Locums for a Small World Blog

It's a long way from Biddeford to the Top of the North

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That's Biddeford, Maine - a town that's darn near as far north as you can go in the United States - and the Northern-most tip of New Zealand, where two oceans collide.

The Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea surround this completely unspoiled land of long sandy beaches, island-studded bays and dense subtropical forests. Cape Reinga, just twelve degrees below the Tropic of Capricorn, plays host to the historic lighthouse that guards the country's northwestern shores. Magnificent Ninety Mile Beach stretches in an unbroken span of white sand for nearly 50 miles (88 km) where boogie-boards become slick toboggans on the golden sand dunes. Surfers, sea kayakers and sailors take to the waves. And it's all flanked by the Aupouri Forest, a Narnia-like place where bands of wild horses roam free. Yes, the Top of the North is a hub for outdoor and historical activity, but it's in the "wop-wops" by Kiwi standards - out of the way and the last stop before nowhere.

So when Judith Ziegler, DO, took a recent holiday trip to New Zealand, she hadn't really planned to go back to the Northland, where she had locumed in 2007. As travelers are known to do, however, she changed course and took the four-hour detour only to be shocked when she "met" the new locum physician there - a classmate from medical school whom she hadn't seen in nearly 20 years! Global Medical locum, Christopher Brace, DO, was just as stunned. After all, the University of New England's College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford is more than 9,000 miles (15,000 km) from the Top of the North. Plus, the med school is tiny. Yet both graduates of this itsy-bitsy school went to the same itsy-bitsy spot in the wop-wops to locum. Who'd a thunk? By all accounts the good docs had a good "yack" in the Northland.  
                                  
Judith Ziegler, DO is an Family Practitioner from Portland, Maine who says a "little postcard" from Global Medical changed her life; Christopher Brace, DO is also an Family Practitioner and lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.