Tales from the Tundra

"Seldom a Dull Moment"

By Audrey Woodget, RN

I remember one occasion when we had a call from Rae Lakes to [evacuate] a very sick man … It was my turn, so off I went in a single engine plane. There was space for one pilot, one extra seat, and room for a stretcher.

We picked up the patient who had TB and was vomiting blood. With him on the stretcher and me in the spare seat, we took off. It was still extremely turbulent and I was not feeling well. I looked around for a bag. The only one I could see was the one the patient had and obviously needed. Knowing there wasn't much time to lose, I grabbed his bag and used it. The patient then explained that he couldn't breathe very well and needed to sit up. I changed places with him. He sat up on my seat while I lay down on his stretcher. We shared the bag all the way to Yellowknife.

Surprisingly enough, I didn't get TB.

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"Adventures of a Northern Nurse"

By Dana Hawes, RN

During February, high in the Arctic, there are 24 hours of darkness. The tundra is covered with boulder-size rocks, and there isn't much snow. Any snow that falls is like Styrofoam frozen so hard that, when you walk on it, it actually echoes in the Arctic quiet. It is so quiet that it almost hurts your ears. Never before or since have I experienced such absolute silence as I have on a cold dark Arctic night. The only sound will be from sled dogs tied up on the sea ice, howling from hunger. It is an eerie, pathetic assault on your auditory senses. This is not a place for cross-country skiing.

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Nursing in remote areas can be a very tiring job. You may just return from a call that has taken 10–12 hours and be called out again for another 10–12 hours. The beauty of it is the sense of freedom you have. Every day, when you go to work, you are going somewhere different. If you love to fly, it is an awesome job. The pilots of the North are the true heroes.

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"My Life as a Northern 'Underfill'"

By Karen Stauffer, RN

As part of the school program, I set out to teach sex education to the teenagers. Because the Catholic Church ran the school at the time, we had to go to the priest and the school board to get permission (even though the rate of teen pregnancies was sky high). They allowed the program but said it was to be taught at the nursing station, and that boys and girls were to be taught separately. The only space in the station large enough to seat a group and show films was the storeroom, so that was where I conducted the classes. A couple of days after the boys' first class, a young teenager came into the nursing station to see me. He was very shy and said one word: "rubber." I was so pleased that my teaching had sunk in. I chattered away as I filled a small paper bag with condoms and handed it to the boy. He looked in the paper bag and then at me, and said, "No, I meant rubber tubing for slingshots." He had seen it in the storeroom while he was in the class.

Northern Nurses: True Nursing Adventures from Canada's North is available for purchase through abebooks.com for C$25 (Canada) or US$17 (USA or international) plus shipping and handling. All proceeds beyond production costs are being donated to a scholarship fund for northern nurses.

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