Discussions

The Russian specialist engineer (who can fix the plane to take the team home) is not due to Punta Arenas until Saturday… Apparently he has to be really small so he can fit in the engine—I kid you not—to repair the part. So even if the situation is perfect and he repairs the plane Saturday (Jan. 19), they test it, and the weather holds, the soonest we can get in will be Sunday. But in truth, no one is expecting it to go that smoothly.

Union Glacier is having an unexpected wind storm, with winds at 40 knots per hour and gusting higher. The clouds are stunning because of the high winds. These are called lenticular clouds. They look like a painter took a big thick brush, dabbed it in white paint and then just dabbed at the sky. People are really whooping it up and enjoying the incredibly windy day. There are a lot of kites in the air and some are actually practising their kite skiing. It is totally wild here.

Canada Health Infoway has established a pan-Canadian Clinician Peer Support Network Program. The initiative brings together natural leaders – physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other health care providers – to work closely with their peers, helping them achieve clinical value through effective use of health information and communication technology.

Although heart transplant recipient Dale Shippam is the most remarkable ambassador for organ donation and an inspiration to us all, my personal motivation for this trip changed on Dec. 16, 2012.

Certainly we had a much bigger flavour today than what we’ve been seeing over the last few days. It’s about -30 C today and with the wind chill it’s in the –40 to -50 C range. Because of the cold and because of the wind, we opted to do only four pushes and three stops, meaning each push was longer and the stops were shorter.

We woke up this morning and all of us were feeling the acute effects of the significant altitude. Even though we’re not as high as you might think of when being in other areas of altitude, the air at the pole is thin/stretched; it behaves much higher. It’s safe to say everyone feels like we’ve been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer.

Dr. Heather Ross, director of the Heart Failure Program at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre in Toronto and the medical director of the Cardiac Transplant Program, is venturing to the South Pole to raise awareness for heart failure research, cardiac transplantation and heart health.

The year in headlines: 2012’s heroes and villains