Burin Peninsula - Plans are changing

Sunset near our Frenchman's Cove campsite

 

Another mild sunny day here today. We set out to explore the peninsula a bit. In the town of Grand Bank:

One of the large houses built by rich seamen, back in the day

 

Yesterday though, Cathie had hurt her finger when tucking blankets under the edge of the mattress when making the bed. It looked kind of odd, we thought she had stretched a tendon maybe, so splinted it to avoid further damage. Wish we had taken a picture of the splint, fashioned with folded boxboard and a couple of bandages.

While in Grand Bank she thought she'd have the pharmacist in the Shoppers Drug look at it. After she had a look at it, the pharmacist immediately said to get to the hospital Emerg, only a few blocks away. There they checked it out, and the upshot is that Cathie had somehow cut/torn a tendon in her ring finger. 

It seems a really odd thing, but a couple of nurses kind of marvelled at it because the same thing had happened to two of their co-workers recently. A bit of a head-scratcher.

They xrayed and diagnosed the problem, and provided a proper splint and some tape. They are trying to get Cathie in to a surgeon in St John's to repair the tendon as soon as possible. That might happen next week, we're hoping for a call to confirm that soon. Meanwhile we need to be prepared to get to St John's again, maybe fairly quickly at some point. The sooner it gets repaired the better, and that's likely to happen quicker here than trying to get back to Ontario and have it done there.

They did say the splint we had fashioned helped reduce further damage, so it did its job.

So instead of heading to the west coast and north from there, we'll be heading back easterly, likely south of St John's to places like Witless Bay and other notables in the Avalon Peninsula. This was sort of in our original original plan, so things may work out.

Cathie is a bit handicapped now, but it's not painful so we will carry on. I have to add how fortunate we feel to have the Canadian medical system. Here we are several provinces away from home, getting prompt help from skilled professionals, and so far have only needed to show our Ontario Health Card. No charges at all yet.

On a different note - we didn't realize how close we'd be to the French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon. We had thought we'd look into what's involved in a short crossing tour when we got to the town of Fortune, the ferry terminal. However this was now mid-afternoon after Cathie's hours-long hospital visit. We did drop around the ferry terminal, and it was very forbidding-looking. It's an International crossing, with all that that implies. Lots of dire warnings and rules posted outside the terminal building:

So this is as close as we got to St Pierre:

You'll see our short drive on the map below, and how close the French islands are here.