Day Twenty-Six

I have finally managed to get some sleep! Friday, which was a 14hour day last time I wrote, turned into a 21hour day during which I got less than an hour off. Manic. Essentially we had finally dealt with all the emergencies during the day and I had just made it home when the drunk fights started at the boundary.

Santa Teresa is a dry community as it is strictly catholic, and following the government intervention to try and reorganise Aboriginal communities most now have strict rules about drinknig within the community. This means that following payday lots of people (especially the men) head into town to buy alcohol, then return to just outside the community boundary to drink (the boundary is marked by a cattle grid). Friday was pay-day so lots of men were out drinking and a fight started, during which lots of people got hurt and one man was really seriously wounded.

I came back to the clinic to help Adam out, as it was just him and me (he's a nurse) in the community because everyone tends to go away at the weekends. This guy had been kicked in the face multiple times by someone wearing steel-capped toe boots and had a massive laceration across his forehead, and his left eye was extremely swollen. I'm sure he has multiple fractures, but more concerningly having cleaned his face it became apparant that the majority of the blood was fountaining out from his eye, through the swelling.... we tried to open the eye to look at the damage but the pain was too much for him and in the end we patched it up to take him to hospital.

That however, was not the end of it - he proceeded to cough up blood and when we got him to move to the ambulance we noticed that his leg was also bleeding. A quick examination revealed a stab wound to the right thigh which was also pouring with blood. We did the best we could here to patch it up, and then arranged for transfer to hospital. In these cases the ambulance needs a driver and a health professional to look after the patient - the driver was male, and because of that I went with the patient so that there was still a male in the clinic in case more men were brought in. Culturally there are limitations as to what I can do/say to a male, and I was also very conscious of my white female status with lots of drunks around!

We got him to hosptial safely (and alive...) and I was very relieved to hand over!

Yesterday was much less dramatic, with lots of routine check-ups in the community and some medication to sort, and babies to weigh! I succeeded in getting sunburnt as well... which I am hoping will now go brown!

Quiet day today, in theory there is no routine work on a Sunday, emergencies only - but we will see what unfolds! It seems that earache and bruises can count as life-threatening emergencies sometimes...

Much love to you all, and I'm thinking of you lots,

xxxxx