A few weeks back, while I was completely on my own, the phone rang at home. On the other end was a local yelling 'Come to clinic, quick, quick'. Now does that mean finish you dinner, have a shower and wander up, or does it mean drop everything and run? Well who knows.
This time it was 6-00pm and the voice did sound a bit stressed.
So put yourself in my shoes. I jump in the ambulance and hoot the 2 kms up the dirt road to the community. As I come around the corner near the clinic all I can see is a sea of locals, hundreds of them, some standing, some on the ground, distressed, crying and wailing. Your heart hits your boots. What the hell is going to greet me? I get out of the car, scanning the crowd for what it is I am looking for. There in the middle of the crowd, being held in the arms of an elder gentleman is a child, lifeless, bent over his arms like a rag doll.
I unlock the door and usher the gentleman into the emergency room. We place the child on the trolley and I look around and there are 50 people in the room. This room is tiny, maybe 3 metres x 5 metres (about as big as a bathroom) with most of it being taken up with the resus trolley. The child is alive, but what happened? I ask the question and everybody just looks at me. The room is in silence. Is it a snake bite, a fit, a drowning or an accident? Where do you start? After raising my voice a little and asking the same question, one person coughs up. 'She fell out off the back of a ute.' Good, a starting point. Who saw the accident? Total silence again. Was the car moving? Still silence. How can so many people be so quiet? After raising my voice again, "Come on guys, help me out here, work with me for Gods sake", one person again splutters, '80 kms an hour.'
Bloody hell, 80 kms/hour is fast to hit the deck. Next problem. It will be dark in 1 hour so if I need to get a plane out here, the window of opportunity is rapidly slamming in my face. Our air strip is not lit. Its a 'day time use' only.
A quick set of observations, look her over for other injuries then try and get all these people out of here. I cannot even get around to the other side of the trolley.
At the top of my voice, "Everybody out, out now, go go". Nobody moves. Time to be a little more forceful. Slowly the crowd makes their way out. I lock the door behind them, but someone on the inside opens another door and in they come again. I am fighting a loosing battle. I grab a senior man and lady, take them in the other room and tell them, "I cannot help this girl unless I can move. Get rid of these people, and get rid of them now." I know these people are upset, but they will just have to be upset somewhere else. The ploy works and they scream out in language and almost everybody except the immediate family leave.
Why do I have to be on my own??? The child is not well, not well at all, but stable. It's now dark, and the only way out of here is 80kms of rough dirt road and then 130kms on the highway to Alice Springs. How do you drive and look after a sick child? Who around could or would drive for me? Who do I trust enough on those roads at night, with cattle everywhere. I really want to get home to my family tonight after this is all over.
Alice Springs is notified, and hopefully St John Ambulance can do a half way meet, that is, meet us somewhere along the road. That can be the difference of 2 hours on the road or 5 hours. That is a big difference at 11-00pm. Again luck is on my side and they will meet us, somewhere on the highway. They leave at the same time as I do. I drive, with relatives in the back of the ambulance with the patient. I have to stop every 15 minutes to check on her and am constantly asking "Is she OK?" If I ask that once, I ask it 300 times during the journey. Not a pleasant situation. Finally we are on the highway. All has gone well so far. Our red beacons are flashing, lighting up the night sky like a bush fire. How far away are these guys? Then in the distance, a sea of flashing beacons, they are coming my way. We pull over, finally I am not on my own. Believe me that is a nice feeling.
The patient is transferred to the other ambulance, a hand over given and they are ready to complete the journey to town. As they drive off into the darkness, their flashing lights fading in the distance, it is time for our beacons to go off, for us to turn around and back down that dirt road. It's midnight by the time I get back, time for dinner and then to try and get to sleep. Welcome to a night in my world. Thank goodness this does not happen every night.
This kid will live. That is a nice feeling. How easily it could have gone the other way.
This might sound a little selfish, but the other thing that is on my mind while I am alone, is what will happen if something happens to me. What do I do if I get really sick, collapse or get chest pain. Who will come to save my life? The simple answer is no one. Absolutely no one.
During our time out here we had two weekends away in Alice Springs. One was at our expense, to do some grocery shopping and the other compliments of the NT Govt. I had to go into town to complete a course I had done, so it was tacked onto a weekend. It is nice to get away.
We have caught up on plenty of jobs since being here and the kids have been working away at their school work. Poor Harry only finally received his school books in the middle of March after a number of cock-ups. Luckily Chris brought plenty of other work for him, so they have been plugging through that.
In my second last week at Laramba, yet another one of those great "It could only happen out in the bush" things happened. We had just opened the doors at work and were sitting out the front of the clinic having a cuppa when a Landcruiser pulls into the driveway. Who this time? It really is a constant stream of visiting everybodies, coming out here, almost on a daily basis. This time it was the 'Rural Vet' from Alice. These two ladies were in town for two days to deal with the huge number of dogs in the community. Part of the strategy, other than the 'Green Dream" is to spade or castrate as many dogs as they can. "We need a bit of shade and power. Some water would be good", they say. They look longingly at the carport where the ambulance is parked. Yeah, OK I say, and within minutes of moving the ambulance we have a makeshift, open air operating theatre happening. Dogs on the table, IV in their paw, anaesthetic injected, let the surgery begin.
I must say it did add yet another dimension to our daily routine. They had a recovery bay set up on the ground and at the peak of production, they had 5 dogs lined up, all with their tongues hanging out. What a sight.
Yes, we will miss it out here.
Another brilliant experience for me was to be involved in the "men's business ceremony". While I am unable to elaborate, as I do not wish to betray the trust that the locals bestowed on me, it was an amazing experience and one that I will never, ever forget. It was an absolute privilege and something that almost NO white fellas ever get to see. These are the reasons why working in a area for a while, gives you such a different perspective, as opposed to just being a tourist, who flits in and flits out, only seeing the things the local folk want them to see. Every town, every community has it's hidden jewels, the jewels that only the locals know about and use. By living and working next to these people you get to discover these jewels. No amount of money can buy you experiences like this, believe me.
Now I must mention one of our afternoon sporting events. We have taken to late afternoon cricket games in the front yard, and it is becoming fiercely competitive. A few weeks back Alex was batting and Chris walked behind just as Harry bowled the ball. Alex swung and firstly collected Chris in the face with the bat and then followed through and hit the ball for a four. There was plenty of blood and yelling. Poor old Chris ended up with a nice laceration across her nose and then a few days later a good black eye.
