Limping in a winter Wonderland

So here it is, the story of the year. I am sitting here writing this with a cast on my leg from my toes to my knee. How did it get there? Well, Saturday afternoon Tom and I went up Seymour to go Snowboarding. We were having a great time. I was making it down some long runs without falling and learning how to switch from my heel edge to my toe edge. Things were great. We had an awesome lunch and then head to the hills for some more. I made it off the big chair lift the first time with a minor fall. The ride down was alright. We came up a second time. Here is where the accident happened. I was coming off the chair lift, I had my right foot bound in my board and was trying to get my left foot on my kick pad, the details of the next few minutes are not so clear. My board slipped from underneath me and I ended up going over onto my left ankle. It was here that I heard a very very load popping noise, screamed, and laid in the snow crying until I realised that I better get the hell out of the way before I get even more injured by the other people falling off the chair lift. I moved to the left and at this point, it literally just felt like a bad twisted ankle. However, due to the sound I heard when it happened, I stayed put and waited for first aid. I was taken off the mountain by snowmobile which was pretty cool actually. Took my mind off my ankle for the time being. When I got to the bottom they put me on a bed and progressed to attempt to take my boot off, let me tell you, that was not cool. I just laid there, used my yoga breathing and just took the pain. Luckily there were two paramedics already up there so they came over to check out my foot. They told Tom and I that we would have to go to the Hospital for x-rays. At this point we had no idea what exactly was wrong with it and were thinking that it must just be a sprian. Eventually we got to Peace Arch Hospital in Whiterock where we waited and waited some more after my x-rays to only find out that I would have to stay the night in the hospital as I had fractured my ankle in two places and would require surgery to place my bones back where they should be. The surgery would include a metal plate and two pins. I literally laughed in the doctors face and asked him if he was kidding. I was shocked, ya my foot looked like a basball had grown on the side of it, but surgery?!?!?? So I got a makeshift cast put on my leg and was wheeled to a room to sleep for the night. Not cool. The next morning I was taken up to the O.R. floor and given a bed there. Stay tuned now this gets worse. ok so they tell me that I'm going into surgery in just one hour, not bad actually, beats waiting for it. So I get taken to the O.R. and the anesthesiologist visits me. I have a choice, I can have general anesthetic or spinal freezing aka an epedural. Now, I hate General Anesthetic, bad experience so I opted for the epedural. I was pretty scared though, thinking about a needle going into my spine. So they start doing it to me and at first its not bad, then there is this shooting of pain from my spine to a more sensitive area and I jump. Now I'm freaking out because I moved with a freaking needle in my spine! The doctors say not to worry and they administer the second dose and the same thing happens at this I pass out and wake up when it's all over. Just a bad dream. Ok so NOW, I'm in my hospital bed and they tease me with the thought of going home that night. i didn't end up so lucky. Turns out, and I never thought of this, that my insides are frozen as well. That means my bladder. So at around 9pm Tom and I are watching a movie and I tried to sit up only to have incredible pain below my stomach. I call the nurse, she does an ultrasound and I have an incredible amount of fluid I cant get rid of. They threaten me with a catheter and I'm ready to break out of the hospital at the thought of that. Anyway to spare the unneeded details here, I managed to get rid of the liquid naturally and barely slept through the night. When I woke that morning I was visited by physio to teach me how to use crutches and then was allowed to leave. Merry Christmas to me!!!

Environmental Refugees

I just finished writing the last paper of the semester. I was dreading writing it and getting it started was torture, however, now that I am finished I am so glad I chose this topic. Before I wrote this paper I had no idea what an environmental refugee was. To be honest I had never thought of global warming affecting where people lived. I quickly realised that this was quite naive of me. So because I'm sure not many other people know some of the affects I just wanted to take this time to go through some of the stuff I wrote about in my paper.

• The UN is estimating that by the end of this decade there will be upwards of 50 million environmental refugees.

• Environmental degradation is currently displacing more people that war or conflict. (There are 19 million current conventional refugees).

• The main problem is that the majority of the international community does not recognise environmental refugees as refugees therefore these people are not entitled to the same protection offered to conventional refugees.

• Some of the affects of global warming causing this issue are, desertification (productive lands turning to desert land), deforestation, soil erosion, extreme weather (hurricanes), water deficits and droughts, salienation, and of course rising sea levels.

• Because the earth is warming at such a rate, ice in northern regions is melting causing a rise in sea levels. There is an Island in the pacific ocean between Hawaii and Australia that has literally admitted deafeat to rising sea levels and will evacuate the Island. If anyone is interesting in looking further into this the island is called Tuvalu.

50 million people is an insane number. I think it is about time the international community start paying attention to this problem. Emphasis should be put on improving the state of the environment first. kyoto is not enough.