Cheers! The Northern Quebec Experience

• Main Author: Mahan Mathur
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chisasibi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.281.3918

My experience during the month long rotation in Chisasibi, Quebec, has been one full of contrasts: between feelings of emptiness and acceptance in this far-removed, yet warm-loving sector of Canadian soil, between stark landscapes and heavenly skies, between a timid population and their unimaginable secrets. Therein lies the problem: having spent only three weeks in this community, I have become comfortable with knowing that I'm treating my fifteen-year-old patient's six month old baby boy for a presumed viral illness. I have become complacent at enquiring about social habits because the idea of smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs seems the norm. Sexual status almost seems irrelevant in any teenager and thoughts of domestic abuse cross my mind more often when assessing a nine year old boy with jaw pain. Amongst the middle-aged and elderly population, the letters "DM 2 " are almost always penned down before asking about their relevant past medical history. Speaking to the nutritionist, it seems that such stereotypes can be misleading: she had recently been consulted on a thirteen-year-old for newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus. As an outsider, observing and interacting with this community's inhabitants on a daily basis, there seems this sense of apathy about healthcare, with patients often arriving at the most irrelevant times to verify that their cough is not a life-threatening pneumonia. Better yet are patients who arrive for appointments unaware of why they made the "rendez-vous " to begin with. To constantly write off such interactions as cultural differences is too fail to perform our tasks as family physicians (or in-training as is my case). Whereas we should savor the lovely intricacies of the Cree culture, with their rich history embedded in the language, * To whom correspondence should be addressed: