Trawler Foot.
Well another day in the clinic and another ream of presentations that were like nothing I’d seen. Before I get started, I want to honour my Mum who had here birthday today. She has just learned how to read blogs, and use facebook and skype, so it is really cool that we can connect despite the fact that we are 3000km and 50 years behind the rest of Queensland
Today the Barge came in to Yorke to off load supplies. The clinic has received a brand new emergency trolley (crash cart)…well actually parts of it. The health department has decided that it will standardize all of the emergency equipment in all facilities. From the trolleys , and ecg machines, monitors and ventilators. Remote clinics are morphing into clones of each other, in an attempt to reduce human error with regard to using equipment and stock. The crash cart is a cupboard on wheels that holds all the most urgently needed equipment for saving a life when seconds count. When a huge box came today with the branding of a familiar Crash Cart supplier, I thought, you beauty, and opened the box to find 5 drawers, but no trolley. It is the Torres way. We get sent stuff in multiple boxes … but only one box at a time, on each barge….weekly. So God only knows when or if the rest of the trolley will arrive.
The Trawlers also anchored off shore today, and the trawlermen hungry for terra firma, fresh veges, and the touch of a lady (I dare say), came ashore to mingle on the island. The relatively fit young white fellas stand out like a sore thumb here, and a group of 4 of them came into the clinic. We bought 10 kg of fresh (and I mean fresh) Endeavour and tiger prawns. They should keep us going for a few weeks. I wont tell you what they cost, because you would cry. I might just say that what we loose buying veges, we well and truly save by buying seafood straight from the trawler. I asked one of the boys if they get crayfish, or bugs, and with an uncomfortable and shifty expression, they said the did, but were not allowed to keep them, so chucked them all back. LIES!!!! I smelled a rat, and asked one of the boys to ‘Chuck a few of this contraband in a box and ‘chuck’ them my way when they are back for refueling next week’.
With a hand shake and a wink he knew his secret was safe with me…and the greater internet community…..shhhhh ….dont tell any one.!
As it turned out, the Trawler boys needed to all see me for Sea Sores. What?? Yep… sea sores. These boys are constantly wet with salt water, in rubber boots, and their feet seem to be afflicted by a type of mixed bacterial /fungal trench foot.
Multiple boil like sores in various stages of healing, and Tinea the likes of which I have never seen, all rolled into horrid wounds in and under their gumboot line. Once I had assessed the blokes, grilled them about nutrition, and offered them vitamin/mineral suppliments for their bad diet, antibiotics for Staph, antibiotics for Strep, antifungals for Tinea, condoms for the girls, Triclosan antibacterial soap for their hygiene, they left to sample what the island had to offer.
Up here, wounds from the smallest beginnings, seem to deteriorate into tropical ulcers, and become difficult to heal. To compound the problem, and unique to marine lacerations and in these trawler men, the wounds are colonized, by strange marine organisms that thrive in hot, humid gumboots, and in bodies with poor fresh fruit and vegetable intake.
These blokes go out to sea for 6-9 months at a time, and play hard in their down time, once a month or so as the dock in the islands to restock and off load their catch. It is a dirty dangerous job, in a law less environment, where accidents happen often. There are stories of blokes being caught in nets being dropped, and drowning, blokes falling over board, and being crushed in winches. They are often fairly unskilled young blokes that society has discarded as trouble makers, and a lured up her for the BIG dollars that prawn fishing can net them. The last two weeks has been a bumper catch, with these 4 blokes catching 3.5 tonnes in just 3 hauls.
Well clinically that was my interesting day. As has become ritual, I took the kids down to the jetty to swim, snorkel and catch fish again at knock off time. The sharks were out in force, and whilst I couldn’t land these fish tonight because they snapped my 90 lb line, I had a fun time trying. To throw out a bait, and have a monster fish hit the bait with in seconds is still very exciting, despite the fact that I couldn’t land it. I got my arm in the way of the fishing line which shredded of the reel with such force that it left me with 6 welts and 3 lacerations on my wrist as the nylon slapped my arm like a whipper snipper. Exciting stuff, but it has made me more determined.
We came home from fishing to one of Jo’s legendary lasagnas . Mmmmmm comfort food, and a nice change from marine life forms on my plate. Tomorrow Ben is being taken to the outer reef to catch cray fish with an elder, so man I wish I could go with him, but it is a big day as we have half the island here for fasting blood tests, pending next weeks doctors clinic. So I will sign off
Good night from Rob.
No comments:
Post a Comment