03/09/07-04/09/07

LondonOntario

Arrived London on the afternoon of 3rd September after a connection in New York.

It’s Labor Day in the USA & Canada, a Bank Holiday to honour the workforce, celebrated by no-one doing any work. Wonder if we could transfer a similar concept to the UK & have a “Trauma Day” Bank Holiday where no-one hurts themselves & the Trauma Theatre has a day off?

London is about a 35minute flight from Toronto, a University Campus (University of Western Ontario) & we have arrived at the beginning of “Frosh” (Freshers’ week), so the bars are all heaving. Dinner at the wonderfully-ambigously named “Blue Ginger”. Fortunately Canadians are blissfully unaware of Cockney rhyming slang.

The unit at University Hospital was made famous by Cecil Rorabek & Bob Bourne. We are being hosted by Steve MacDonald & spend the 4th in theatre with Steve, Doug Naudie (Ganz-style open debridement & MoM THR with Summit stem & Pinnacle cup via Hardinge approach) & Jim McCauley (Summit & Pinnacle THR with ceramic on x-linked poly bearing via Hardinge approach).

We were shown their very impressive research facility with wear-stimulators & RSA lab plus introduced to their IT guy who has developed a software program (ORTECH) for saving data in an orthopaedic surgeon-friendly manner. Fantastic tool for recalling data & setting up studies, eg, you can pull out all male patients with a BMI of 36 who had a cemented stem in their left hip etc, etc & see their Womac, Harris score etc in excel or graphic form. Makes preparing presentations & papers very easy. 2 full-time joint replacements nurses collect the data, entered by a full-time clerk.

Dinner at The London Club, an MCC style gentlemens’ club (which now does allow ladies, not that there were any seen) before an early night prior to a 5am rise for the trip to Boston via Detroit. Breakfast at the ubiquitous Tim Hortons (Ontario coffee shops founded by an Ice Hockey player who was afraid of flying, but died when he fell asleep at the wheel driving to a game in the US). Usual, “oh yeah, two British Doctors, empty your bags” at customs whilst the hoodies, multiply-pierced & tattooed waltz through. Fortunately no pointed  pulling on of latex gloves..yet.