The traumatic adventures continued this weekend, with me volunteering for a Friday and Saturday night. Friday was quite sedate, with a mixture of stabbings and slashings which required suturing, as well as a couple of chest drains, one of which I put in.
Saturday was quite a bit busier – there had been a big football match earlier that evening, which when combined with your typical saturday night drinking meant we were quite busy. There were a number of muggings aswell, one of which ended up with a man with quite a deep stab wound in his ass, which I happily sutured closed…
Saturday wasn’t busy, but there wasa staedy stream of patients coming through Surgical Casualty which kept us busy until about 0530. I was getting ready to leave at about 6 when two strecher cases rolled in off an ambulance – one of them was a stab wound to the side of the neck, which looked like it might have gotten the apex of the lung. The main problem was thyat it wouldn’t stop bleeding – we had to get the surgeon on call to come and take a look – he ended up clamping and ligating 4 arterioles in the recovery room before the bleeding was under control.
As I was getting ready to go home, one of the Casualty doctors asked me if I’d be interested in going to a ‘Charismatic Church’ that morning (it was 8 on Sunday morning at this stage). I agreed, which might have been an indication of just how sleep deprived I was. I got home, into bed, and an our later, my phone went off. 30 minutes later we were sitting in a church which I thought could only exist in the world of Hollywood – there was a band and singers and a choir and karakoe style lyrics on a big projection screen, and the preachers definitely liked to preach. I can honestly say I’ve never experienced anything like that before, and while I may have had a problem with a lot of what was being preached (which was at odds with a lot of the catholic beliefs I’ve been exposed to over my school years), some of it was very relevant to the congregation, and you couldn’t fault the presentation.
I was planning to visit a DeBeer’s diamond mine today, but when I rang yesterday it turns out that the last mine in Kimberley ceased operations last August, so they are understandably not running tours any more.
Just a few more days in Kimberley, and then I start on my backpacking adventure – I’ll post up my itenerary in a few days once I’m sure it’ll all work.
So when you coming back?
Are you gonna be in any place for a set amount of time? That offer still there to go bungie jumping with you?
I finally make it back to Ireland around the 22nd of August. I’m going to stick up my travel itenerary, if you want to come over and join up that’d be great
Bungee jumping, gorge swinging and parachute jumping are all on the cards…