I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes by Mary Tennant

Author:Mary Tennant [Tennant, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Finch Publishing
Published: 2016-05-18T14:00:00+00:00

Each morning we would see anything from twenty to fifty patients, a large percentage of the small community of around four hundred. I soon became familiar with the treatment for scabies, intestinal worms and infections that ranged from ears to lungs to skin. If we needed to consult a doctor we asked the patient to return after lunch, when we could talk to a doctor over the two-way radio, since we had no phone. This schedule was called a medical sched, because it was the time when the medical centres in our region were scheduled to use the radio. The doctors were based at Gove Hospital. One came to Gapuwiyak once a fortnight and on those days we lined up all of our sickest patients, who invariably went back with them on the plane to be admitted to hospital.

After the medical sched we had a general sched in which an Aerial Medical Service nurse based at Gove Hospital called each of the rural health centres one by one to receive and report news. They could be very entertaining and gossipy. More than anything, they briefly connected us to the outside world. The health workers and I would make a cup of coffee and sit around the radio, listening to conversations from the other health centres until it was our turn.

On one occasion we had a patient who had a leg amputated in Darwin Hospital. According to tradition, not only the bodies of the dead but also body parts need a burial ceremony. So the leg was flown to us from Darwin Hospital – but it hadn’t arrived.

‘Gapuwiyak to Gove, over,’ I said into the mouthpiece.

‘Come in Gapuwiyak, over.’

‘The leg from Darwin wasn’t on the plane, over.’

‘Mmm, it says here that it was sent to the terminal this morning, over.’

‘I met the plane and it wasn’t there, over.’

‘Could someone have picked it up by mistake? Over.’

‘I’ll ask around, over.’

The next day I was on the radio again.

‘I went through all the fridges in the store and I couldn’t find our package, over.’

The following week it was placed on the plane. Someone in Darwin had left it in the freezer. Afterwards, whenever I met medical staff from the region, I was always asked about the missing leg.

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