Fears and Phobias.

Is fear good or bad? It’s a bit like the question is pain good or bed. In the matter of pain the answer is a simple one – it is both; bad because it hurts, good because it indicates something needs to be looked into or done about it. It is wise to fear some things.

My wife has a fear/phobia for rats or mice. Snakes she can tolerate and in her childhood has eaten snake meat, which she reassures me tastes quite nice – a bit like chicken. I have not asked her to prepare it for me even though we see them quite often around our place. Sometimes they even seem to come by post.

However, she hates rats. But what is in a name? She was in the paddock the other day and discovered a delightful little critter. It didn’t run away, nor did she. She thought it was a poteroo, (like a small wallaby) but strangely it didn’t run away and she stood and took a picture of it. No fear at all.

Naturally she came home and shared the experience with us. It is not a poteroo but a rat! A Rufous rat kangaroo. Hereafter she may prefer to call it a Bettong, but really what is in a name? Maybe, just maybe, the word rat won’t terrify her any more.

On the other hand the husband of the family living here some years ago, built a lovely tree house for his children to play in. It still stands solid and useable maybe 50 metres outside the home area fence. The children were allowed to play in it once, before the wife knew that it had been built. It was never used again because of the wife’s phobia of snakes!

Dominic Cartier

Too busy with sheep!

I’ve been so busy that I have hardly opened my computer for days! For ages we’ve been trying to buy some dorper sheep. I’m too old to do much but as the government won’t give me a pension I have to do something to justify the small acreage that I own – that is, to make insurance etc payments tax deductible!

After several months of asking around, last week we had a call saying that someone, living a bit more than 500 km away was prepared to sell us some.

Our son who lives with us, and acts as both a carer (non-government) for us and the place got around to build crates to fit the back of a borrowed vehicle and a hired trailer.

Then there was a family discussion as to whether or not they would allow this old man to make the trip. I won out in that I went; they won out insisting that we made it a two day trip. As I slept most of yesterday, the day after we got back, they were probably correct. But I enjoyed it.

The destination was Aramac. Torrens creek is about halfway.

The road from home to the township of Torrens Creek is up through low mountains, mainly cattle country but with many trees and typical of the area we live in.

From Torrens Creek it is flat, almost treeless and somewhat boring! We saw four varieties of kangaroos – Greys and big reds; dead and alive. At the pub where we ate supper we were chatting to a kangaroo shooter who kills them, then refrigerated takes them for the meat market. He was telling me that the government has stopped them shooting greys as there are so few. That was not our impression. We saw about 60 or 70 live animals waiting to jump in front of the vehicle and about half were greys. We also saw several groups of emus.

Aramac has in the area only about 300 people. There are according to the write up on Internet many nearby associated interesting things to do. We went one day arriving after dark and left the next morning as soon as the sheep were loaded. Maybe we’ll have to make a longer trip some time but the sheep were our prime concern.

The owners were lovely people. As you can see they had a pet goat who considered herself very much a part of the family.

After a seven hour trip we arrived home to a setting sun.

so we had to hurry and get the sheep off.

Next morning they remained a tight knit group, but seemed happy enough.

They look scraggly, but you don’t shear dorpers – they shed their wool. They are apparently good meat producers and the ewes lamb twice per year, with a fairly high incidence of twins apparently. we’ll see I guess. Thus we have 12 pregnant ewes and a young ram.

Dominic Cartier

Cutting away.

Some relationships don’t last. Cut them off. Certainly some bumps and lumps need to be cut off. Cancer is often cured by its removal. So much money is spent on face lifts and tummy tucks that it is almost unbelievable.

But, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m going through slides and memories. I’ve been thinking, as I’ve looked at slides, about the reasons for which I have amputated kids’ limbs. I’ll tell you a few!

Personally I have not been involved in amputating a child’s limb in Australia. In Ethiopia I have done a lot – too many to count! I just want to mention the reasons. These are not listed in a time sequence, except the first.

The first one, and that soon after I arrived as a young surgeon (28) in the country, was because a kid, playing in the paddock came across an old unexploded Italian bomb. He succeeded in making it explode amd lost an arm, an eye and had a piece of bomb lodged in his heart. Three operations on the same boy at the same time. He did well and left – one armed, one eyed but with a normal working heart.

2. Another because he was run over by a train. He lost 3 limbs, both legs above knee and one arm below his elbow. I was not the first to operate on him but had later to revise a poor job. As he told me the story later, I wished that I had been the first surgeon, because if he told me the truth (and I have no reason to doubt him) we could have preserved more limb length than was saved. I had to reoperate soon after I first met him because there were spikes of bone sticking into his skin making every movement there excruciating.

3. One because of an electrical burn. He lost both his right arm at the shoulder and his left leg below the knee. He had other extensive burns and suffered tetanus infection before his eventual survival.

4. The majority because of no doubt well intentioned but faulty local healer treatment. Of these over many years we had almost one a week. The splints applied were too tight and post splinting principles of normal follow up were not practiced. That is you must release the splinting if there is any sign that it is too tight.

5. Certainly I had to amputate in lepers because of uncontrolled infection, but the only child with infection as the primary cause of amputation was a girl with extensive gas gangrene.

Often in these children there was so much severe infection that they needed quick early surgery to remove the mess and then reconstruction later. One I remember had 3 cardiac arrests on the table. Others were brought so late that they died , sometimes within hours of arrival, because of septic shock.

6. Several for limb cancers. The pictures, if I showed them, are revolting as they came so late. The smell often was nauseating, but you just had to hold it in, and get on with the job at hand!

There are some nice photos of happy customers below the line – no blood, few bandages.

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