip and email it to them they put me on hold... then said that they couldn't accept that... i said ok, how about i put it on the internet and let you take it off of there... they were mystified by that, but said ok (after again putting me on hold and then having someone phone me back later on). they never did get back in touch with me.

in kimberley things were fine and i got the first of the shots i needed (because the ecuadorian shots are not recognized by canada health or the world health organization - one person, in response to an email about what i had been given, reported that i had been given vaccine that had been cultured in the brain of a lactating rat, and then put an exclamation point beside it... nice). the very first shot is the worst because they inject it into the wound site... and they have to put in a lot of stuff based upon your weight... luckily i'm not all that heavy but they still had to inject 8.2ml into my lower leg. this wasn't exactly fun, and the main incisor mark that wasn't fully healed was jabbed, and then the doctor slowly moved the needle around in a circle to inject as much as possible without taking the needle out. after that was done (they could only fit 6.2 mls in my leg - 2 had to go in my tush) i got a shot in my arm, the same shot that i've been given three more times in kingston.

ok... more news later.