Day Twenty-four

Hello again! Friday 13th has come out in force for the people of Santa Teresa - I have just worked a 14hour day with only emergency cases! The slight silver lining of all that, is that because I'm staying here for the weekend (no-one to give me a lift to Alice) I managed to get a quick supermarket shop in when we took a patient to hospital!

Woken up by an on-call emergency at just before 6 this morning; an old lady in the community (ok, so I say old, she is old by the standards here - at 51!) had returned from hospital yesterday and had become acutely confused overnight and very unwell. We brought her to the clinic but she had a GCS of 10/11, sats of 65%, and deterirorated so we nipped her up the track to the hospital for readmission. It's a bit of a sad story because her family don't want her at home and were really keen for her to go away, and they had been up drinking all night, so when we got there they were drunk and abusive to her... maybe she's better off in hospital?!

Got back to Santa Teresa to find that there had been no other staff in the clinic all day! Crazy! A little baby then arrived, who had lost about 20% of his bodyweight in four days, but we managed to rehydrate him and by this evening he was beginning to put some back on again....

A severe asthmatic came in very short of breath, so we treated her, before she walked out on us leaving the nebuliser running! It won't be long before she needs us back again!

Finally a renal patient rang up, she has self administerd dialysis every day and was feeling really dizzy and unable to stand since her session this morning. Even more worrying given that she had a massive vagal fit on Wednesday when she tried to take off 8L of blood in two hours.....

All in all a bit manic! Sadly not much tourist activity to report on, and who knows what a weekend here will bring! Am definately going to book a three day trip to Uluru and King's Canyon tomorrow and have a long weekend away next week:)

Am thinking of you all at home, and missing you lots...

love you xxxx