This morning, at the ungodly hour of 0545 my alarm shattered what had been a pleasant night’s sleep (that’s 0445 for those of you playing at home). Why? Because my first outreach flight of the elective left from the red cross hangar in Kimberley Airport at 7, and I had been warned the plane would not wait.
The plane actually took off sometime after 8 o’clock, meaning I could have had an extra hour’s sleep. Oh well. The flight to Upington took about 1.5 hours across an almost completely empty semi-desert landscape. The planes are run by the South African Red Cross and are part of the Air Mercy Service which includes helicopter rescue and air ambulance services.
Once we landed, I decided to stick with the oncologist (this 2 weeks is meant to be medicine after all). I spend the day doing physical exams and seeing patients with all kinds of cancers, the ones I can remember are cervical, breast, prostate, lung (this one had invaded and was protruding through the chest wall)and lymphoma. Upington is an Afrikaans speaking area, and neither myself or the consultant speak any. Luckily, we had a fantastic nurse who translated for us.
The clinic was finished at about 1430 and I was planning to maybe go into Upington town for an hour bewfore catching my lift back to the airport. On my way out the door of the hospital, I ran into two orthopods from Kimberley who had just been told on the phone that the plane was on its way to Upington. This was a suprise to me because I’d been told that the plane wouldn’t be coming back until 1700 and to be at the airport at 1630.
1700 came and went and there was still no sign of the plane. The airport staff started to become concerned at us just hanging around – they were planning a rehearsal of their major incident plan that night. This gave us something amusing to watch until the plane finally arrived sometime around 1845. It would probably have been better if I’d understood anything they were saying, but unfortunately, it was all in Afrikaans. The rest of the Outreach team found it hilarious though…
I have some pictures from today, and will put them online when I have a chance.