The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (52 page)

Actually, I got into the Flying Doctor Service in a roundabout sort of way, really. I’d been working out bush as a Remote Area Nurse and the girls from the RFDS knew me and they needed someone to do some relief work for them, so they gave me some relief work and it just followed on from there. I went part-time and finally I went full-time, which was great. That was at our Port Augusta base, which is in South Australia.

Then, as far as stories go, there’s one particular accident I still remember quite vividly. It happened to a midwife from Adelaide. At the time she was visiting people on a station property, out along the Transcontinental Railway Line that runs between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie. I’m not exactly sure how far out the property was just now, but we got an urgent call saying that somehow a brick fence had fallen on this midwife woman and she’d been caught and her lower leg was a mess.

On that occasion we flew out there without a doctor; there was just myself and the pilot. When we landed at the airstrip on the property, there was a ute already waiting for us, so I just grabbed some gear and in we went to see the injured woman. In all, from the time we’d been notified about the accident till the time we arrived, I’d say it took us about an hour and a half to reach her. By then they’d taken the bricks off her and she was lying on the ground, with her foot going in a
very odd sort of direction. So I just took one look and I thought, ‘What am I going to do here?’

It was a real mess. The pilot even had to walk away from it, that’s how horrific it was. Anyhow, the woman was still conscious so I took her pulse and while I was holding her hand I was summing up the situation. ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to go about this?’

The wall was a garden wall, and she’d been lying outside on the ground right next to it. Now, I don’t know what made it fall over — I didn’t actually ever ask that — but when it fell over it pinned her lower leg. It was just like, well, to be absolutely honest, it was a near amputation. Her clothes were even stuck between the broken bones of her leg. Oh, it was sort of all mashed up, mushed up, with the clothes wedged in the break, and I daren’t remove them without risking her bleeding more badly than what she already was.

Anyhow, after taking her pulse I thought, ‘Well, to start with, I’ll cut her shoe off just to see which way her foot’s really going.’ So that’s what I did and when I took a look, I thought, ‘There’s no way I can reposition this. It’s just got to stay in the shape it’s in, and I’ve got to support it the best I can.’

Actually, I was a bit worried about not trying to reposition her foot but, anyhow, I ended up deciding to stabilise the fracture as it was, in that awkward position. I put an IV (intravenous drip) in and gave her some pain relief. All this time the people that she’d been staying with were holding up a blanket to give her some shade. It wasn’t that hot. It was quite reasonable weather, you know, not too hot or cold, just reasonable. That was a good thing, and I don’t remember there
being too many flies about either, which was also a very good thing, too. I just hate it when you go to an accident where there’s blood and there’s millions of flies about.

So I got her as settled as I possibly could and then, when we went to move her back to the aeroplane, we laid her on a mattress — which would’ve been more comfortable than a stretcher — then we put her in the back of the ute and we drove her back out to the aircraft. To me, that seemed to take about twenty minutes. Then we returned to Port Augusta and from there she was taken down to Adelaide.

And later on I felt justified in my decision not to try and reposition the foot because actually all the doctors and that, they even decided to leave it the way it was before they did the X-rays and everything. They didn’t try to do anything until further down the track. And, luckily, as it turned out, her leg was saved. Mind you, they had a lot of trouble with it. But they managed to save it, so that was a nice ending to a rather challenging accident.

Then, on a lighter note, there’s the story about the same pilot I went out there with on that particular day, when the wall had fallen on the midwife. I won’t mention the pilot’s name but he was just so funny to work with, which, mind you, is exactly what you need in some of those more serious and critical situations. But this pilot just loved his dog. It went everywhere with him.

Anyway, one time we got this Code One out from Port Augusta. A Code One is an emergency. And when the pilot got the call he just grabbed his gear and ran out of his house. Then, just as he was about
to get in his car, he noticed that the boot was open, so he slammed it shut, then he jumped into his car and drove flat out to the airport, where he started preparing the aeroplane for take-off.

Then, just as we’re about ready to leave Port Augusta, I get this phone call from his wife saying, ‘Rhonda, I can’t find his dog anywhere. Is it out there with him?’

Now, I’d seen the pilot arrive but I hadn’t seen his dog.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen his dog.’

‘Perhaps it’s in his car.’

As it happened, I could see his car from where I was and it didn’t look like there was a dog in it, so I said, ‘No, the dog isn’t in the car.’

‘Well, that’s strange,’ his wife said, ‘because it always stays around the house when he’s gone. Look,’ she said, ‘just on the off-chance, would you mind asking him to check to see if his dog’s somehow ended up in the boot of his car?’

So I went out and I told the pilot and sure enough, when he unlocked the boot of his car, there’s this sheepish looking dog, looking very pleased to see its even more sheepish looking master.

I’ve only ever given injections once and, unless it’s a life or death situation, as far as I’m concerned it won’t happen again. I just hate giving injections. I don’t know why. It’s just one of those things. I just can’t do it unless, of course, it’s an absolute life and death situation. I remember one guy who came into Gibb River Station, in the Kimberley area of Western Australia. He was up here working in a Main Roads Maintenance Camp, and afterwards he told me that he just knew it was an accident waiting to happen. They apparently had an urn placed out on a bench, with the tap poking outwards so, of course, when he walked past the urn, the tap hooked onto his short pants, didn’t it? Over it went and he ended up with boiling water all down his side.

With Gibb River Station being the closest place to where the Main Roads crew were camped, they drove him in and asked if we’d call the Flying Doctor Service and get them to come out and treat him. In the meanwhile, the guy asked for some morphine to ease the pain. Apparently he’d been badly burnt before with a motor bike accident and so this poor bloke he just knew what he was going to have to go through with all these terrible burns. You could actually tell that he was thinking, ‘Oh, not again’, if you know what I mean.

Back in those days, the RFDS medical chests contained morphine in both injectable and tablet form; the injections, of course, being the much quicker acting.
I mean, we don’t have morphine in the medical chests any more because of the chance of it being abused. But I just couldn’t bring myself around to give him an injection, no way, so I gave it to him as a tablet instead. Then, just before the RFDS plane came to pick him up, it came out in discussion that we actually did have morphine in the injectable form. But I just told him that I didn’t have the confidence to give him a shot. ‘Oh bugger!’ he said. ‘If I’d known about that I would’ve given myself the injection!’

Oh, he was a big bikie sort of feller. So it was obvious that it wouldn’t have worried him too much to have given himself an injection. But there was no way that I was going to give him one.

Then there was another occasion when I just couldn’t give an injection. It’s one that really stands out in my mind. It was with a little Aboriginal boy, Devon. He’s still around town, here in Derby, but he was only about seven months old when this happened. It was also during the time that my husband and I were out on Gibb River Station.

As usual, these things always seem to happen in the wet season. I don’t know why, but the wet’s always the worst time for accidents and illness and so forth. Anyhow, Devon’s people — his Aboriginal people — came up from Mount Barnett Station and they were all playing cards with our lot at Gibb River Station. Then, as it does quite often in the wet, a huge storm hit us in the afternoon and the house creek just went whoosh and the water level came straight up. We were then flooded in which meant that these Aboriginal people couldn’t get back across the house creek to get out to the main road to go home. So they were stranded,
and they had this little baby, Devon. He was just there with his grandma and so he wasn’t being breastfed or anything. And because they weren’t supposed to be staying overnight they hadn’t brought along any of the baby formula to feed him with.

Anyhow, they brought this baby, Devon, up to me and asked if I had any baby formula, which we didn’t. At that time we didn’t even stock baby formula in our store on Gibb River. I tell you, after that we certainly always did. Anyhow, oh, this poor little baby, he was just so sick and I noticed that he had a swollen fontanelle — you know, the little bulging part in his head. Not only that, but he was also very lethargic which to me straight away signified that he could well have had meningitis.

So I got on to the Flying Doctor base in Derby and they suggested that I go to the medical chest and give him an injection. Now, you’re supposed to put the injection in the bum, but I just couldn’t do it, and especially not to a little baby, no matter how sick he looked. I’ve seen one of these injections given and, from the reaction, it was really difficult to get the needle into someone, plus it hurt like hell. So you know, I just said to the doctor, ‘I’m really, really sorry but no, I can’t; not to a little baby like that.’ I said, ‘I just can’t give him an injection. I just can’t do it. Is there any other way of treating him?’

Anyhow, we then had to put little Devon on 1000 micrograms of penicillin, as a liquid, which, mind you, is a huge dose of penicillin for a child. But to make matters even worse, with all the rain and the creek having risen so much, the Flying Doctor pilot couldn’t land on our strip because it was too wet.

And the Aboriginal people kept saying, ‘Why can’t they come?’

‘They can’t come,’ I tried to explain, ‘because the airstrip needs to dry out before the Flying Doctor aeroplane can land on it.’

‘Then why can’t they get a chopper (helicopter) to come out for him?’

‘They can’t,’ I said. ‘They just can’t. It’s too overcast for even a chopper to get in.’

Really, there was nothing we could do but sit and wait until the airstrip dried out because, basically, we were stranded. Of course, in the meantime this little fella, Devon, was really struggling. Then I remembered that we had some baby yoghurt in at the clinic and so we fed him with some of this baby yoghurt mixed with water. We also had Sunshine milk but we didn’t give him that because it probably would’ve made him sicker. And dear me, he’d just look at you with this big pair of eyes and your heart just went out to him. He was just so sick, the poor little man.

Then — and my memory’s a bit vague here — it was either the next morning or the next afternoon when the RFDS were able to get a plane in. By then the weather had cleared and the house creek had gone down. The house creek does that. It just goes up and down, up and down, like a yo-yo, with each storm, if you know what I mean. But with the Gibb River Station airstrip, it only needs a few hours of sun and it’s alright. So they flew in and they got little Devon and they took him into Derby Hospital, with his grandma.

And Hugh Leslie — who was the RFDS doctor at the time — well, he rang me after and he said, ‘Cheryl,
you did a really, really good job.’ He said, ‘He has got meningitis but I think he’ll be okay.’

So I felt really proud and very relieved about that, and Devon’s nanna also told me, ‘Oh, Missus,’ she said, ‘you shoulda seen him. When they bin give him that bottle, he bin like it’s all he wanted.’

And that really sticks out in my mind because meningitis is pretty deadly, you know. The poor little fella could’ve easily died. I really should’ve given him the needle but you know, again, I just didn’t have the confidence. So that’s why these days when I see Devon around town I always get a good feeling about that. I guess that he’d probably be about fourteen by now, maybe fifteen.

But there was one old lady who I did give needles to, and that was quite a funny one, in the end really. Old Maggie, it was. She was a beautiful old Aboriginal lady. She used to work in my garden and things like that when we were out on Gibb River Station. And this time she had a terrible dental abscess, so we rang up and we were told that she had to be given one penicillin injection per day, for four straight days.

On the first of the four days, she came into my house and she was nearly as bad as me, so to help her relax I got her to lie down on the bed and I said, ‘Wriggle your toes, Maggie. Get ready.’

So she wriggled her toes and I took a deep breath to prepare myself and then one…two…three…and I gave her the first of these daily needles. Anyhow, so that day went okay. We survived it, both Maggie and I. So that was day one. The next day Maggie seemed even more tense, you know, which of course made me feel even worse. So we go through the same procedure:
‘Lie down, Maggie. Wriggle your toes,’ and I somehow managed to give her the needle. So we both survived day two. Then on the third day Maggie arrives and she’s even more tense than the day before and I’m even worse still. She’s shaking. I’m shaking. She breaks out in a cold sweat. I’m already in a cold sweat. But we survived the experience…just. Then come the fourth day she arrives even more tense than the previous three days put together, and by now of course I’m just a complete wreck. Absolute. So I asked her straight out, ‘You feel pretty good today, Maggie? You feel okay now?’

And she looked at me with such a look of great relief on her face and she said, ‘Yeah, I’m feelin’ real good Missus.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘then how about we won’t worry about the needles today, aye, Maggie?’

‘Nah, Missus!’ she said. ‘We don’t worry about that no more!’

She didn’t want them. I didn’t want to give them. And when I told her ‘No needles today’ she was out of there like a shot. But, oh, they’re terrible things to give — just terrible, you know. And that’s the only time I’ve given injections and I don’t ever want to give another one again unless, that is, as I said, it’s in an absolute life and death situation.