• 10 years ago
• Posted in:Winnipeg
• 1
• Author: genievec

My supervisor Chira told me to come around 9:00AM

I arrived at 8:30AM

because I didn’t know it only takes a matter of seconds to bus from my house to my workplace. That’s a pretty big difference with the 2 hour bus ride to UBC.

8:30AM

Sabine Ma, the head professor of the research department, greeted me and told me that my supervisor was unable to come in today, none of her co-workers knew about it, so I’m basically the lost kid in the building.

Sabine told me I am working with a high school volunteer on this project for 4 months. Is the high school student skipping school or something, shouldn’t they be in class until June?

The Cancer Centre looks really fancy outside and on the first floor. But once I stepped into the research area, the building lost the glamorous touch. The entire floor was dark, and the equipment were outdated, everything felt really packed and stuffy.

Sabine introduced me to a doctor who’s going to be doing research in the lab in September, and then she introduced me to another supervisor, Cheryl, who is going to go over some general lab instructions with me and a young medical doctor. The high school student apparently hasn’t arrived in Winnipeg yet.

I mean who would want to arrive here early anyways, good for you high school student.

During the whole tour, I kept hearing “no budget”, “not enough funding”, and “don’t have enough money”. The equipment was extremely different compared to UBC, UBC labs have relatively modern and new equipment, and the equipment I saw today were really outdated and out of condition. But I guess I’ll just have to live with it for the next 8 months.

10:ooAM

Once the tour ended, I was literally assigned to do nothing. I really wanted to leave, but I am getting paid till 5, so I sucked it up and went in the lunch room with the doctor.

Hazaan? I think was the doctors name. We didn’t really do a formal introduction of ourselves. He’s a surgeon working in the surgical wing in the hospital, he wants to continue on to do a masters degree, so he’s volunteering to do research. He’s extremely tall and buffed, so that kind of intimidated me, but he’s an extremely talkative guy. He started all of the conversation, because I can literally think of nothing to talk about.

“What department are you in?”

“What is your research going to be about?”

“What do you find interesting about the research?”

My answers were short and concise: I don’t know.

Then, he probably realized he’s not going to be able to squeeze anything out of me if he continues to ask me questions about this research project that I know nothing about. So he started to talk about his own interest: Urology.

He brought out a book for me to read, “The Medical Statements of Urology”

And he showed me all the surgical pictures and diagrams of what goes on in the urinary tract.

“Do you have a strong stomach? These pictures are going to be pretty bloody”

He showed me a guy with a broken leg, patients with direct hernia, patients with indirect hernia, and patients with two reproductive organs.

He flipped through the book and walked me through a shit ton of diagrams and pictures, and did an extremely sophisticated lecture on urinary systems for 3 hours.

I was really excited at first, but then after that 2 hour point, he started throwing out big terminologies, so I just gave up processing everything he’s throwing at me.

He was really nice though,

“Do you want to watch a live surgery? I can check my schedule and get you in? You probably want an open surgery rather than closed surgery?”

Hell.To.The.Yes.

“I’m working on a research paper on patients with kidney cancer, are you interested? I can probably put your name in the research paper, it’s more of the data statistics organization”

Are you an angel sent from heaven?

“You’ve never been to the nice side of Winnipeg, I can totally show you around the nice part of Winnipeg, drive you to the nice places when you’re off”

“You can be my first friend here! Since I don’t get to socialize much with my 100+ hour on call shifts per week”

Hold up.

Let me go check some stuff off my to do list:

– befriend a doctor (I got a surgeon, even better)

– befriend someone who’s willing to show me around Winnipeg (I got a surgeon, even better)

– befriend someone who has a car (I got a surgeon, even better)

Achievement in Winnipeg Level 1 Unlock.