Agnes and Ecstasy – vol V                                  

For those living in the real world, the past four or five weeks hopefully have contained post-Christmas frivolity and New Year froth.  I would love to share ours with you but it was cut off sharply around Boxing Day and turned into four weeks of major Non-Fun.  A treacherous trail through Queensland Health in search of a holy grail. Just after Christmas, we drove down to Bundaberg (about an 80 minute drive) for a day's shopping with our friends of three months standing, John and Julie. We always take Peppie and of course since Coco came to us, we take both pups.  But on this occasion we didn't take them.  We had never driven down with humans before either but the gods do work in mysterious ways...

My husband is not a small man, he is 6ft 3 and that's just across the shoulders.  So when he collapsed at about 2pm as we were heading home, I was eternally grateful our friends John and Julie were with us.  Bundaberg Base Hospital brings fear and terror into the hearts and minds of most up here and the thought of my darling having to go in there was untenable until I was informed it had the only Emergency facilitates.   I cannot objectively write about this episode but will jot down a few survival points should the same thing happen to you.

1.  Make sure you have private medical health cover.

2.  When the 10 year old doctor cannot tell you why your husband is dead white and collapsed but decides you should drive your husband home to Agnes Water and come back in a week or so when they can do an investigation, stand up quickly.  Take the doctor's arm (try not to rip it out and beat him with the wet end), look down into his eyes and say 'No - we will not be making that decision'   This then involves him in the new decision which you have decided will involve getting your beloved a hospital bed until there is a medical diagnosis - as opposed to getting him a minimum of 1.5 hrs away from any sort of hospital, into a house that has two flights of stairs to enter or exit, with only the help of a wife half his size who has no medical training.

3.  It's best at this point to overcome emotional responses such as whipping out your non-black Amex card and declaring you will buy the hospital if that's what it takes to get your husband a bed. I can assure you it doesn't work.

4.  This is also a good time to have a first class acute care nurse (in our case named Derek) on duty.  Derek reminds the doctor that my husband has private health cover so therefore could be transferred to a hospital bed at the Friendly (The Friendly Society Private Hospital).  Imagine what would have happened had we not been covered or I had agreed to take Tom home?  In the end, Tom was flown by air ambulance to Brisbane and was given a total of six units of blood (he had serious abdominal bleeding). 

5. Make sure you are befriended by John and Julie prior to this type of event. 

Now, I must admit, when I started this web site I thought of it more for locals.  However, from the emails I receive from strangers, I know folk across the globe read it.  So let me round out this event by writing a small note on Indian doctors - of which we have a great many practicing in this area not just the infamous Dr Death Patel (see photo and story in side column).  Yes, the 10 yr old was Indian but so were the next 2 and they knew their stuff. They were followed by a German, then an Errol Flynn look alike, a devastatingly handsome Italian and two Australians.