INSIDE: Survey says we have high quality of life in Chilliwack Pg. B1 T U E S D A Y
January 25, 2011
12 N E W S ,
SPORTS,
WEATHER
&
Giant nemesis just down the highway
E N T E R T A I N M E N T chilliwacktimes.com
Farms versus
Fish
eye see dead people
Drainage issue battle lines being drawn once again BY PAUL J. HENDERSON phenderson@chilliwacktimes.com
A
Tyler Olsen/TIMES
Chilliwack General Hospital nurse Kirste Fritz (above) is a part-time enucleator tasked with removing, for transplant, the eyes of the recently deceased. BY TYLER OLSEN tolsen@chilliwacktimes.com
Kirste Fritz desperate recipients. The removal of eyes is nothing like that. Neither are those who conduct the operation. We’ll start with Fritz. Despite being just 25 years old, she carries with her the serious, professional demeanor that is necessary when you have a job that necessitates spending large quantities of time alone in morgues, often in the
middle of the night. Her young age is not uncommon for an enucleator; the procedure is delicate but relatively simple and the on-call nature of the job is attractive to medical students and those trying to bolster their resumes and get a foot in the door of a medical profession. Fritz, doesn’t need to update h e r re s u m e — s h e’s a l re a d y a
post-surgical nurse at Chilliwack General Hospital. For her, the job is an extension of a passion that dates back to school. “I always wanted to be a surgeon,” she said. But Fritz also wanted a life, and the decade of schooling and long hours required to be a surgeon, convinced her to become a nurse. In her final year of school, while interning at CGH, a patient on her floor donated his eyes. Fritz followed along as two would-be enucleators were trained in the process. Hearing about the step-by-step process triggered her interest in enucleation. “It is very surgical,” she said. See EYE, Page 4
See FARMS, Page 3
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f it’s not the strangest part-time job in Chilliwack, then it must be in the top-five. Kirste Fritz, to put it bluntly, removes the eyes of dead people. Fritz is an on-call enucleator for Fraser Health. When somebody in the Valley no longer needs the use of their healthy eyes—when they’re dead, in other words—and when that person is a registered organ donor, it’s time for an enucleator to go to work. Most people are at least passingly familiar with how vital organs— the heart, kidneys and liver—are removed from a “living corpse” in order to be transplanted into
“It’s a little strange, yes, but that’s never bothered me and in some cases I think it’s kind of cool. I’ve always liked that side of things. Some of my friends think it’s really weird but, you know, it’s totally been up my alley my whole life.”
ndy Bodnar has been growing crops and milking cows on land adjacent to Mountain Slough in Agassiz for his entire life just as his father did before him. The issue of flooding on his land—which stands just 12 metres above sea level—has been frontand-centre for as long as his family’s cows have provided milk. But recent endangered species consultation meetings held by the federal fisheries department held in Chilliwack and Agassiz have brought up old wounds, and once again old battle lines are being drawn and farms are being pitted against fish. Farmers want ditches, which sometimes criss-cross crop land, to be regularly cleaned out with excavators to allow for proper drainage in the flood-prone land. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) approves drainage requests and, in efforts to protect species listed under the Species At Risk Act (SARA), wants other techniques used to allow for both drainage and fish habitat to be maintained. Farmers say it doesn’t make
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