New baby.......

I have decided that being a RAN is a bit like having a new baby. You have disturbed sleep from call out at all hours of the night, lots of people give you advice on how they think you should be doing things, and just when you think you have a handle on things, something new comes along and you have to learn a whole new set of challenges.

One of the island Patriarchs returned from Cairns on Tuesday, after a month away having surgery on his leg ulcers. The most worrying one was removed and the skin graft has taken and is healing well. But the large ulcer on the front of his leg was really moist and very sloughy when I first saw it Tuesday afternoon. After consultation with the oncall Dr, he decided we would try some topical antibiotics as the surrounding skin looked healthy. However yesterday, things had deteriorated. This is a man who has been flown off numerous times for cellulitis. So Rob, put in a drip and we are on a regime of antibiotics via the drip every 6 hours for the next 48 hours. That’s OK. Our AO flew out yesterday for a weeks holiday and so we are seeing patients and doing the medicare forms, finding and filing charts and answering phone. That’s OK. We have 2 health workers here to help. One is 26 weeks pregnant and spends more time at home than here and her hours are fairly random. That’s OK……Then today, we discover our other health worker is a close contact for a contagious disease and needs to spend the next 5 days at home, on antibiotics herself, until she is no longer contagious. Its just about now I am feeling a little like its not OK. So its Rob and I and our random health worker who is a trainee, and doesn’t drive! We have no manager, no administrative support and the ambulance that the council are supposed to look after is still sitting out the front of the clinic where it stopped over a week ago, and will not restart. I have to take a deep breath in, and then let a deep breath out, and remind myself that Dan Murphys.com are only a phonecall and a barge delivery away, and that my supplies have not yet run dry.

Livin the dream, wild ride that it is :)   Yawo!!