Gastroenteritis halts 365

I’d been working the 2pm till midnight evening shift on both Saturday and Sunday. Now normally I would have taken the train up to work with my bike and cycled home at night when there is very little in the way of traffic on the Highway. However, as is the want of Railtrack, they had decided to cancel all trains on the Northern Line for the whole weekend for track works and replace them with buses.

The 3 problems with the buses are firstly that you can’t take a bike on them which means I wouldn’t be able to cycle home. Secondly they are erratic in their timetabling and in order to make it to work on time I would have to be at the bus stop at least 2 hours before I was due to start. The final problem is that they don’t run that late and trying to get a bus from Hornsby to St Leonards at 00:30 is akin to nightmarish.

That left only one option and, as has happened before when it comes to weekend track works, I had to cycle the 18km in both directions two days in a row. That in itself is not an issue but when it’s 29C outside and you get to work and find that the place is stowed with patients and the weekend near-skeletal staff are run off their feet then you know instantly that breaks for food are going to be difficult to take if not impossible. Drinking enough water to replace the rivers of sweat I’d lost on the up-hill slog was also going to be an issue.

Already you can see that the weekend was shaping up to be just bloody shite (and that’s not far off the truth). So not only was I tired, dehydrated, continually sweating and aching in the legs, I was inundated with patients – all of whom had viral gastroenteritis. I don’t know where is comes from here but I’ve seen so much of it in comparison to the UK and I’m amazed that I’ve not been struck down with it before. However, my luck was about to run out.

By Sunday night I was exhausted and by the time I free-wheeled into my street I realised that I was also starving and hadn’t eaten a single thing all day. The glowing signs of the Seven-Eleven (which is strangely open 24 hours instead of 7am – 11pm?!?!) hailed me from across the street and I thought I’d pop in and see if anything was worth eating.

It was the first time I’d been in there and it reminded me of the shops that you would go into on the way home from a night out in Glasgow – the ones that don’t really sell anything nice but for some reason you buy a load of rubbish and wake up in the morning retracing your steps from the night before only to see the carrier bag on the floor of the bedroom full of half eaten sandwiches, crisp packets, chewing gum, red bull, Irn Bru and the odd chicken tikka wrap (which you thought tasted amazing last night). And that about summed up what the Seven-Eleven sold so I settled for a bottle of diet coke, a yogurt and a cheese and ham sandwich.

Pretty innocuous a selection I would have thought and whether it was the sandwich, the yogurt or the fact that I was run down and had been treating gastro patients all weekend I’ll never know but for some reason the next morning the badness began…

I’d not gone to bed till after 2am but I was up at 6:30am when Isla’s alarm clock went off for her to get up and go swimming. I still hadn’t drunk enough fluids and was all stinging eyes and dry-mouthed as I said to her “I don’t feel too good.” I was having some stomach cramps, like trapped wind – or flatus if you want to get technical – which weren’t too bad but just didn’t seem… right. I moped around for a couple of hours without much change in my guts until Isla went to work. After she left I had a shower and went out to the post-office to collect a couple of parcels that were being held for us occasionally clutching my abdomen in the same way that pregnant women do in movies when they are having Branston-Pickle contractions. (Yes I know it’s Braxton-Hicks but imagine how much funnier that last sentence would have been if I’d been eating cheese and Branston Pickle sandwiches the night before).

Anyway, as I stood in the queue (even in Australia the GPO queues are massive on a Monday morning) it felt like Luke and Darth were going for it in my stomach and by the time I got the packages I felt like I was going to fall over from the colicky pain – that I would describe in a medical history as 10/10 pain score, coming in waves and generalised without radiation, now associated with nausea, headaches, fevers and with no exacerbating or relieving factors.

That last bit isn’t exactly true because as I dragged myself back into the flat I realised that there was one relieving factor… don’t read on if you are squeamish!

When I was about 11 years old my school teachers organised for us to spend a day learning to ski at the Cairngorm Mountains in the Highlands of Scotland. Now bear in mind that I went to a State School where nobody was particularly well off and certainly didn’t have a clue about skiing and what it involved. That meant that there was a coach full of underdressed kids without enough waterproof or warm clothing and no concept of how difficult if was going to be to carry around boots, poles and skis. To top it off, when we arrived there was a howling wind and driving sleet to contend with so instead of going to the proper slopes to learn our instructor took me and my group of about 15 pre-pubescents down into a gully beside the exposed and freezing car park and attempted to teach us how to snow plough there.

One of my lasting memories of the day was that there was a small stream running through the middle of the gully and one of my friends had skied up one side of the small valley and then, uncontrolled and completely unintentionally, started to ski backwards towards the water until it became clear that the only way he could stop was to fall over but by the time he attempted this his skis were already in the river and he fell into it soaking himself to the core and bursting into tears. The instructor came running over and lifted him out of the water and then took him in search of the teachers and the keys for the coach so he could get changed out of his dripping clothes.

My next memory is how hard work it was clambering up and down the hillside and how despite the cold winds and freezing ice storm I was incredibly hot and thirsty – camel-packs hadn’t been invented in those days – and when one of my class mates said “We could drink the melt water” with what I now know was more than a hint of uncertainty, “I think it’s pure” our thirst got the better of us. So with that ludicrous suggestion about 9 of us ditched our skis knelt down by the river and began guzzling the ice cold water. It was incredibly refreshing and tasted like melt water should – thirst quenching, clean, crisp and healthy.

In fact it was quite the opposite and when the instructor returned from the car park he was in full sprint (as much as his ski boots and the rough terrain allowed) screaming, “STOP DRINKING THAT WATER!” Actually it was quite a frightening sight having a relative stranger clumsily tearing towards us through the snow covered heather waving his arms in the air and bellowing at the top of his lungs but on hind sight I can see why he was so distressed especially after he explained that some of that water was run-off from the restaurant at the top of the hill. As a group of 11 year olds we just shrugged our shoulders and when back to attempting to ski which most of us gave up on soon after.

My final memory of that trip was the explosive diarrhoea which came that night once I was home with the unbridled fury of dysentery or cholera and how for 2 days I had absolutely no control over my bowels – a scary situation that 8 other people in my class were also in. Not the most pleasant way to end a ski trip!

Anyway I was talking about relieving factors… So as I got in from the post office I had a sudden flash back to the seconds before the culmination of my sewer water drinking experience and dashed into the bathroom where all hell broke loose. And I mean ALL HELL! Daemons, spectres, devils, ghouls and even maggot infested undead animals that have been buried in pet cemeteries and then brought back to life by black magic. All things in this world that were evil were deposited in the toilet but thankfully with the relief of some of the pain and discomfort I’d been suffering.

The smell though was something else. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that sometimes poo just smells… wrong! The smell of stool is actually a reasonable diagnostic tool in Medicine and you can often smell someone has had melena (stool with blood in it from a bleed in their upper digestive tract) before you even enter the room or you know that someone should be isolated because they smell of Clostridium difficile infection. And it’s not unusual to see “foul smelling stool” written in medical notes – I realise that nobody’s crap smells of roses but I just write this to illustrate that there are certain faecal smells that are “abnormal”.

Anyway when I was about 5 years old I was in the town centre with my Mum and little sister and while Mum coached 3 and half year old Sophie in that great female institution called “shopping” I was left outside playing out on the rain soaked concrete. I don’t really remember what I was doing but I do remember slipping on something and landing in a horrible carrot and noodle ridden puddle of drunk-man’s vomit. I also remember that I was wearing my primary school uniform and it was covered with the puke. The next few minutes went very quickly and merge into an amalgamation of me crying in a shop, then getting a hiding in said shop as my Mum screams “Look what you’ve done to your uniform,” Slap, “Ergh, now you’ve got it on me!” Slap slap slap. Then I was dragged in a dislocating-shoulder sort of way to the car and made to strip off and sit naked in the back seat until we got home. Thanks for that Mum.

As I said that all happened when I was about 5 and the memory is vague and distorted but one thing that has never changed is my memory for that rancid stench that filled my nostrils with such a horrid acidic acridity that I hoped I’d never smell that again. Well when I dropped my insides for the first time during this gastro episode that is exactly what it smelt like – old tramp puke. Although I have to ask the obvious question which is “Does my gastro crap smell like the chunderings of some old homeless codger that’s drank too much or did I really slip in vomit?”

Regardless, the flat stank for the next 48 hours and poor Isla really didn’t want to have anything to do with me because of the reek emanating from my pores, skin and orifices. It’s much like the time one of my parents cats became really unwell and the other 2 cats refused to let him sleep near them or feed from the same bowl as they could smell his “unwellness”. I think on an unconscious level that happened with Isla and therefore I ended up sleeping on the couch. In fairness to her though I was up every hour to squirt out some more toxic dribblings and kept opening and closing windows in rhythm with my cycles of fevers and chills so sleeping in separate rooms was probably just as well from her sanity point of view.

So this ended up continuing for three whole days and the worst thing about it all was it happened during my days off! What a waste and in fact the only thing I’ve done in that time apart from set new world records for the amount of toilet paper used and sharts done in a 24 hour period is write this. Shit chat I know but hey it’s something for the blog.

MMC Destroys 365

One thing that has just occurred to me is that I was relying a great deal on my trip round Indo-China to complete the 365. I mean it's still possible to do here but the time scale is now very short and I'm going to have to continue putting rubbish in it like "wine I drank" (which I've had enough of now) and "books I've read" (which I could do anywhere). Hardly makes for an inspiring read does it?

Damn you MMC... Damn you all to hell!!!

I hate MMC

As some of you may be aware, Isla and I were planning to do a 6 week tour of Indo-China on the way home from Oz. It's all been paid for and we were supposed to start the tour in Bangkok on the 9th Jan then travel round Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos followed by a week on the southern beaches on Thailand. We'd then be heading back to the UK on the 23rd Feb.

HOWEVER... Thanks to the powers that be at MMC (Modernising Medical Careers) the dates for applications into GP training, released today, completely clash with our plans. So it looks like I'm going to be back in Scotland early Jan which sucks. I guess I'll see you all sooner than I thought but bear in mind I'll be studying for the crappy GP exam so no partying thank you very much!

Death jump

I should just let you all know that I'm doing a skydive on the 8th of Dec.

Should anything bad happen to me I leave everything to Isla McAllister including the flat which she has to sell immediately . However, My TV and DVD player + surround sound system goes to Amitava Roy as does my desktop and lap top computer. The guitars and all their paraphanalia goes to Graham Fisher and finally all my snowboarding things go to Angus Lyon including the board boots, bindings, board case and clothes. Finally I should say to Isla that should the ultimate badness happen then £15000 of the sale of the flat should go to a mega party which Matt Strachan and Pete McHugh should organise in Scotland with all my mates and everyone from www.drinkingmachines.com

Andy Butts is to organise the finer points of the party including the DJ, booze and security (Angus Lyon can contact him).

I hope none of this comes to pass but if it does or should anything happen to me following the creation of this post then the same rules apply and you all better come or I'll haunt the crap outta you.

I can't wait.

8th Dec is the day!

Things are... escalating

I've just seen the funiest thing ever!!! Do you remember that scene in Mall Rats? where there is that bit that goes something like "That kid is BACK on the escalator again"? And then there is some chat about a "blood bath ensuing".

Well I've just seen it happen. Here I am editing the prologue to the book I'm writing and I hear someone at the station shouting "Help, help, help... HEEEEEELLLLLLP! HELP ME. HELP ME!!!" Now normally I would have thought that someone was being raped or killed but after all this is Sydney and when I went to the window to see what all the commotion was about do I see badness??? No, I see a fat goth with her billowy sail-like black skirt caught in the escalator. She was grabbing the hand rail trying to push it backwards but without success.

However, a weedy little Asian boy turned up and just gave her skirt a pull and out it came. Thankfully I didn't have to see any Bridget Jones style knickers - mind you her's were probably black and covered in Skull and Cross bones.

Laser beams!!!

This post is for the blokes and anyone else that thinks hi-tech gadgets are cool. You might remember reading about the time we went to the Sydney Observatory and how I thought that the best part of the whole tour was when the guide brought out his laser pointer which was so powerful that you could see the whole beam as he pointed out various stars he wanted us to look at.

About 6 guys simultaneously said "Oooh. Where did you get that?" He'd obviously been asked that every single time he's conducted the tour and with a sigh said, "I had to order it from America," shrugging his shoulders, "It's too powerful to buy in Australia." Weilding it like a light saber, it looked slightly larger than a pen and for the rest of the tour the male contingent ignored his astrological chat and were transfixed by his pseudo-sabre. The beam was exactly like the green laser sights you see in all cop dramas and SWAT-style films and everyone wanted one.

Well thanks to a Barrowlands-like but legitimate market in Fremantle I HAVE ONE. It's amazing!!! The beam has a 6km range and when you point it into space it really feels like some poor alien is going to be looking through his telescope and suddenly become blinded by a searing green laser which in turn sparks an intergalactic war all thanks to the Sydney Observatory.

Incidently there was a recent story of a helicopter pilot who crashed his chopper because someone fired a laser into his cockpit which resulted in him losing control and destroying the hefty bit of kit.

It wasn't me...

The Plague(s)

Sydney has been struck by a plague - well 2 actually. Not the bubonic one you understand, but the biblical kind.

When we got back from Melbourne we walked into the flat only to find that there were about 50 giant moths flying about the living room. In fact they were every where and the outside of the windows were covered in a blanket of them all trying to get into the appartment. It was very freaky especially when we disturbed them and they started flapping crazily round the room and dive bombing us.

It seems that some odd weather conditions this year and previous droughts had resulted in an abundance of them this year but not enough birds to eat them all. I suppose that means that there will be more birds than normal next year as all the chicks will have plenty of food this year. Does that also mean that Sydney is going to be covered in masses of bird guano next spring from all the returning birds?

The next plague started about a week ago. Flies. Millions of them. There are so many of them around that everyone is beginning to look like and extra in a third world documentary. I thought perhaps they were landing on me every time I was out on the bike because of my manly fragrance and musky odour but actually it's just cause I smelled like shit.

Anyway, they have appeared because an inconsiderate wind blow them off course and instead of staying inland they all ended up in the City and up my nose.

It's horrible.

Winter wonderland?

In recent weeks something has become increasingly unnerving. Everyone here is getting more and more excited about the Christmas Holidays and the New Year whereas I am becoming happier that the weather is warming up and the sun is out more often. It seems strange to think that Xmas is round the corner but it's hot outside and I'm getting a tan!?!?

I think it's a hangover from the Northern Hemisphere that I should associate the festive period with winter but I just can't help it. Santa and sun just don't mix. I also feel that way about my birthday which is in a few weeks time. I've always celebrated it in the dark coldness that is November so this year it doesn't even feel like I'm having a birthday. If I was here on my own I'd probably forget it until ages after it had past. I wonder if that means I can also forget to add one more year on to my age and just count 2007 as an anti-birthday year?

So who's got it right? The north or the south? Well, I don't suppose there is much in the way of seasons in Jerusalem and also the Earth is closer to the sun in January than any other month so perhaps the Aussies have the edge. One down side though is that during their wet winter months there is nothing to look forward to. They don't have summer holidays in July and August meaning all the good stuff is lumped together at the end of the calender year.

Unlucky? Well let me ask you this - would you rather be singing "Winter wonderland" whilst wrapped in 6 layers of clothing getting hammered as it's the only way to stay warm or would you rather the radio was playing "I'm dreaming of a white christmas" while you chill out on the beach with all your mates drinking cold beers and knowing that the sun is going to be blazing till 9pm when the BBQs will be starting?

Tough choice? Not really!

Dear Readers...

...Just another little note to remind you all that I've mostly been posting on the 365 Challenge blog site since we've spent the last 2 weeks in Victoria and Western Australia. I suggest you have a read there as this site is becoming increasingly dull.

Cheers.

Z

Fame at last!

I sent one of the photos that I took on the Ocean Rd to the people at Wicked Campers and they have put it on their website and emailed me a big thumbs up! Cheack it out here...

Wicked Adventure Ralley

Z

"Bats... I hate bats"

So... I'm on my way to work a couple of nights ago and I'd taken the skate board with me. There's a bit where I start skating in a grocery shop car park which is on a slope and gather speed then negotiate a tricky dog-leg right then left out onto the street and continue picking up speed on the pavement. It's nice and smooth and there's a gentle incline at the end of the street so I don't have to worry about stopping as gravity does it for me.

This night I was paying the usual amount of attention to the chicane and at the last second spotted something in a low branch of a tree right in front of me. It seems that it's impossible to get away from nature and as I smacked my face into the side of the massive fruit bat I realised the futility of trying to escape the animals of Oz.

It was actually quite funny as it struggled with its huge webbed wings to take flight before it hit the ground but with about 1 foot to go managed to lift ungainly into the air having a thoughful bowel motion right in front of my board that I ended up skating through.

Incidently, I spent the next 3 days thinking that I had rabies......

My thoughts on Australia

How’s things? I guess you have realised that I’m back from my travels round the south and west of Australia and I’ve got some things to say. I spent a great deal of my time outside NSW thinking about stuff that I’d not really covered before in this Blog. Here follows an observational account of what a foreigner may find unnerving or interesting about Australia.

Firstly there is the chat about distance. If Australia was in the middle of the Atlantic there would be about 2 billion people living here. Unfortunately it’s in the middle of nowhere – and the country is massive. I find that the distances here are so difficult. Were I in Europe I could spent 4 hours in a plane and find myself in Moscow or Morroco but in Oz I still find that 4 hours doesn’t even take me outside the country. That also means that I’m thousands of miles away from my friends and family and more importantly, the rest of Europe.

That also has a real issue when it comes to Skiing. The ski resorts here are rubbish in the same vein of Scotlands Ski destinations. Japan is relatively close but still a 8 hour flight away and the skiing in NZ is hardly worth crossing the Tasmin. So if you decide to stay in Australia then don’t expect to be riding the powder or bashing the moguls any time soon. In fact, this is the longest that I’ve gone without a trip to a resort in 12 years.

The next tine that I find remarkable here is the outdoor life-style. People are able to predict the weather fairly accurately here and that means that a Barbie next Monday says a Barbie next Monday. This also leads to the fact that there is a great emphasis on the Al Fresco style of life and the produce here is amazingly fresh (even though the lack of artificial preservatives causes your average apple to become rotten within about a day).

Coupled to this the Australians love their sport. They rule in AFL, rugby league and union, swimming and they are not too bad at soccer, netball, beach volley ball and hockey. However, this also means that the national cancer of Australia is melanoma and that’s a bloody shame, Mind you – would you rather a lifetime at the beach and skin cancer or a lifetime of deep fried pizzas, cigarettes and Buckfast followed by a heart attack and bowel cancer? In all honesty I think I’d opt for the Aussie way.

Moving on I find that there is some major weirdness with the cities here. It’s kinda hard to describe but I think that it goes a bit like this… Somehow I feel that I’m safe in the cities here – I’d walk all over Sydney without even feeling the remotest bit endangered. However, leaving the city and going into the outback or simply suburbia inspires a major amount of terror. In Glasgow I’m always looking over my shoulder but when I visit the folks or go on a day trip to the Highlands I never feel worried or threatened. Strange that it’s the reverse here – and I’ve not even watched Wolf Creek yet. I think that it’s because there is no such thing as council housing here and therefore if you want to live in the city then you have to be able to afford it unlike home where I paid a ton of cash for my flat and yet I share the street with about 50 council flats full of non-tax-paying benefit leeches who get their houses (in an area of prime real estate) for free.

There are some very cool attitudes in Australia and the most noticeable are the indomitable Aussie Spirit and the ”Fair Go” mind set that all Australians hold dear. They are brilliant to see in action and it comes across that everyone here is a mate and they all seem to know each other. It’s almost like everyone went to school together.

As well as the attitudes there is a load of verbal mannerisms here that I find myself deliberately avoiding. They include “how you going?” “Beautiful” “I’m so over it” “That’s exactly right” and “I’m across it”. Mind you I guess these pale in comparison to what Australians would have to put up with if they spent a year in Glasgow – “Haw, bawbag!” “Minging” “Mon tae F£$%” etc.

The final thing I’ve noticed (or not noticed) is the Aboriginal culture here. I’m told it exists but I’ve not seen any aboriginals here with the exception of a group of young lads on a train in Perth being ironically racist to a group of middle aged Chinese people. It’s like Australia’s dirty little secret and it’s hidden from everyone. They are one of the most ancient people in the world yet every part of their beliefs and culture has been destroyed by the arrival of the white man. Recently the Australian Government has implemented alcohol bans and child health checks in the Northern Territory aboriginal towns. These have been met with major resistance and town elders have been telling the locals that “the police are coming to take your children away” which of course isn’t the case. I think it’s similar to the problems with the Native Americans in the USA and a lot of it stems from booze and the inability to adapt (or lack of desire to adapt) to the “modern” world. I would ask someone about it but as I said I’ve not met a single aboriginal since we arrived except those louts on the train – who incidentally thought I was aboriginal and kept calling me “Old School”.

So that’s some thoughts so far. I’m sure I’m sure I’ll have more before I leave here.