Alas, poor Hamish...

To put it mildly, it was a bit of a weekend, and not in a good way. The most hardcore member of the Snow Valley Lodge team got a good spanking from Fernie mountain on Saturday afternoon. Yup, poor wee Hamish is now the not-so-proud owner of a broken wrist and two broken fingers. Ouchy!

It would seem that the mountain decided to get it's own back and was fed up with Hamish tearing all over the place, doing his bestest to conquer all he could see (and he pretty much conquered all of it, to be honest!) so as he was skiing down a chute - which he'd done a million times before - he hit a nasty little windlip that had formed and got spat out on Falling Star run, one very bruised, winded and broken dude. Props to him, he skied down to First Aid to get checked out and then got taxied over to Fernie Hospital where they confirmed it was a break.

We then had an hours drive to Cranbrook hopsital where there is a breaks specialist and waited around for five hours to be told in five minutes that yes, he needed an operation (three pins) and he had to come back tomorrow. Bummer.

Bless him, he was exceptionally brave, having had no pain relief. We did have a good giggle when we heard one of the nurses ask another ER patient what level of pain they were experiencing, level 1 being mild and level ten being ripping your lip over your head!

He eventually had his two hour operation on Sunday afternoon, and we got home last night at about 6pm. Thank heavens for insurance - Canadian hospitals are not cheap. You would think that the amount of money you have to pay to even get through the door - $400 admission fee - they would be spanky places with unpeeled grapes on tap and private rooms a go go. Not so. Cranbrook hopsital is just like any other NHS hopsital in the UK. Crumbling walls painted hideous colours, peeling wallpaper and no canteen open at the weekend. The only good thing I can say about it is that the ER is probably a bit more unusual than your average UK hospital on a Saturday afternoon - while we were there a snowmobiler was helicoptered in and a little kid that had been hit by a quad bike - both were fine in the end, thankfully.

As I whiled away my seven hour wait on Sunday, knitting hats and reading a book from cover to cover, I met some lovely people from all walks of life but one thing that struck me about all of them is that they're not shy about sharing their injuries or ailments with you! I suppose us Brits are a reserved bunch, but I do think that Canadians on the whole are very measured in a way that they rarely get uppity or panicky - the ER was a very calm place, even when the paramedics wheeled the snowmobiler in.

And you would think that a hospital in a ski town would have a breaks specialist employed there... well, think again. The doctor at Cranbrook has only been working there a year and it took them a long time to get him. Why would a doctor not want to work in Fernie??? It's totally beyond me!

Broken Hamish with his shiny white plaster cast