Today is Monday

The weekend was an interesting experience. The usual catching up on the ward patients with a few adjustments in management. Reduce medications, rationalise polypharmacy, prescribe evening therapeutic brandy. A few "out-patient" presentations, including someone who had to be referred on to Cairns Base. Saturday had a lady with a fish-hook imbedded in her toe. The standard push-through and cut off the barb was not going to work, the tip of the hook was in contact with bone, so "forwards" was not a viable direction to travel. The Flying Doctor manual had the solution, not a technique I had seen used before - shield the barb of the hook with the tip of an injection needle and then the "traction/rotation" extraction.

I also saw man with a cut finger (about a one week old injury ) who developed cellulitus. The local pharmacy being closed Sunday and with him having not enough petrol to travel far, I decided to give an intravenous antibiotic that would last 24 hours. This was Sunday morning. By Sunday evening he was feeling unwell, had fevers and while with us had "rigors" ( yeah, go look it up - but not a good thing to have ) ... easy decision, not something that I was comfortable attempting to manage locally anymore. This is in itself was actually not the reason why I tell you about this man though. It was because I got stonewalled by the Cairns Base ED doctor-on-duty. Reminds me of the days I was an "admitting officer" at Dandenong - it saddens me that decisions are made still based on workload and rationing of resources. I won't say much more because this is a public place, but needless to say I shared the nursing staff frustration.

Last night we also had someone in with a tick for removal. Long time since I had to deal with this. Patient and doctor survived the process. The tick did not.

Otherwise the weekend was a relatively casual time .. enough spare even to watch most of the NRL final .. until I couldn't bare watching anymore. It wasn't that Melbourne was losing, I can appreciate a good match who ever is winning or losing, but to have a game so one-sided ... no not a good spectacle at all - well except for the enthused Manley supporters who would have just been seeing their warriors slaughter the opposition.

Oh .. more photos ...

This one is of the hill behind the hospital - that rainforest on the back doorstep.

This one is of the welcome sign painted on a Silo near the Babinda railway station on the main road in ( Bruce Highway, which you can see on the Google map )

... and the other two of the local sugar mill not far from where I am staying. The smell down wind was quite pleasant, warm syrupy - not overpowering at all.

Today I got a semblance of a roster ... well, actually just notification of cover for the weekend. A locum who is currently in Weipa will be flying into Cairns and travelling down to cover me, if all goes to plan I will be off from 08:00 am Friday to 12:00 midday Sunday. Now I can plan a bit of local sight seeing.

Catch you all again in a few days.

ps. The photos are all stored online in my photo album found ... here