Christmas Vacation

I'm officially on Christmas Vacation!  Whoop Whoop!

Today was my first day of Christmas Vacation since Public Health is closed from Dec 22nd to January 2nd.  It's actually awesome because it means I get to go home for Christmas without missing any days of work.  They have Mandatory Leave with Pay days up here which means you're not allowed to work but you still get paid as if you were.  So technically I got paid to ski today!  Have I mentioned that I love the North?

Getting Paid to Ski :)

Meg and I headed out to the Hay River Ski Club to hit the trails.  It was more of a social ski than a workout since Meg was on classic skis and I was on skate skis but it was still fun.  I am anxious to get out and actually get better and get a good workout in though.  I guess I just need to find someone roughly my speed...aka not very fast!  I'm still learning so it's tough but I love that it's an activity that allows me to spend hours outdoors in the middle of winter.  I bailed pretty hard on one of the hills but other than that I managed to stay upright.  Unfortunately we had a pretty rough windstorm a few days ago and haven't had any new snow since then so the trail was covered in a lot of debris so I spent most of the ski terrified that by the time I was done the basses of my skis would be destroyed.  There are a few scratched on 'em but I'm hoping they'll brush out.  Fingers Crossed!

Last night we celebrated being on vacation by having a big bonfire out in Old Town at a friend's place.  I'm still really bad at whipping out my camera all the time in fear that I'll look like a huge looser so I only have a couple of blurry, dark pictures.  It was fun though!  We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows on the fire and had a nice low-key night.

Bonfire Night!

Acclimatization

I think I’m finally starting to become acclimatized to the North.  When I first got here I was bundling up in 12 layers every time I left the house.  Now I don’t wear my ski pants unless is colder than -25, I’ve switched from a hat to ear muffs for temps warmer than -15 and I don’t wear my big huge gortex mittens unless it’s -25 and instead just wear a pair of knitted red Olympic Mittens that I didn’t deem warm enough when I first got here.  I also started out by wearing huge clunky Sorrel boots every time I left the house but since it’s so cold here, and stays cold, I really didn’t need the waterproofing of those boots and now I just wear a pair of Ugg knock-offs which I’m pretty sure were about 7$ at Walmart.  I had never ever wanted a pair of real Uggs because in PEI girls would walk around in them but have wet feet all day since the puddles were unavoidable, even in the dead of winter.  The dead of winter in PEI means a lot of snow, but even more slush, which is definitely not conducive to wearing fabric boots. They seemed like the silliest invention ever considering they were winter boots but not waterproof.  Now  that I’m here and realize that not all winters require waterproof boots, I am beginning to see the appeal of a warm pair of boots that are light weight and easy to walk in.  I might have to invest in a pair of legit mukluks before the end of winter.

Other than how to dress appropriately for the weather, I feel like I’ve learned a lot up here!

1.)    “Down South” means Edmonton, not Florida. This is important since it’s used in conversation all the time and I was under the impression for my first week here that everyone went to Florida regularly and had family there.

2.)    Eating polar bear liver will kill you because it has toxic levels of Vitamin A in it.

3.)    Tuberculosis is still very prevalent up here.  About 80% of people test positive for the Mantoux test indicating that they have had exposure to TB and are carriers of it.  If I make it out of here without exposure to TB I will be considered lucky, especially since I am working in Public Health and in the Hospital.

4.)    My coworker is Stompin’ Tom’s cousin and was also in the show “North of 60”.

5.)    It is commonly believed that rabbit is a Canada’s Food Guide Serving of Vegetables (not meat and alternatives) since rabbits eat vegetables exclusively before being eaten themselves

6.)    You can wear real fur without fear of having red paint thrown on you by some Peta supporter. In fact, it’s encouraged because it’s soo much warmer than synthetic.  I’ve seen fur lined hoods (like in my Canada Goose Coat), I’ve seen fur lined coats and I’ve even seen a full seal skin coat and mittens ensemble.  No one looks twice or judges you for wearing it either.

7.)    Out at the ski club (aka a mere 15km from town) there are wolves and lynx and black bears.  I figured there would be wolves, but LYNX!!  How unreal is that?  I hear they are incredible rare to spot, but we saw lynx tracks along the ski trails last week.  So rad. Pictures of them remind me of our old cat Sid for some reason. The ski trails are lit at night (which is almost always) and these cats are primarily nocturnal.  I wonder if any late night snowshoers have ever gone missing from the trails…

Evidence Based Practice

This week at work has been incredibly quiet. By quiet I mean boring.  I’ve only had one client and was caught up on my charting and all my work at the end of last week so I didn’t really leave myself much to do this week.  I’ve been passing the time reading journal articles and catching up on the most current nutrition research.  I’m sure this time next month I’ll be wishing for an afternoon to read and catch up so I’m trying to take advantage of the office being slow while I can.

Despite the quiet, I did have one cool project this week!  We have a mom of a premature baby who is in the process of switching from breast milk with added human milk fortifier to formula and wanted to know how long she should keep her baby on specialized formula for preemies.  There are a ton of different formula products out there formulated specifically for different conditions and stages of infancy.  The formulas designed for premature babies are higher in calories (22-24 kcal/fl oz versus 20 kcal/fl oz for full term formulas) and are higher in protein, vitamins and minerals. I didn’t know the answer to this question off hand; my initial assumption was to keep the baby on preemie formula while tracking growth very regularly and once the baby has achieved healthy growth patterns they could be switched to regular formula.  However, I didn’t really want to give a recommendation without knowing exactly what the research and official recommendations were.  As Registered Dietitians we use Evidenced Based Practice, which means we use the latest research to make recommendations to clients and to develop all of our interventions. We had an Evidence Based Practice course at UPEI where our project was to pick a random nutrition related question and answer it in a paper using evidence from our own research.  The point of the class was to learn how to evaluate research papers to determine if the research itself was strong enough to base recommendations off.  Anyways, it was time consuming and a huge pain, especially considering the paper took all semester to write and was only a max of 4 pages.  But I did learn a lot from that class. I really liked going through research articles and finding the limitations to the studies and flaws in their methods and having to decide if it was applicable to the population of my question.

Since I had a lot of free time this week for reading, I decided to tackle the question of the preemie baby formula in the same way.  I didn’t realize I was doing it until I was perusing through the Cochrane Library via the UPEI library website and had a flash back of 4^th year university.  It made me happy that I was actually using skills and methods I learned in University to solve real life Dietitian problems.  There were a lot of classes in University that I have never once used and that I am fairly confident I will never ever use in either my practice or my real life.  I loved UPEI and am so glad I chose to do my undergrad there and using this process made me realize just how awesome my program was and how lucky I was to have gone through a University program that actually prepared me to join the work force.  There are not a ton of programs that do that anymore.

Based on the research, there is no strong evidence that giving a premature baby specialized premature formula after hospital discharge impacts growth or development.  Babies are smart, and the evidence shows that preemies who aren’t on specialized formulas simply take in more of the regular formula to make up the different in the calories, vitamins and minerals. There is some evidence that these formulas can result in greater growth if provided for at least 6 months, but this was only evident in very small birth weight infants weighing < 1000-1250 g, which the baby in question is not.  So long story short is that this baby is following a normal growth curve and is currently doing well.  While providing him with specialized formula will likely do no harm, it hasn’t been shown to provide benefit either.  This answer seems really fluffy…it doesn’t actually contain a concrete recommendation for what mom should do, but based on the evidence it’s all I can really tell her.  I used to be really frustrated by the fact that often the evidence isn’t available for us to make definite recommendations and felt like we weren’t really answering the questions asked of us as Dietitians.  However, I am glad that we can tell people what the most current research is saying and allow them to make their own decisions based on fact.

Today is my last day of work until the new year! I’m getting antsy to get home. I’ve never travelled this close to Christmas though and am slightly terrified of what the airports are going to be like on the 23^rd of December.

First Ski of the Season!

Before I moved up here I had googled the town to figure out what facilities they have here in terms of sports or clubs that I could join once I got here.  I saw that there was a nordic ski and biathelon club and have been wanting to make it out there since I arrived.  It's only 15km from town but I don't have a car so it's been tough to get out there.  One of the nurses at the hospital hooked me up with a couple who are on the ski exec and they took me out to the club on Saturday.  I even got a 40 minute or so lesson before we headed out for our ski which was much appreciated since I'm not exactly a super star and haven't really done a ton of skate skiing before. Our actual ski ended up being primarily social.  They have some bird feeders set up about 20 minutes from the club that they wanted to refill and one of the other members of the club was out with his super hard ore camera gear and wanted to tag along.  His gear was heavy so we ended up pulling it in one of those baby buggies.  I posted one of his pictures in this post. When we got out to the feeders there were boreal chickadees everywhere!  Before we filled the feeders we put peanuts in our hands and they came and ate right out of our hands! Other notable parts about the ski included seeing a bear scratch tree, lynx and wolf tracks.  Skiing with these guys was awesome because I was constantly being coached by Bob while Adam and Sue knew the names of every type of bird and tree we saw and pointed out a lot of cool stuff I wouldn't have noticed before like the animal tracks.  I also got introduced to a bunch of other club members who I can hopefully hitch rides with!

Boreal Chickadee

Trail Map

The club is awesome.  It's small and run completely by volunteers.  Members have the password and can come and go as they please.  The club is completely stocked with tons of snowshoes and ski wax that are free for members to use.  The majority of the trails are all lit at night so you can ski whenever you want.  There's a little kitchen thats stocked with coffee and tea and a couch and fire place making the clubhouse definitely somewhere you could hang out all day with intermittent ski loops and snowshoe trails. I really wish I had a car, I'd be out there all the time, it's gorgeous out there!  The best part is membership is only 55$ a year!  It costs that much just to go for one ski at home if you're renting gear for the day.

Ski Club

I didn't really take a ton of pictures (I had my phone on me) but I'm hoping to make it back to the ski club on a very regular basis between now and the end of April.  I hear the snow doesn't melt until May so it'll be an extra long ski season!

Candy Shrapnel

Happy Friday!

Today was pretty uneventful.  I only had 1 client come in to see me this morning and the office was dead quiet all day.  After aerobics I went to the grocery store and stumbled upon this on my way home:

It's hard to tell but it was the Hay River Santa Clause Parade!  There was a big to-do in the paper about it several weeks ago when I first arrived because the city had decided not to have a parade this year to the dismay of the residents. All of the local businesses got together to make it happen though.  I ended up having to wait on the side of the road for about 20 minutes while the parade went by before I could cross with my bag of groceries to get home.  I didn't mind though because otherwise I wouldn't have seen the parade at all!  Plus it was cold enough out to keep my groceries frozen.  My favorite part of the parade was all the little kids handing out candy from the floats.  It consisted of them hurling handfuls of candies at the crowd. Literally pelting the crowd with Hershey Kisses and little mints and caramels.  I'm fairly confident that there will be candy on the road for at least another month.  Actually, if you look in the bottom left hand corner of the above picture you can see shiny silver specks which are candies all over the road. This was the scene for the entire 2 km parade route. I managed to catch a few to nibble on while the parade went by but most of the candy hurled at me bounced off my head and rolled under the cars parked on the street.  The ravens will have a feast tomorrow with the left over candy!

Christmas Sunshine!

It's almost Friday!  This week has been way more exhausting than it needed to be.  We were pretty busy at work, and now that I finally have access to all of the computer programs I need, I have been doing a lot more work by myself.  Today was my last day of 'shadowing' slash working with the other Dietitian and starting tomorrow we'll each be responsible for our own workloads and will have different roles within the office.  We had out office pot-luck yesterday and our office cookie exchange today so I've spent every night this week baking or cooking.  For many of my coworkers, today was their last day in the office until the new year so we had all of our Christmas celebrations today. My apartment is slightly Christmas-y now since I have pretty Christmas cards to decorate with.  It was a busier than normal week, but not really that busy at all, but yet I'm still pooped.  To be honest it's probably just a sugar crash from all the holiday eating that's happened at work this week.

I believe that every single person has a talent.  It may be obscure and not very obvious, but every body has something that they excel at better than anyone else.  I used to think that my talent was functioning on very little sleep without being an exhausted zombie all day.  My productivity:sleep ratio used to be pretty impressive if I do say so myself. I say "used to" because I feel like I've been  a walking zombie since I got here!  One of my goals for the year was to try to get 8 hours of sleep a night, and I have been consistently getting more than that, but yet I still feel like I could fall asleep at any moment.  My mind feels hazy, as if I haven't slept in weeks and all I ever want to do is go home and nap.  

I'm beginning to think that the lack of day light might be getting to me!  It's pitch black when I go to work and pitch black by the time I get home from work.  I have a window in my office but it's tinted heavily to protect patient confidentiality when I have clients in my office.  I don't normally get a chance to venture outside during the either, but I might need to start trying harder to do so.  I also need to start taking some Vitamin D!  You can't get enough Vitamin D from your diet and the rest normally comes from sun exposure.  The majority of North Americans are Vit D deficient, and up here it's actually impossible to get enough from the sun so we recommend 1000 IU of vitamin D daily to all of our clients.  Vitamin D deficiency is typically associated with bone health but current research has indicated that adequate levels of Vitamin D are also associated with decreased risks of cancer, increased risks of developing diabetes, hypertension and multiple sclerosis.  It's one of those super vitamins that no one really knows a lot about.  More and more research keeps coming out suggesting even more super powers the vitamin may have.  I guess it's time to start practising what I preach! On the bright side, the shortest day of the year is December 22 nd this year which is soon! By the time I get back up here in January the days will be getting longer and brighter and hopefully I'll be more awake throughout the day.

Enough about my exhaustion, it's probably mostly in my head anyways!  I'm so excited to get home for the holidays to temperatures that permit running outside during day light hours!  Plus I have 10 days off work and am not even missing a single day.  We have mandatory leave days up here from the 22nd to the 2nd, which is probably so people don't go crazy in the dark over the holidays.  This time next week I'll be all packed and pumped to get on a plane the following morning.

To get into the holiday spirit I'm spending the night watching my favorite Christmas specials.  Charlie Brown Christmas, and the claymation Rudolph.  It's not Christmas until I've seen them each at least once.

Diet Destruction

I have never actually been a real grown-up over the holidays before.  I've always been a student, cramming for exams.  My strategy for cramming for exams usually also involves cramming food into my mouth at a more abundant rate than is typical for any human being.  I somehow manage to find time to bake a lot more during exams that I do during the rest of the year.  Not to mention I somehow managed to wander my way into the kitchen every 5 minutes convinced that I was 'hungry' when actuality I was just bored out of my mind of biochemistry or stats or microbiology.


Turns out that there are very few things worse for healthy eating than working in an office over the holidays.  Instead of just having to deal with your own baking marathons, you have to weave your way through everyone in the office's baking sprees too!  There are countless parties, all of which include a potluck or buffet meal, office cookie exchanges and countless other delicious treats being brought into the office every day.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the holidays, including holiday baking, but I can only take so much of it!  It's still almost 2 weeks until Christmas and I have a potluck, cookie exchange and hospital christmas party/dinner to go over the next week.

Chocolate Covered Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

Today a co-worker brought in chocolate covered cookie dough balls.  Working in Public Health, there are a few of us who are slightly food safety conscious.  Raw cookie dough, as delicious as it is, is actually considered an unsafe food because it contains raw eggs, which have the potential to carry salmonella.  This normally doesn't stop me from licking the bowl and beaters clean when I'm baking cookies but it would definitely worry me if I was serving raw cookie dough to a group of people.  I'd be too afraid that someone would get sick to serve it!  Luckily this recipe didn't contain egg so we were in the clear.


However, according to a recent study investigating the cause of an e.coli outbreak that was traced back to raw cookie dough in 2009, raw egg may not be the ingredient to worry about!  This outbreak involved commercially available cookie dough, and in most commercially available products that contain eggs, the eggs are pasteurized which kills pathogens that could cause harm.  Actually, every single ingredient in the cookie dough underwent pasteurization, even the baking soda and margarine used in it's preparation, except for the flour.  When analyzing commercially available wheat flour, researchers found that 13% of samples were contaminated with salmonella.  Although the study was somewhat inconclusive, and researchers can't actually state that the flour was the definitive cause of the outbreak, they still recommend that raw cookie dough not be consumed, whether you buy it commercially or make it at home.


My favorite part of this study was the random stats on raw cookie dough consumption:

• A 2008 study of risky eating behaviors among college students found that 53 percent admitted to eating unbaked homemade cookie dough.
• In the new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, several of the people who were sickened bought the contaminated cookie dough with the sole intention of eating it raw. “They had no plans to actually bake cookies,” the authors reported.

My first thought was that only 53% admitted to eating unbaked cookie dough.  Guaranteed that way more people eat raw cookie dough than 53%.  The key word is 'admitted'.  I'm not convinced the will power to bake cookies without eating a bit of dough even exists.  I have to admit though, I'm not surprised that some of the dough was purchased with no intention of baking cookies.  

Even though I probably have more food safety knowledge than the majority of people given my Food and Nutritional Sciences degree, and I know that cookie dough may carry e. coli or salmonella when consumed raw, it never seems to go through my head when a bowl of cookie dough is sitting in front of me.  

Parka-Plegia

I've lucked out with some unseasonably warm temperatures this month.  I have nothing against the cold (there's not such thing as bad weather, just bad gear) but it has been nice to have a chance to get acclimatized to the conditions a bit over my first few weeks up north. The coldest it's been so far is -33 with the windchill but it's generally been steady in the - mid-teens.  My walk to work is about 15 minutes each way and on the colder days I've been wearing my ski pants over my work pants to keep warm.  Add to the ski pants my giant tourist parka, hat, mittens, scarf and boots and I'm pretty much parka-plegic by the time I'm all bundled up.  I somehow manage to waddle my way to work with limited use of my joints, sweating buckets by the time I get there, swearing to myself that I'm not going to be so ridiculously afraid of the cold the next day.  But every morning I check out Environment Canada's Weather and I see the high negative numbers and convince myself I need to put on every single piece of warm clothing I own just to step foot outside.  I am slowly learning though!  Today I didn't even wear my tourist parka!  After thinking that maybe my parka was a bit overkill and after seeing all the locals in their 'normal' winter coats, I decided that since it was a balmy -14C I would simply wear my snowboard jacket to walk to work.  I wasn't cold per say, but I definitely did miss my parka.  For no other reason than it's so cozy that I could curl up into a ball and nest in it.  My 'normal' winter coat does not have that coziness to it.  Yes it kept me plenty warm and yes I realized that I don't NEED my parka, but I decided that I LOVE my parka so I'm going to keep wearing it, even when the temperatures aren't necessarily cold enough to justify it.

The whole point of the above ramblings was to ask the question I've been asking myself since I arrived:

  At what temperature is it acceptable to be wearing ski pants over work pants?  

There's gotta be some kind of temperature threshold in which it's ok for adults to be bundled up like school children.

Lucky Superstitions

My fabulous red Canada Goose "Tourist Parka"

It's funny how every culture has it's own superstitions that seem so ridiculous to outsiders that they are laughable.  I went out with some friends for wing night in town last night and I was being made fun of for my big huge red parka.  Terrified of how cold it gets up here, I purchased a Canada Goose jacket to bring with me.  A fabulous red one.  Well, I might as well have a giant sign on my head that says "FROM AWAY".  All the locals refer to them as Tourist Parka's and make fun of me as often as possible for wearing it. My saving grace is that my colleague has the same one but in a different colour so at least we're lame tourists together. To be fair they are incredibly warm, and I am not used to walking around in -50 degree weather.  Today was only -25 and my eyelashes froze to each other on my 15 minute walk home from work. I was definitely happy to have my 'lame tourist parka' today and I am sure I will be more than happy to have it once it gets into real winter weather a month from now.

 Apparently the only people who wear Canada Goose coats up here are Japanese and Chinese tourists who come up to see the Northern Lights.  I got laughed at once again by all my local friends for asking them to call me at any time of day if they happen to see the Northern Lights.  I've never seen them before and apparently they are absolutely unreal up here.  It's been too warm and cloudy to see them so far, but I've been told that on a clear night in the middle of winter the entire sky is just full of a plethora of different colours and it's spectacular.

Northern Lights over Hay River

I was surprised to hear that -25 degrees Celsius was too warm for the winter lights!  Apparently Northwest Territories is a very popular vacation destination for Asian tourists specifically because of the Northern Lights. I was told that in Chinese and Japanese folklore, it is said that children conceived under the  Northern Lights will be male and blessed with good luck. Crazy eh? It makes me wonder what they would think of our superstitions here in Canada. For example: opening an umbrella in the house is bad luck, crossing the path of a black cat is bad luck, making a wish at 11:11 on the clock is good luck, people believe in lucky charms, breaking a mirror is 7 years of bad luck, and the old school rhyme "step on a crack and break your mothers back".  Obviously these are all just as ridiculous, but they do share a common theme.  All of these superstitions, regardless of where they originate are based around luck.  Everyone is looking for good luck and for good things to happen to them without having to put in any work. And the reverse is true as well; there are many superstitions that cause bad luck and give people an excuse for bad things happening so that they don't have to take responsibility and be accountable.

I find the same phenomenon in my clients.  Everyone seems to be looking for a quick fix, an answer to all of their dietary issues that doesn't involve doing any of the hard work that is required to make changes and see improvements.  I'm not sure how I feel about luck.  I like to think that you make your own luck.  Yes I think that some people are fortunate with the timing of opportunities, but you have to set yourself up and work hard to be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you.  One of my favorite quotes is "Success is when preparation meets opportunity" and I believe that some people interpret this as luck, forgetting about the preparation required by the 'lucky' individual.  For now I'll pass on the superstitions and just keep working hard knowing that the next new exciting opportunity is around the corner.

PS the picture of the Northern Lights was taken in Hay River by a local. I recently purchased a coffee table book containing a bunch of his pictures taken in and around Hay River and it is gorgeous!  His website is found here.

Anticipatory Excitement

The Michael Buble Christmas Special is on TV right now and it makes me happy.  I LOVE the holidays! I started listening to Christmas music as soon as Remembrance Day was over and have been excited ever since. I had been listening to Michael's new CD and the Justin Beiber CD on repeat in the car and while studying at the end of my internship and was 100% in the holiday spirit. 

Since arriving up north, I seem to have lost the anticipatory excitement of Christmas looming in the near future.  The town is decorated with lights and trees, but it just doesn't feel the same!  I think the best part about the holidays is checking off all those holiday things you only get to do once a year like wrapping presents, decorating the house and tree, going to parties, and eating copious amounts of Grandma's shortbread cookies. It's the traditions associated with the holidays that make them so fun, and that's what I'm missing up here.

Cooper the Christmas Cat

All of the things I normally look forward to during the holidays is back home and I'm up here.  I don't get home until really late on the 23rd, so technically Christmas Eve and I know that I will have to go without getting to do many of my favorite holiday things. It's a bit of a bummer but on the flip side I've only been here a week and already I've had so many great experiences that I would not have been able to have at home.

I LOVE snow, and I spend the majority of most Decembers crossing my fingers and wishing for a snow fall before Christmas.  I have never seen so as much snow in one place as they have here! Its awesome!  I haven't had much opportunity to take advantage of it yet, but I'm hoping to in the near future.  I'm excited to get home for the holidays but so glad I'm here!

No-Shows

Today was a bit of a bust.  We had 3 clients scheduled but one of them only wanted to see the nurse and requested that the RD NOT be present, and the other two were simply no-shows.  Apparently no-shows are very common in December since everyone gets really busy with Holiday stuff.  It's also common for people to be no-shows when 'holiday stuff' entails holiday parties and holiday eating and they feel as though there is no point to coming in because they know their blood sugars are going to be out of whack and that their current laboratory values are not indicative of their typical diabetes management.  I can understand wanting to avoid an appointment if I thought I would be scolded by a nurse and a dietitian for indulging in a some festive treats, and for the fear of seeing huge lab values and blood glucose values when you feel as though they don't represent how you normally eat.  Most of our diabetes clients come in every 3 months to have blood work done and to meet with myself and the nurse, so missing one appointment doesn't seem like a huge deal to them. I also think that the appointments that are being missed are even more important that a typical visit simply because it is so close to the holidays and eating habits are so irregular. As a public health dietitian, it's my job to help people self-manage their diabetes through diet and exercise recommendations.  This is possible for many newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics but sometimes medications and insulin are unavoidable, but regardless diet and exercise always play a key role. We don't tell people they can never eat their favorite foods or splurge every once in a while, but we try to teach them how to eat so that their blood sugars remain within target ranges.  This includes educating clients how to enjoy some not-so-good for you treats every once in a while without it resulting in chronically high blood sugars.  A check-in with us at this time of year would actually be beneficial for clients because it gives them a chance to learn strategies and refresh their knowledge on maintaining control over their diabetes despite indulgences.

Ok enough of my ranting! Instead I'll just cross my fingers that our clients show up tomorrow!  Since I don't have any admin work to do or charting to get caught up on, I spent the day reading and responding to e-mails.  Didn't feel like the most productive day, but I do think I learned a lot in my readings!  I am working towards becoming a Certified Diabetes Educator this year so I have a lot of studying and reading to do for it.  I also have to complete 800 hours of direct patient diabetes education...yet another reason I really like when clients show up, so I can get my hours in!

I also used the hospital gym for the first time today!  I was disappointed to be honest. The machines are ancient and kind of useless and they don't have any possible place to do seated row. I know this sounds like a lame reason to be disappointed in the gym but it's one of my favorite exercises and we used to do it quite a lot when I was training.

The Hospital Gym...note the machine in the back corner...it definitely would have been in a infomercial featuring Chuck Norris if television had been invented when it was.

So anyways, the gym here is a bit of a bust.  You can't really tell in the picture but it's old school.  The saving grace is that it's cheap.  There is apparently a second gym in town that is better but I have yet to find it and I also hear that it gets really busy and it's expensive.  I might go find it to see if it's worth the extra money.  But until then I'll be paying my 10 bucks a month and making this little gem work for me!

Footloose, Finally!

The buzz about the Firemen's Ball was not unwarranted! The hall in the legion was done up all swanky  and there was a beautifully catered meal and everything!  The DJ even played "Footloose" !  Footloose is such a crowd pleaser every single time it gets played at a bar or club or dance.  Obviously the entire crowd got up and busted some mad moves as soon as the song came on. It was fabulous.  While I was at school in PEI, I would request Footloose quite frequently and the DJ always refused to play it.  I considered it a small personal victory last night when at last my footloose request was appeased.

On a semi-related note, last year at school I was at the gym when the girl on the treadmill in front of me started dancing.  Full out, flailing arms and singing out loud dancing.  On her treadmill, while running.  It made me so happy because she was clearly loving her life and didn't even care that the entire gym was starring at her. I told myself at that time that one day I would have the guts to do that. Anyways, this story is actually related to footloose.  A friend sent me a video the other day of this guy who puts his ipod in his ears and dances wildly in public.  The difference between this dude and treadmill girl is that he is purposely looking for attention.  But regardless of his motives, the video is pretty funny and in the video he happens to be dancing to footloose.  See? Eventually it all ties together!

While I was out and about this weekend socializing, I met a lot of awesome people, and learned that pretty much everyone knows everyone else.  While this is one of the charms of small town living, it does worry me a little.  As a dietitian, I will be seeing clients about a wide variety of different medical conditions and personal concerns that they have.  I have access to their medical records and charts and tend to know a lot about the people I see.  People divulge personal information to me and there are obviously strict client confidentiality standards in place.  I wonder if my clients will feel awkward to see me in the community? I am also aware that it is a small community and everyone knows everyone so I need to be careful when out with friends to ensure that I am representing myself in an appropriate way. It's not as though I was planning on going out and being crazy every weekend but it's definitely something I'll have to be somewhat aware of.  There is also a possibility that it's all in my head and that no one will actually care.  I suppose that if the nurses in town don't have the same issue than I shouldn't either. Well, either way I will definitely find out soon!

I'm going be booking my own clients starting this week and will begin to see clients on my own too!  I'm still going to be primarily shadowing for the first half of the week but by this time next week I should be doing things solo! I'm not sure why I'm sooo excited considering these are all things I've done before during internship - it's not as if I've never seen a client before.  I'm excited to go to work tomorrow morning. Hopefully 20 years from now I will be sitting in my house somewhere excited to go to work on a Monday morning.

Perfect Snowflakes!

The snowflakes in Hay River are perfect!

There is definitely never a shortage of things to do here!  It's incredible how many activities and clubs and social opportunities there are in such a small town.  I have to admit, I have misrepresented Hay River a little bit.  It's a small town, but it services a fairly large number of people.  There are about 3600 people in town but the area that uses it's services is about 6000 people.  A lot of people drive in from the reserves surrounding the town to grocery shop and use the pool and library.  So it's a pretty bumpin' little town!

Before I got this job I had never even heard of Hay River, but now that I am here everyone I know seems to know someone from Hay River or who has been to Hay River.  Just yesterday I went to the Bank to open an account and the bank manager went to UPEI and we had an english class together in my first year! What a small world!  The 6 degrees of separation theory can definitely be proven here!

Last night I went to the Legion for a few drinks with the girls and it happened to be Karaoke night! What was intended to just be a beer or two ended up resulting in a night of dancing and socializing until the bar closed. Since I'm new to town and the town is fairly small, I stick out quite a bit.  Everyone knows I'm new and everyone wants to know who I am, why I'm here, what I do, where I came from and how I like Hay River so far. It was nice to have people approach me and talk to me for the first little while but by the end of the night it became a bit exhausting!  It's almost like being a mzungu in Kenya all over again!  Regardless it was a pretty good time! It's nice to feel like I'm making some friends and being welcomed into the community!

This morning was Hay River's Family Christmas Day and they had a free breakfast with Santa! Stacey and I went for pancakes this morning and then to the craft fair at the high school.  I bought a coffee-table book full of photographs of Hay River taken by the librarian here. The photographs are gorgeous and I can't wait to get to experience all the different things that are represented in the book!  I'm hoping to have personal stories to go with many of the images in the book by the end of the year.

Tonight is the Firefighter's Ball!  So we're getting all glammed up and heading back to the legion for a fancy dinner and dance party.  It's the buzz around town and apparently quite the event! 

Always an Intern, Never a Dietitian

It's a winter wonderland here in Hay River!!

Today was my first day in my new job!  After interning for 40 weeks I was incredibly excited to finally get to do work as a Registered Dietitian and have my own patients / clients, my own office and to be earning a pay check. As an intern, you do a lot of shadowing, you get to see patients and clients but you're pretty much always in the presence of your supervisor and everything you do has to be read over and approved. I finally get to make my own decisions regarding client care! Well, turns out that my first day was slightly anti-climatic in that regard.  I spent the day shadowing Stacey.  I know I should have expected this, but it would have been nice to get to do at least something on my own!  I will essentially just be an intern again for the next week.  But on the bright side I'll be getting paid for it, and I'm sure I will learn a lot over the next week!  I also go my new @gov.nt.ca e-mail address and all my login info for the computer systems and charting programs.

Hay River Ice Road!

Despite being an faux intern for the day, today was still pretty fun.  I went into the office for a few hours this morning for some general orientation and then Stacey and I went to the treatment center just outside of town to give a presentation on Healthy Eating. I spent the afternoon seeing a client for diabetes and diabetic nephropathy and in a HR meeting filling out forms, signing my life away and learning about my benefits etc.  To get to the treatment center we got to drive on the ICE ROAD!!! Ok so I should clarify...there are 2 ice roads in Hay River.  One goes from Hay River to Yellowknife across Great Slave Lake.  The second one goes from one shore of Hay River to the other shore. To put this in perspective, the point in which the road crosses the river is only about 100m wide.  The ice road we took today was the short one, but it was still really exciting!  Its one more thing I can cross off my list of must-dos while in Hay River.  I'd also like to apologize for how fuzzy and blurry all the pictures I take on my phone seem to be.  Ice roads are not the smoothest of roads and I took this one while driving.  I'm also thinking that maybe my pictures wouldn't be so fuzzy if I started wearing my glasses.

Tomorrow should be another fun filled day at the office!  Friday's are admin days so we won't be seeing any clients and I'll be learning the ropes in terms of charting protocol. Plus it's already FRIDAY!! Woot Woot!