Plans in Motion

Just put up another Tibet post. I know I'm working at a slow pace and I haven't even started posting any Tibet pictures yet! Don't worry, after this post on Xining I'll finally start writing up my trip into Tibet. As an aside, I finally figured out how to tweak the size of those flight maps to fit the width of the blog.

My plans to move back to Ontario are starting to take shape. I've settled on a moving company and they'll be confirming my move out date soon. Unfortunately, it will be over a week before I'm able to physically leave town myself! Ah well, this is what happens with a long-distance move. I only gave myself 10 days off between jobs. I'll just live out of a suitcase (literally) for those 10 days.

My search for a place to live in Brockville has yielded some progress as well. Although I'm fairly certain I will want to buy a place for myself I know I should rent first to make sure the job goes well and to give myself a chance to see the town. I was referred to a real estate agent and I mentioned my #1 priority -- I wanted to live near the hospital.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

During my training I've always been "in house" whenever I was on call. Most hospitals were quite busy and I was working into the wee hours of the morning. In addition, I had to be available to cover any emergencies and so I got used to staying at the hospital for on call. Once I finished and became staff I had to switch over to "home call" where I stayed at home until called in. I still haven't become used to it -- I'm paranoid that when an emergency comes in I'll waste precious minutes trying to get to the hospital. Even though I literally live across the street from the hospital in St. Anthony, the few times where I had to run out the door it felt like the hospital was further away than it actually was.

Brockville has the same arrangement although it is a bigger and somewhat busier hospital. For my peace of mind (let it never be said that Dr. Lee was stuck in traffic while the patient was bleeding to death!) I've decided that I want to live as close to BGH as possible - walking distance ideally.

The real estate agent found a condo in an older 3-story building less than 5 minutes walking distance from the hospital. Perfect! Although my Dad feels that I should be buying a house, I insisted I was not ready for home ownership. Living close to the hospital meant living in older houses and older houses will need constant maintenance. In addition, the cost of utilities will be higher, too. Perhaps in the future once I have a family but for now, an apartment condo is ideal.

The owner of the condo is prepared to rent the unit out to me first and, if I like it, will carry through with the sale. I'm going to check the place out and hopefully sign the lease in late August.

There's a bunch of other little things I'll need to do in a few weeks to get ready for the move including changing my address and incorporation of my medical practice (more on that later).

I'm counting down the days!

Sayonara St. Anthony, Bienvenue à Brockville

I'm going to need a new title for this blog or maybe even consider shutting it down. I'm back from my trip to Brockville and Toronto and I'm still amazed at what has transpired: I've got a job at Brockville General Hospital starting September 19th!

I'll admit I tend to be pessimistic in order to avoid disappointment but I'm still pinching myself over recent events. First, I was expecting it to take at least 5 if not 10 years for me to get a license from Ontario -- I managed that in 2.5 yrs. thanks to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). But, thanks to restrictions placed on my license and the horrible job market at the moment I thought it would take me at least one year, if not more, before I could find a job in Ontario. I scored the job after 6 months of searching. Lastly, given all my circumstances, I thought for sure I was going to be working in Northern Ontario. Now, I find myself heading for the St. Lawrence river within 1 hr.'s drive of Ottawa. As the old saying goes: it's better to be lucky than good! (Although it's best to be BOTH).

So, I did a 4 day locum in Brockville and it was what I expected -- a small community hospital with most, but not all, surgical services represented. Although I thought I was ready for the quicker pace, I was caught off guard by the lack of lunch relief. For 2 days I skipped lunch and plowed through the list. The weekend was relatively quiet except for Sunday when I came in to work for 6 hours. The rest of the time I checked out Brockville and tried to get a head start on finding a new place to stay.

Brockville is a city of 24,000 and its hospital serves a catchment area of just under 100,000 people. It is within one hour's drive of 2 academic centres (Kingston and Ottawa) so most high risk and specialized cases get transferred out. Compared to my Newfoundland experience, it is probably most comparable to Corner Brook (pop ~20,000) which is the second largest city in Newfoundland. It has pretty much all the mod-cons of a S. Ontario city -- even a Future Shop and a movie theater! It's also within easy driving distance of Toronto and my parents were ecstatic with the news. The only thing it doesn't have is high quality Chinese food -- although I should withhold judgment until I've tried out the other restaurants. (I ate at one downtown restaurant and it wasn't bad...just a little salty).

Brockville is also in the scenic 1000 islands area of Ontario and if boating is your thing then this is a great place for it -- there's a new condo development on the shore where you can have you own dock! It's also on a cross-Ontario trail and I can see my self going on some long bike rides on the weekend when it's warm. Hopefully there's cross country skiing as well so I can continue using my skis.

I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to do much better than Brockville -- I may be able to find a similar community a little closer to Toronto but I doubt it will be very soon. In addition, I am starting to get tired of moving around every few years. Assuming I like the job, I'm quite motivated to set down roots. In fact, I've got my eye on a condo unit that's a 5 minute walk from the hospital...

So, although I'm excited that my long-range plans have suddenly come to pass and I'm looking forward to returning home to Ontario, I've got mixed feelings about leaving St. Anthony. I've got some good friends here and, were it not for the remoteness and isolation, I can easily see myself spending the twilight years of my career here. As I've said to numerous people, St. Anthony is a great place to work but not for a young grad like me. Early September is coming up quickly and I'm not looking forward to the goodbyes and farewells.

I'll be back to visit Brockville for a day in August to hopefully secure a place to stay and run errands. Afterwards, I'll be back in Toronto to do an ACLS course at Sunnybrook hospital.

More Travel and Air Canada Anxiety

I was out of town yet again for the weekend -- this time to St. John's to fulfill my duties as the local rep. Due to the timing of flights I was committed to a full 3 nights in St. John's. In addition to dining out at a few restaurants I managed to watch 3 movies to make up for my recent trip to Tibet: X-Men 1st Class, Super 8, and Thor. X-men was actually pretty good with good plot, character development, and just-enough action to satisfy. I don't think I'm enough of an '80s movie buff to truly enjoy Super 8. It's sort of like a non-Trekkie watching JJ Abrams' remake of Star Trek -- you'll miss all the references which the true fans will get. Thor was the least impressive of the bunch but it wasn't a waste of time either. I think Thor's exile on Earth was a bit slow and poorly developed. Fortunately, hammer-time came back and Mjolnir stole the show.

I'm once again, getting ready to leave time with my locum in Brockville being my first stop. I'm pretty pumped since this is the first job prospect I've had so far and hopefully I'll impress. Unfortunately, the Air Canada strike is throwing a wrench into my travel plans. My Plan A involves taking the train into Brockville but I only have 1.5 hrs. to make the connection and the flights I needed to take were delayed today by 2-3 hrs. Hopefully Air Canada can pick up the slack and the unions won't try to escalate. Otherwise, Plan B is renting a car in Ottawa and driving to Brockville.

I'll try to get back on track with the Tibet postings!