The Word - Vol 71

Ankle Express
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In last week’s Word, I told the story of coming face to face with a shotgun-toting rancher in Princeton while working for a mining company. That was the second mining location I was sent to by the company in my short career as a prospector. The first location was up north. It’s a long story, but to cut it short I put an axe in my ankle and spent time in an experimental hospital.

It began when, much to my parent’s dismay, I decided to take an extended vacation from high school, and was told if I wasn’t going to go to school, I had to get a job. I was hired by a mining company to be part of a prospecting team. Our job was to see if there was any silver on the company’s property on the side of a mountain, high above Stewart, B.C. Stewart is a town at the head of the Portland Canal separating Alaska and B.C.

Our team consisted of a surveyor, a university student, and me.  The surveyor ran the transit, which is the instrument a surveyor looks into, the university kid held the stick, or range pole, and my job was to clear the bush in between the transit and the pole.

A few days into the job, while clearing the bush, my axe glanced off a wet root and ended up in my ankle. I was helped back to our camp where we put a couple of bandaids across the wound in a butterfly stitch. We called for the helicopter that brought us our supplies to come and get me. After waiting a day for the weather to clear, I was then taken off the mountain and into town, where I was taken to the experimental hospital. There had been a regular hospital in Stewart when the nearby Granduc copper mine was up and running, but the mine had shut down. It wasn’t certain that the remaining population in town would warrant a full-time hospital. 

I was checked in and it was determined I needed stitches. The nurse took me to a room that I shared with a guy who was moaning and groaning and in obvious pain. He had been in a fight the night before and had a gunshot wound to his hand. He was checked by the doctor and sent to Prince Rupert as the hospital wasn’t equipped to handle the case.  

As I waited for my stitches, I got another roommate, this one had a towel over his face and was also moaning. There was a lot of moaning in this hospital! He too had been in a fight the night before, not sure if it was the same fight, and had been hit in the face with a large rock. He would also be shipped out to Prince Rupert, as the case was too tough for the hospital.  

This did not instill a lot of confidence in the workings of this hospital. I was starting to wonder if they would be able to handle the stitches that I needed. I didn’t have to wait long, when I was wheeled into the operating room the doctor looked at my open wound and asked me if I wanted any freezing. My answer was a quick, “Yes please!”  

He turned around and was doing something on the table behind him, then quickly spun around and jammed a cotton ball soaked in alcohol into my wound! I went 3 feet off the table! He said, “What’s wrong?” What’s wrong? Did I have to tell him the effects alcohol has on an open wound?  

He then started preparing the needle for the anesthetic, but I suddenly heard him talking to someone. I looked up to see he was talking on the phone but left the needle sticking in my ankle! When he finally stitched up my wound he put one stitch on one end of the cut, one stitch on the other end, and one in the middle, so my wound was now the shape of a figure eight, with a couple of gaps on either side of the middle stitch. Not the way I would do it, but who was I to argue? I got wheeled back to my room. 

Later that day, a fellow patient from the room next door came to visit. He said it wasn’t looking good for his roommate. He said his roommate had passed out. As we talked, the backfire doors of the hospital opened, and the panel truck/taxi that delivered me from the helicopter earlier was backing up to the door. The driver kicked open the truck’s back doors and pulled out a basket-type stretcher, the kind that’s usually used in search and rescue. He and a buddy carried it into the hospital room next door. Moments later, they came out with someone on the stretcher covered with a Canadian flag! It was the roommate, and he hadn’t passed out, he had passed away!  

So, with this latest development, the broken nose that couldn’t be fixed, the gunshot to the hand that couldn’t be fixed, and my figure eight stitching job on my ankle I felt it was time I got out of there before I was carried out on a stretcher draped with a Canadian flag! I changed into my clothes, put my boots on the best I could, snuck out the back door, and hobbled down the street in search of the helicopter. Our prospector’s tent on the side of a mountain suddenly seemed like a safer place than that hospital.  

I found the helicopter, and the pilot took me back up to camp. Another day passed and the helicopter came back! Strange, because we hadn’t called for it or ordered anything? When it landed, the doctor from the experimental hospital jumped out! He spotted me, and shaking a finger at me yelled, “If you get gangrene, don’t blame me!” He then jumped into the helicopter and was gone. I guess that was his idea of a house call. 

The wound healed, with no gangrene, and eventually, the job was completed. We didn’t find enough silver deposits for the mining company to continue with the project, so we headed home. 

I was beginning to think that going back to school might be a better option.

Till next week….
Wayne

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