Wednesday 16 January 2013

A cautionary tale

... in which Matt goes to the hospital and Mary learns that Googling medical symptoms isn't conducive to peace of mind.

Most of you will by now be aware of the 'hospital episode' via Skype, Facebook or the Parental Network but requests have been coming in for a follow-up, so I thought I'd give you the whole story. 

Still staying at Matt's sister Pam's house, we sat down to a dinner of steak and salad one evening last week.  Matt attacked his meal in the customary manner, that is: one that would make a gannet blush (to continue the avian theme) but three bites in he started making choking noises, whereupon he leapt up from the table and scuttled off down the garden to throw up, followed keenly by the dogs, who knew the opportunity for a bit of almost pristine steak when they saw one.

I was pretty unfazed by this, given that Matt frequently has to rush out of the room for a glass of water to help wash down the gargantuan mouthfuls he's crammed into his gob, and in keeping with my general views on this activity, I assured Pam that there was nothing wrong with him that a bit of table manners and a more measured approach to eating wouldn't cure.  There might have been some pursing of lips and some heavenward glances accompanied by the odd long nasal sigh involved as well.  I couldn't possibly say.

The meal continued without Matt for a few minutes until it became clear that he wasn't coming back to the table, which, with half a pound of prime beef still on his plate, was unusual.  Suddenly I was overcome with pangs of guilt about my less than charitable assumptions and went in search of my poor, long-suffering husband, not only afflicted with some kind of physical discomfort but also with a harridan of a wife.  

I found him in the bathroom, in some distress which he explained was due to the fact that he couldn't swallow anything.  Nothing.  Not even a sip of water.  Pam and Mabs (Pam's husband) suggested I take Matt to the 24 hour medical centre in Taringa, but Matt was adamant that he didn't need a doctor.  However, this complaint continued all night, during which time I'd Googled 'inability to swallow' and found a whole range of possible diagnoses, from getting food stuck in the oesophagus and reflux induced corrosion to indications of major neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis (!).  Never one to pass up the possibility of a bit of drama, I spent the night envisioning worst case scenarios including, but not limited to, long-term care and subsequent widowhood with a bit of abject poverty thrown in.  Edwardian costumes in black crepe and tear-drenched, lace-fringed handkerchiefs might have featured in my imaginings at one point.  But I'm not telling.  

By morning, therefore, we were both seriously wound up and on top of that, Matt was knackered and sore from retching every five minutes for 12 hours.  Quite apart from the horrific list of possible diagnoses, it had been seriously hot that week with midday temperatures in the mid to high thirties and Matt was losing quite a bit of fluid without any means to replenish it.  We decided that at this stage, we'd need to go straight to an A&E department, so after Mabs gave us the details for the nearest public hospital, I drove Matt to the Royal Brisbane, while he spat into a bowl and gave me driving directions.  

At the hospital, they took him in straight away and did all the preliminary tests etc.  It's the quietest A&E I've ever seen!  He was seen by no less than 5 medical staff and 2 administrators in less than an hour and other people were rallying round, asking if anyone wanted a spare trolley as there was a bit of a glut of them, apparently.  Meanwhile they put him on a saline drip to counter dehydration.  They were also really keen to give Matt some anti-nausea drugs, despite his repeated assurances that he didn't feel nauseous, and was only retching to avoid choking on his own spit.  Nevertheless, it appeared that everyone walking past his bed felt compelled to offer him some, until one of the resident medics got impatient and gave him a drug to relax his oesophagus which she assured him WOULD make him feel sick, much to the relief of everyone in the department, as they'd finally get to shift the surplus of anti-nausea drugs.    
 
Within about an hour and a half a chap from gastroenterology had come down to assess Matt and confidently announced that it was probably just a case of a bit of steak stuck in his gullet and they'd have it out in no time - well, at least by 5 pm.  But by 1.15 he'd had an endoscopy under general anaesthetic and was being wheeled back out to recovery.  The nurse attending reported on the size of the bit of steak with relish (by which I mean that she relished the reporting; not that there was relish on the bit of steak).  I sneaked off for a sarnie and a coffee downstairs and was called by the nurse 20 minutes later saying that Matt was ready to go.  

When I got back upstairs, I found Matt looking exhausted and not a bit sheepish, surrounded by nurses giving him lectures about the importance of taking smaller bites and chewing food properly.  They also gave us pictures of the procedure and prescriptions for meds.  In the light of all the grief he was getting from the medical staff, I laid off adding my own lecture to the mix for like ... a whole three hours or something.  Matt slept off the whole episode properly and woke with a sore throat and a cold, which we treated with Weis Bars (an ice-cream bar half vanilla flavoured; half mango sorbet flavoured), Panadol and Berocca.

And THAT, children, is why you should always eat slowly and chew your food!  (Not quite in the same league as Struwwelpeter, but still...)

He is now fully recovered and we're now house sitting for a week at the house of one of Matt's mum's friends.  The tenancy we thought we'd got for our flat in Glasgow fell through, so we're still looking for tenants.  Meanwhile we've been told by letting agents here that it's unlikely we'll secure a list without proof of ongoing income.  I think if we were to do this again, (GOD FORBID!) and if we were going to be sensible about it, we'd get the native with the family connections to go on ahead and get a job before the other one followed on. But then when have either of us ever done anything sensible?! All our efforts are now therefore on the job hunt.  Any developments on this score, and I'll be sure to let you all know.

TTFN

Mary 


Tuesday 15 January 2013

Dawn Chorus


I remember reading somewhere - or seeing a documentary - probably narrated by David Attenborough - a claim that the dawn chorus, far from the harmonious communion with nature it sounds like, is merely a cacophony of territorial war cries.  Difficult to believe when listening to the tuneful warbling of a mistle-thrush perhaps, but here in Queensland, the ‘Dawn Chorus’ sounds at times like a snarling, squawking, wall of threatening and disturbing noise.  I can therefore far more easily believe that claim.

Due to the heat, the windows are all open in the hope that some breeze might waft through and cool the room, but I’ve been up since 4.30 am after being unable to cope with the cockatoos any longer.  I mean, sure, they LOOK cute, but they sound like a bunch of neds drinking Buckie in a bus shelter on a friday night.

I just heard that the number of guns licensed to Australians has surpassed the number recorded just after the amnesty following Port Arthur massacre (an event which took place in the mid nineties and changed Australian gun law dramatically and which, following the primary school massacre in the US, has been getting mentioned regularly in the news here).  Well, I’m all for gun control under normal circumstances but I can understand the need to bear arms if it’s a case of shutting up the dratted wildlife.  Nature Schmature!  Hand me my shot gun!

This isn’t the first time The Birds have Disturbed My Slumber.  A couple of weeks back when we were house-sitting for Matt’s sister, I awoke with a start on hearing what sounded distinctly like someone tunefully whistling the first bars of the Peter theme from Peter and the Wolf.  This was quickly followed by a buzzing sound like a door bell.  I’d never heard the door bell at Pam’s house, but in my sleep addled state I convinced myself that unbeknownst to us, Pam must have arranged for a workman to come and fix something on the property and this was him trying to get access to whatever it was to do whatever he did to fix it.  We were still in bed and in a state of considerable disarray which added to my panic that there was someone at the door.  The whistling of odd bars of Peter and the Wolf or something similar continued meanwhile, as did a further insistent buzzing noise, so I did the only thing I could do in the circumstances.  I prodded Matt in the ribs until he woke up and then implored him to throw on some shorts and find out who was at the door.  This he did without complaint, while making the gnom gnom noises of one not quite awake and rubbing his eyes ...

Only to discover that there was no-one at the door at all - the whistling came from a magpie (which isn’t at all like the European magpie in terms of its call) and the buzzing came from our mobile phones which had been charging on the wooden floor over night to tell us that we’d agreed to attend an event that evening via Facebook.  

Oops.  My bad!  

In my defence - some of the noises these birds make confuse the hell out of me.

  • Budgies often sound like fast forwarded dictaphones; 
  • The Kookaburras snigger like Beavis and Butthead;
  • The Eastern whip birds call to each other, the female call has a long drawn-out, high-pitched noise and the male responds with a sound which people compare to the stockman’s whip crack but which to me sounds like a cartoon noise of a gooey liquid dropping from a height into a pool of more gooey liquid.  Admittedly that would be a bit of a longwinded name for a bird: the gooey liquid dropping into more gooey liquid cartoon noise bird ... 
  • There is a bird that I have not identified yet which sounds like a washing machine bleeping at the end of its cycle.  
  • And then there are the geckos which sit in the roof and sound like birds ...
  • But they don’t even come close to the cackling racket of those accursed cockatoos!

These, and other as yet unidentified noises, are all conspiring to turn me into a reluctant morning person... with avian murder on my mind...    


Saturday 5 January 2013

Happy new year!

Happy new year, everyone!

I'm taking the opportunity of the rainy Sunday to add an update.  

After Christmas we spent a couple of days up north in Bundaberg area catching up with Matt's sister, Sandra, and her family.  They were taking a leisurely trip south from their home in Mackay and stopping off in Bundaberg to watch the turtles laying eggs on the beach and they invited us to join them at their hotel. 

It was great to get out of the city and see a bit more of Queensland.  Bundaberg is the home of Bundaberg rum as well as ginger beer and a bunch of tropical fruit drinks.  (rum and ginger beer, if combined I understand, is called a Dark and Stormy but I can't in all honesty recommend either, as the rum is amongst the worst I have smelled and I'm not fond of ginger beer).  Matt floated the idea of looking for work up in this area, but after spending a bit of time wandering about town, I decided wasn't that keen.  It's basically a distillery plus services for the huge farming hinterland surrounding the town.  Sugar cane, macadamia nuts, melons, mangos and so on are plentiful with roadside stalls popping up every 10 miles or so.   The local news was full of talk of the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of indentured Torres Strait Islanders who died while working in the cane plantations.  Death rates were high amongst the indentured workforce and the ban on them being buried in marked graves with the rest of the community was only lifted in the 1950s, apparently.

When we met up with Sandra, Simon, Alice and Tom Henderson, we headed straight out to the coast - a small seaside resort nearby called Bargarra that had several cafes and pubs on the promenade.  The moon was nearly full and rising large over the horizon, making white, wavery reflections in the calm sea.  Further out the red and green lights of the shipping lanes shone out and lights flashed from shipping traffic and buoys intermittently.  A cool sea breeze was a relief after the stifling heat of the day but the temperature was still in the mid 20s Celsius.

Matt and I decided not to attend the turtle laying session in the end.  The session involved standing about in groups on the beach supervised by rangers who would radio each other to alert groups to turtles landing on the beaches.  The groups would then beetle over to where the turtles were laying and jostle each other for the best position to cop a look at their back ends.  This apparently could take several hours of standing about covered in sand flies.  Now I'm all for communing with nature and whatnot but Matt and I hadn't spent any time alone for over a week so we decided to spend the evening together back at the hotel instead.

The turtle-watching Hendersons reported back the next day. While Simon and Alice went home when the torrential rain started (heaved sigh of relief that I'd missed that), Tom and Sandra stayed on and helped move the eggs laid near the shoreline up the beach so that they wouldn't be swept away before hatching sometime in February.  

As it happened, we had the next four days to ourselves at Pam's place as the family was away.  Bliss.  This part really felt like a holiday - glorious views across the eucalypt covered hills, use of the pool whenever we wanted it, two dogs to keep us company... some wine of course...

... Especially at new year's eve.  We spent Hogmanay with one of Matt's friends, Amy round her house.  She had a little party in her back yard lit with candles and lanterns.  It was lovely.  She'd asked everyone to wear something that they wouldn't normally wear, so I went in shorts and a cotton short sleeved top and sandals.  Well, it's not often I've worn that get up at NY.  Matt enjoyed catching up with a lot of people he hadn't seen in years, and I got to know some of them a little better.

It's been back to the grind this week in terms of job applications.  I've submitted about 6 applications now either in communications/policy type roles or university administration.  It's just something we've to keep on at until we get something.  I know this will probably end up being a relatively short period in our lives (at least I hope it is) but it seems utterly interminable at the moment.  There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to get on with your life because of lack of ongoing income.  Well, there probably is, but I can't think of it just now.  

On a positive note, we have managed to let our flat in Glasgow so the outgoings will be at least slightly smaller in the near future.  

Here's hoping that this development is the start of a domino effect that causes all the other stuff to fall into place...