Emergency Room

So, when we last met, the Head Musher and I had just pulled up to the Emergency Room door at Montmagny Hospital. But before continuing that story, I should tell you what transpired today.
The Rules Committee of the Odyssee Appalacienne decided to let the Head Musher run the thirteen mile, second half of the race today. So with bandaged finger, on a windy, snowy day in temperatures below zero, she sped off down the starting chute happy as a clam and I climbed into a warm car and drove the thirteen miles back to town to meet her. Here she is at the starting line and then, a minute later, going past me down the starting chute:

The race went well. The thumb is OK. A day without drama for a change.

After the last musher finished around 2:00pm, they had an award ceremony. It was outside, in a snow storm, in 35 mph winds and nobody thought there was anything strange about that. It was one of those days where syllables freeze as they are coming out of the microphone.

So now, back to yesterdays emergency room visit. We arrive a little before 7:00am and the place is deserted except for a rent-a-cop and two nurses. They usher the Head Musher into a “Triage Room” and I park myself in the waiting lamenting the fact that, in my hurry to leave St. Pamphile, I didn’t bring a book or my e-reader with me.

But there is one thing about waiting rooms in Quebec, you can catch the highlights of every major and minor league hockey game played anywhere in Canada in the past 24 hours. And the same highlights are replayed every half hour.

A few minutes into the hockey highlights, a nurse exits the room and approaches with a series of question posed in French. Every foreigner who visits a Canadian hospital has to be “enrolled” in the health care system. That’s actually the good news. The bad news is, for the privilege of enrolling, you have to pay them $550 bucks. They assure you that this is reimbursable under Medicare. This sounds to me like one of those benefits that someone will surely cut in the next round of negotiations on the debts crisis before I can get back home and file a claim.

The enrollment is contingent upon your answering questions containing some potential stumpers such as: “What is your mother-in-law’s maiden name?” They are big on maiden names. Women are enrolled under their maiden names. My mind goes completely blank in attempting to remember my mother in law’s maiden name. It goes so blank that I can’t even remember any hockey scores.

It’s too early in the morning for those kinds of questions. I’m wondering why they don’t ask the Head Musher questions about her own mother. I figure maybe she’s already in a Novocain induced haze behind closed doors. But then she appears and we find out that this initial interrogation is only marginally related to the actual treatment of the injury. There won’t be a doctor in for another 45 minutes. We are both in the waiting room and I say; “Oh look, there are hockey highlights on TV!” but the humor of this comment is lost on the Head Musher who now has an official Canadian Hospital bandage on her thumb upon which she is applying pressure.

Finally the Head Musher gets called into the treatment room. This is done over a public address system that they patterned after the old Greyhound Bus terminals. You hear something like “Forberts sab runtling dice cronlick chambre deux.” Turns out I’ve been married to a woman named “Forberts” for over 40 years and didn’t have a clue.

But now there’s a new snag. They need to see the Head Musher’s passport! Luckily, our passports are in the car with all of the dogs’ papers so I trundle out to the car and bring every official identification paper we have on human or canine figuring that sooner or later they are going to ask for one of them. I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t had the passport with us.

The Head Musher’s passport passes inspection and she exits the treatment room with three Canadian stitches and bandaged thumb. We then drive back to St. Pamphile intent upon meeting Gino at the 50-mile checkpoint in his 100-mile race. The mushers have a mandatory 4-hour rest period at the half-way point. The dogs are fed and watered, equipment is checked and repaired, and the dogs stretch out on beds of straw while remaing in harness and attached to the sled. I’ve never seen one of the checkpoints in action and I’m sure that it’ll be interesting.

I’ll tell you about the checkpoint and show you some pictures of the dogs and mushers in the next bulletin. Meanwhile we decided to spend and extra night in St. Pamphile. We’re in the middle of a bad snowstorm and the winds are howling at around fifty miles per hour and the wind chill has got to be down in the -25 degree range. On the bright side, the little restaurant next to the motel has western omelets to kill for, so I’m looking forward to the hundred yard walk in the morning in blizzard conditions.

Later,
The One-Man Pit Crew