Life is Beautiful

Life was not beautiful at 2pm when I was still at the hospital on Thursday afternoon after being up most of the night. Its the tightness you get in your temples, the blurry vision and incomplete sentences that are frustrating to no end. The ultimate problem is that you stop caring. I swear I dosed off while peeing then jerked awake and later found myself 'resting my eyes' when walking down long corridors (just for efficiency's sake of course). Not that the night was uneventful, we extracted a bottle of Dove shampoo from an unnamed body orifice (take a wild guess which one). It brought a whole new approach to the Dove campaign for real beauty. As the story goes he had been "watching a documentary on the male G-spot", which is surprising, because normally the story is "I was doing my laundry naked and I just fell on the flashlight" or "I slipped in the shower and . . ." Nice to have an honest answer I guess. But ANYWAY, I digress . . .

Eventually I got home, collapsed for an hour nap, dragged my pathetic self out of bed for a shower and headed to the airport to pick up a friend visiting from Calgary. And so began my lovely long weekend. There were three friends from various locations crashing at our house Thursday night. Friday was a deliciously relaxing day involving warm gooey cinnamon buns for breakfast, an exquisite foot spa (apparently that means pedicure with benefits), a run through the endowment lands and along the beach in the rain culminating with yoga by the ocean. This was directly followed by hot tea and the whole day was peppered with endless discussions about love, poverty, economics, and toe nail polish.

By 8pm Friday I was on the ferry with another set of friends heading to Galiano island. Saturday morning brought with it a brilliant blue sky and calm waters as we crammed our camping gear into the kayaks and battened down the hatches. Of course Bertha (my camera) was strapped to the deck of my kayak in her fancy Pelican box. We paddled along the coast, past intricate sandstone carvings molded by the ocean, turkey vultures circling overhead, cormorants skimmed the water as we came upon their nesting site and dozens of seals sunned themselves on rocks. A pair of otters crawled out of the water and playfully rubbed water from their eyes as they scurried around the rocks. The whole time our chatter was nearly with pressured speech about all the challenges and experiences that residency has brought interspersed with silence in awe of the beauty around us. We crossed the straight to Wallace island, camping on the northern tip. Uncontrollable laughter accompanied our racoon-safe food hang before our pitas, hummus and wine appetizer. The sun sank slowly behind Saltspring island to the West sending shimmering gold across the water to our feet. A day of perfection, surreal in its beauty and a lifetime away from anything mildly related to medicine.

Sunday morning the sun greeted us again, unheard of on a random weekend in September on the West coast! The wind had picked up but we had a 'following sea' which pushed as back along the coast. Out of sheer necessity I actually started paddling with good technique, figuring out how to isolate those back muscles (fortunately my roomie is a professional!) Soggy, chilled, and blissfully exhausted we glided back into the Montague marina.

Life is beautiful. I am profoundly privileged and blessed to be who I am where I am right now. This situation is helped by the fact that I'm now working in a clinic that doesn't start until 9am! Can you believe it?!? 9 to 5, its novel, and no call! In the mornings I curl up in a chair sipping tea and listen to morning meditations courtesy of the world-wide-web and the Jesuits. The outlook is good!