Ambulance Chaser

Well, it's a weekend on call and the calls just don't stop. Part of the job is responding to all the ambulance calls in my area. Yesterday I showed up at a run down house with 20+ cats and a dead man inside. Ok, it was a little spooky but it looked like he died of natural causes. Today it was a 17 year old boy with seizures....then just a few boring office calls: hemorrhoids, a sore ear, infected hip wound...who knows what next, it's not even 10am yet!

Actually, it's not always this bad. I'm just hoping to get them all set and then be able to go out to one of the local farms and try my hand at some farming skills...milking, etc. We've already been able to go out lambing (when the sheep are having babies) and catch a few newborns. Kimball was more interested in the ancient sheepdog they had (he was pretty cool, the dog rode on the back of the 4-wheeler since he was crippled and stared down the sheep from there).

Don't have pictures yet, but Kimball cut my hair. No, it's not a disaster, i like it, it's the shortest its been in 25 years! Still hoping to look old enough to be a doctor...

Bad season to be a Mouse...

Mavora Lakes...where they shot heaps of LOTR scenes...
Once every five years or so, you can fly-fish with mouse patterns up here...the trees release heaps of seed every 5 yrs, that the mice get full up on, and then they cross the rivers & lakes to get more, causing the fish to feed on the poor lil' mice. The NZ record is 21 confirmed mice skeletons found inside one FAT trout!
Secret fishin' spot...

Death to Didymo!

This is what they mean by gin-clear water!!! Unfortunately, they say careless US flyfishers appear to be spreading a US-based algae in the NZ rivers...hmmmmm.....

More Fishing!

Waiau River...hatch was going' off late at night, and Amy caught her first NZ fish dry-flying!
Upper Matuara River...
Mokoreta stream...

defunction

i know, i know, promised pictures...so far i can only get letters, numbers and symbols in gibberish - help!

well, the week continues smoothly, with a supremely quite call wednesday night and i've just agreed to be the backup call for Twizel this weekend. (if you look at the map that's close to mt. cook...anyway it's phone call only, no long drives for me). the idea is to have a PRIME trained nurse (kinda like ACLS) on call then a doctor for back up by phone. if nurses here can start doing the same, i may just get a few more weekends away. don't exactly know how that affects my liability but alot of scary things seem to work here in the name of rural medicine.



more later...the next patient has arrived.