|
|
|
News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
|
____________________________________________________________________________
June 2005
A physiotherapist for Pikangikum
Sue Careless
Cummins spends the first few days of each two-week stint at the hospital in Sioux Lookout. Then she boards a 9- or 15-seat plane to visit more remote communities such as Nancy Cummings (photo: Sue Careless) Pikangikum, Lansdowne House, Fort Hope or Fort Severn on Hudson’s Bay. Her trips cover a vast land of 250,000 lakes so not surprisingly many of the reserves she works in are named after lakes: Sandy, Sachigo, Wegamow, Pickle, Deer, Red, Bearskin, or Big Trout. All are north of the 50th parallel.
“The hospital drives the agenda. I go wherever I’m needed.”
Cummins is a rural girl at heart. Born in Kirkland Lake, she is the daughter of a geologist and grew up with rock samples in her house. She moved to Toronto as a small child but her parents always portrayed the north in a positive fashion. “For my mother it was the best place to grow tomatoes during the long summer days. I expected a harsh beauty full of wildflowers.” But it was a friend who had nursed at Sachigo Lake who challenged the physiotherapist to work in Ontario’s far north.
Cummins, 63, works in hospitals, nursing stations and clinics, but enjoys home care the most. “I want to work where people live, not in institutions. And I want to help them stay in their homes.”
While there are nursing homes in Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout, most older aboriginals want to live at home, close to their children and their beloved land. So many band councils have trained and hired home support workers to help those who are homebound with their shopping, laundry, wood chopping and cooking.
“What simple things would make your life easier?” she asks her clients. “The goal is to keep you at home if at all possible.” She calls it the W.I.T. approach, “whatever it takes”.
She works with the health representatives of various band councils to devise ways to keep people moving well, no matter what their age. She’s pleased that band councils have built ramps for most buildings making them wheelchair accessible. “Now if there is a knitting group or drumming session, everyone can access it.”
Besides issues of mobility and isolation, Cummins tries to address pain and risk issues such as falls. In the north there are skidoo and boating injuries to be dealt with and chronic degenerative illnesses such as arthritis and diabetes as well as depression. There are also repetitive strains caused by cleaning muskrat or beaver pelts.
When it was traditional to walk long miles along the trap-lines and eat a high protein diet, aboriginals were generally healthier. Now everyone travels around on skidoos and finds it hard to process all the sugar found in southern foods and alcohol.
“I go with my bare hands, with a minimum of equipment, just some visual aids for education, and then I try to find what is already in a person’s house and adapt it.”
What lessons might be covered in 6 or 8 visits to a physiotherapist in the south must be packed into 1 or 2 visits in the north. Cummins may not see the patient again for another year. So whether she is dealing with knee or hip replacements, arthritis, diabetes or joint disorders, she tries to demonstrate as much as she can in a short period of time.
Cummins is a vivacious woman who has learned to be quieter in the north. “On the trap-line you have to work quietly. In the south we tend to use a lot of language in instruction. We are very verbal.” In the north, traditional teaching is by observation and demonstration. There is much quiet attention. Children watch, and then, when they are ready, they often perform a task quite well. “I had to learn not to be so verbal and to quietly wait.”
Cummins enjoys the cross-cultural challenges of Toronto but there are further challenges in the north. She kindly but firmly told one client who was recovering from a stroke, “You have to slow down.” He was offended and corrected her, “I have to learn the way of the tortoise.” Cummins realizes she needs to be subtler. “I’m way too direct.”
Eventually Cummins hopes all the health care professionals working in the north will be indigenous. There are growing numbers of native nurses and teachers.
Cummins visits students
in grades 7 and 8 to raise their awareness about careers in
physiotherapy. First she asks them what sports they enjoy. (Hockey
is always a favourite.) Then she shows them a program of stretching
exercises they could use to prevent sports injuries. “If you think
you’d like to help people this way, study science,” she urges them.
|
|||
|
|
In
the winter, when many of her Toronto neighbours are heading south,
Nancy Cummins flies north. She is a true snowbird. Over the past
five winters she has made 16 trips to 14 fly-in reserves in northern
Ontario, offering her skills as a physiotherapist. |
Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2005 |