Free at last…

“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.” Martin Luther King, Jr. could well have been speaking for us in his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Yes, we are out of the hospital (sprung Tuesday afternoon)!!! Free at last! It has been a long, LONG five weeks. Free at last!

Anouk is doing GREAT! Her burns continue to heal, which means they are itchy and at times driving her to distraction. There are still months of work ahead, though. We are applying a lanolin cream to her burns, coating them with Telfa and wrapping the whole shebang in 2-inch gauze several times a day. Before we checked out, she was fitted for a pressure garment. This fashionable item (we chose purple for one and teal for the other), which applies constant pressure in an effort to help minimize scarring, will have to be worn for months. We will also have to make a few more visits to St. John's for follow-up appointments. But we are still . . . Free at last!

So what was the first thing we did once we were sprung? We ran a lot of errands in preparation for leaving St. John's and heading north and west toward Bonavista by way of Cupids, Brigus, Dildo, and Terre Nova National Park (don’t you just love their colorful place names?). Another doctor visit, this time for me and my Anouk elbow . . . and shoulder (from carrying mon petite poisson) . . . and lower back. Shopping at Dominion (yes, butter tarts were purchased and have already been consumed). Purchasing a few gifts for some of Anouk’s new friends, fellow patients at Janeway: Brianna, who must be about 9, perked up every time she saw Anouk (and, of course, Anouk just LOVED seeing Brianna . . . an older girl to, quite literally, look up to) and Elouan, a little boy from the French (as in part of France) islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (Natalie and Anouk loved speaking French to Elouan’s parents) which are between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And then back to our campsite at Pippy Park. WOW! We spent more time as a family at our campsite this afternoon than we have in five weeks.

Perhaps in unacknowledged anticipation of being sprung, Saturday I ran a 10-kilometer race. At 52 minutes and 19 seconds, my time was not overly fast, but it was an excellent time for me. I employed a combination of strategies I learned from previous running two marathons and one half marathon, as well as my old days of canoe racing. I start off dead last: before the starting gun goes off, I make sure I am at the back of the pack (I want to be the last one over the starting line). I start off slow, warming up, gradually, incrementally increasing my pace. Slowly I start passing people. About halfway into the race, I start putting runners in my sights, speed up just enough to catch them, draft for a few minutes to catch my breath, then pass on to the next person. Using this strategy distracts me from sore muscles and helps make a game out of it. In the end, I finished right in the middle of the 172 runners.

Sunday we went out with a local natural history boat tour operator (following Nat's lead, I will spare the name of the company). Although we did not see icebergs (“hicebergs” in Newfoundlandese . . . for most words that start with a vowel, they add a softly pronounced ‘h’ at the beginning), we saw a couple Minke Whales, hundreds of Northern Gannets, thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes, and a lone Atlantic Puffin.

A few days before we went out, I was listening to CBC radio and heard an interview with the owner of Iceberg Quest, a boat tour operator who had some interesting comments on the economy. Time was, he said, that if they were seeing a lot of great natural history stuff, he would stay out an extra half hour or so. Now, with the rising price of fuel, a two-hour tour is a two-hour tour.