A memory stirred.

I’m pretty deaf, with combined middle and inner ear problems. I’d been taken in an ambulance to the Emergency Department of the local University Hospital. Years before I had been a consultant there for some time. After I had met the young Intern, a more senior guy came in. As you would expect he was masked and in a discernible slightly foreign accent said something, which was to me undecipherable. So with his mask down and me asking him to come nearer I understand that his name was Graeme and the accent marked him as a Scot. ‘I know you he said.’ I did not remember him at all until he said that he had worked, as an intern, in a country hospital about 130 Km away from my hometown and I had been flown in to deal with a young man whose motorbike handle had, when he hit a tree, gone into his upper abdomen and caused massive bleeding. I still didn’t remember the doctor but I did remember the incident – some stories you don’t forget!

There were no specialists at the hospital but the medical superintendent was a very experienced and highly capable GP. Early in the evening he called me and said that he had just ordered a plane to bring a team up to deal with the above described young man. ‘Could I come, urgently?’ ‘The plane will be ready to take off in half an hour’, he said. I owned a Mitsubishi Starion and (maybe illegally) had it up to 230 km per hour. Knowing how long it took to set up people and equipment for the journey by plane I told him that I would be there long before the plane was. And I was.

He was a very capable GP anaesthetist so I told him to get everything set up and knowing him to be a good diagnostician told him to be ready to start the moment I got there. The patient was shocked and being resuscitated as well as they were able, but the family were JW’s and refused a blood transfusion. The parents had, however, agreed to allow me to transfuse him with his own blood, which I knew was collecting in big volumes in his abdomen.

He had a massive stellate tear of his liver. I rescued as much of his blood as I could and by filtering it through gauze, we put it into an emptied saline bottle and transfused it back into him. But I was losing him and bluntly sent out the message to the parents that if I couldn’t give him more blood he was going to die. They agreed for a transfusion to be given, but there wasn’t a store of transfusable blood.

As I said earlier the GP Superintendent was a champion guy. He had previously, knowing that such emergencies arose from time to time, formed a blood bank of living people who all had agreed that, if called upon in an emergency, they would come ASAP to the hospital and be bled. Three of the right grouping came and donated their blood.

The bleeding was so massive that after my attempts to stop it failed, all that I could do was put a large number of packs into the traumatised area thus controlled (stopped) the bleeding. He was sewn up and kept under the anaesthetic.

About a half an hour into the surgery the plane had arrived and the medical crew were very helpful when they joined us in the operating room. After a bit more stabilising of his condition he was flown back to our local city hospital. The next day he was flown about 1,500 Km to the capital city of the state for further definitive treatment under much better conditions. What follows I have only heard secondhand and some of my assumptions may be wrong. I think that the big boys in the big city assumed that the probably rather limited ability-wise country surgeon was making a mountain out of a molehill. For them it would be a ‘cake walk’.

At any rate they took him back into the operating room, removed the stitches and the packs, but could not control the bleeding and had to end up repacking him and sewing him up again. Eventually he was transferred to the liver unit where he had about half his liver removed. He eventually recovered and went back to his local area. I hope that he and his parents were able to curb his desire to race his bike through the forest tracks!

Dominic Cartier.

They’re beautiful but I hate them!

Dingoes are a 'fair dinkum' separate species needing better protection, researchers say - ABC News

I’ve had a week of visits to doctors. I am glad to discover that I am still alive. I know more about the workings of my heart; the complications of various medications; but on a positive side I have discovered that sleep apnoea is a real thing. And I’m getting used to using the contraption.

I had a good sleep last night. The app tells me that I have 1.4 episodes of apnoea per hour and that all of them have been managed properly. So after 8 hours sleep, undisturbed apart from the main disturbing problem of an aged man’s continuous sleep, I was sitting at the table eating my pretty boring breakfast (I’m trying to lose weight) when I sat up with a jolt and yelled out to my wife (of 59 years) and my son for help.

Our sheep usually have a slow measured way of walking, nibbling as they go, but I saw a group racing lickity-split past our back house fence – chased by a dingo! Having lost too many lambs and some ewes to dingoes in the last year or so, yelling like a banshee, I hobbled to my ute and driving at about 70 km/hr along the road which I have signed up saying the limit is 15 Km/hr to get to where I knew the fence would entrap them. They were grouped in a corner of the fence but the dingo had disappeared. I fancy my yelling helped to speed the dingo on its way! So I checked the other mob of lambs (they’re fattening nicely and look good) the members of which were happily munching away in another paddock with no dingo visible.

But as our neighbour saw a family of six of them just outside our place yesterday, we are very aware of their presence. Hopefully they will return as dust to dust soon, when they taste the goodies that we have for them. And if you feel sorry for them, I would prefer my sheep to be alive!

The men (2 sons, 1 grandson) returned to their job for the morning. They were moving a tank to collect water from an old shed and a skillion that we are adding onto the back of it. You need to be inventive as a farmer, and so it was successfully shifted! Water is precious here in the North!

Dominic Cartier.

Are we being led by the nose?

The picture shows a severe case of bilateral TB. There are people who affirm that it is best treated by going to a holy place and drinking holy water. I don’t agree.

We all know that languages change with time. When we first went to Ethiopia the common greeting in Amharic was ‘tenastelign’. That was a brief, shortened way of saying “Igzehabier tena ystelign’ which translated means ‘May God give you health on my behalf.’ If you wanted to say, ‘How are you?’, you had to choose one of three ways. You used one for females, one for males and another for important people. After some years away I went back after the Communist takeover had been overthrown. I went to a university teaching post. After a short time I found the students addressing me in what used to be the common feminine greeting but had now become the friendly greeting between people with whom you felt comfortable. They were really honouring me as someone they trusted. I had not lost respect. Older people still stood up when I walked into a room and said ‘nuur’ or something like ‘May you live forever!’

The language had changed.

In English when the Bible was first translated into English the word ‘conversation’ referred to the way one lived. Today it means a talk together. A change occurring over time with usage. ‘Gay’ used to mean ‘jolly’ or ‘happy’ the meaning has been changed to mean what used to be thought of as a sexual perversion. ‘Marriage’ used to mean a state between a man and a woman wherein there was a commitment to sexual and emotional faithfulness, in a lifelong commitment. It was a basic functional unit of society. Today it seems to be either, for some, what it has always been, but for others an excuse for a party and a declaration that they are proud to be different and want to declare their situation as normal.

The first example (about conversation) which I gave, seems to me to be like dropping the ‘ye’ and ‘thee’ of older English for just ‘you’. The next two seem to be purposeful alterations to fool the masses into seeing things differently and with the purpose of making, what was previously seen as immoral, acceptable.

The above is a prelude to the use of the word ‘vaccine’.….

The meaning of ‘vaccine’ has been purposefully redefined by the government to include altered rna (ribonucleic acid) material being injected into people to alter the body’s ability to immunologically respond to some outside attack. Previously a vaccine was always produced specifically to attack a specific infecting agent by using an attenuated bacterium or part of the troublesome ‘germ’. I am not an expert and have no desire to be such, I am retired. But what concerns me is that the ‘vaccines’ being used against COVID 19, under the new definition, have not been, by usually accepted medical and legal standards, adequately tested. They are causing at least occasional, and some claim more frequent, deaths and serious complications. I have several personal contacts who have become seriously ill. And without a doubt there are a number of cases of significant heart problems (myocarditis and/or pericarditis) in young people.

Many experts, even though a minority, in the field have warned of late serious effects, maybe even in future generations. There is a sizeable body of reported deaths and significant immediate complications, enough I believe to stop the use of a new medication. Honest discussion is, I feel strongly, being suppressed by authorities and the mainline media. The statistics which we are fed seem slanted to a desired result. Can you remember – lies, damn lies and statistics?

I am not an anti-vaccine person by the old definition but am dubious about substances produced under this new definition until they have been adequately and thoroughly tested.

The continuing war of oppression.

I listened last night to an economist presenting a lecture on why and how the ‘western’ world and China wants to and does keep sub Saharan Africa under their control and in relative poverty. The main thrust of the paper seemed to be that Africa is a prime source of fundamental needs which Industrial countries must have and so at all costs Africans are to be stopped from becoming industrialized so that they could use their own resources. They do this in a number of ways but to a large degree by providing aid and loans, with strings attached, which make the provider the master. In addition if they can get the ‘right’ people in power that also makes the job easier by subtle use of bribery and corruption. If you wish you can listen yourself on Youtube – ‘Underdevelopment’ in Africa – What’s the real story? by Howard Nicholas. An Associate Professor of Economics in the Netherlands.

At the end after marking ‘watch if you want to’ some nastier medical photos but prior to that just some of the poverty photos which are so common.

Main lecture theatre for clinical surgical students in a major hospital,

with its modern facilities and space! We had about 60 people in this room five days a week!

House offered to a doctor working in a major University hospital

This picture shows the world wide situation. It obviously affects lives lost and the health of the workforce as well as the economy.

Of course I could show you many beautiful buildings and better roads, but most of them, although seen as a solution, are part of the problem, as they have been built by aid and include the debts owed which keep the population under control. They are in the cities where only about 20% of the population live. 80% of the population are rural. Many are without decent roads, transport, electricity etc.

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Do you ever feel sorry for yourself?

To answer the question above, sometimes I do. My knees are giving me ‘hell’ today. I had my knee surgery a good few years ago and they were good for a while.

This was the first day the dressings were taken down. They healed well and I was able to be on a plane back to Ethiopia within a couple of months to help with the first group of year 4 medical students as they came into our hospital there.

They were good for a couple of years then something went wrong and although I am constantly reassured that it has nothing to do with the prostheses going bad, now every step hurts. So today I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. and decided to look at a few photos of those who really did have something to complain about.

I have chosen a handful from more than a hundred leg shots, and cut out the really nasty ones but you choose if you want to read on.

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