A trip to A & E!

We’re sat in a little coffee shop in a funny little backward town called Mossman, waiting until 12.30 so that we can be taken in the back of a Ute back up to Cow Bay (our current home) by a lovely albeit rather weird market stall owner who we met only 15 minutes ago. Let me backtrack.

Three days ago, Bro started feeling ill. He woke up with puffy eyes, and felt achy and genuinely pretty rough all over. It’s not like him to feel ill and he even tried working, but after half an hour he gave up and went to bed and didn’t get up all day. This didn’t worry us too much as he didn’t seem too bad, but we were slightly nervous as Tina our host is away for 4 days, we have no car, and no reception. Plus the nearest doctor is about 12km away-not the kind of cycle you want to do when you feel ill. By the afternoon of the second day of him still feeling crap, I went for a cycle and met a lovely lady by the beach. I told her about Bro and our conversation went something like this...

Lady: “Oh hell has he had mozzie bites?

Me: “Yes, loads!”

Lady: “Oh dear, he probably has Dengue Fever then. Or a tick, have you checked for ticks?!”

Me: “No!”

Lady: “Well we have ticks that can paralyse you. There’s loads of them round here. They could get anywhere…your ears, your crotch…[insert any body orifice here]…

Me: “Oh deary me”

Lady: “Or has he been walking around in bare feet/flipflops?..If so he’s probably stood in rat piss and has caught leptospirosis””

Me: “Leptospir-what?!….”

Lady: “Yup, nasty thing. My ex had it and it kept coming back year, after year. Simply horrible!”

So the long and short of this delightful and mind-easing dialogue was that the woman offered to follow me back in her car (me bombing it on my bike, quite dramatically in torrential rain with thoughts of tropical diseases and rat piss going through my head), and pick Bro up to take him to the doctors.

Unfortunately, the surgery was shut (it was 2.30 on a Friday!!), the out-of-hours number didn’t pick up, the emergency nurse was away for the weekend (is that even allowed?!), and we had no signal to call anyone. So the lady (we by now knew her as Rebecca) and her two kids drove us to a nearbye petrol station, where the manager took pity on us and let us use their phone to call the Ozzie equivalent of NHS Direct. After 15 mins going through his symptoms, Brodie was then advised to “Go straight to your nearest health centre within 4 hours” which as you can imagine scared the living daylights out of us. In addition, the nearest Health Centre was Mossman A & E which is about an hour drive away, including a ferry ride. And we don’t have a car. So thank God, Rebecca (rapidly turning into a saint!) said she would be heading that way later anyway, so she may as well go sooner and drop us off, so the five of us and their Teacup Chihuahua, Ruby, squeezed into her car again and off we went.

Mossman A & E was quite frankly a lovely experience. I think they were in need of something to do, so we were attended by 2 uber-friendly nurses and a rather dashing (Brodie’s words) Scottish Doctor. Brodie repeated his symptoms 3 times over, and they took bloods, and a urine sample. They concluded it didn’t appear to be anything serious, and definitely not Dengue Fever, but was likely to just be a virus he’s picked up somehow. Bloods come back in a week to check for Leptospirosis, but in the meantime he has antibiotics to knock it on the head if that’s the case. So we were sent of with 3 cheery waves, some anti-sickness drugs and two hydrolyte lollipops for Brodie (but alas not for his long-suffering girlfriend).

The problem was that we then had no way of getting back to Cow Bay, and nowhere to stay, so on the advice of the nurses, found accommodation at a local Hotel/Pub. This was super cheap (less than we’ve previously been spending on hostel beds), and when we entered the bar looking knackered, ill yet still decidedly touristy, the entire bar turned to stare at us. Still, it did the job and had air con for a poorly Brodie.

The issue is that we still have to get back to Cow Bay. We’d been told there is a daily shuttle, but after extensive searching this morning (the Tourist Information is shut as it’s Saturday!!!), and about 8 conversations with various locals, we established that there is no bus that goes that way (?!!!) and we’d have to hitch. As one local said to us, ‘It’s all very North Queensland’. And so it is.

However, we’ve lucked out by super charming a lady on a market stall, who took pity on us and dug out her friend Madeline from a different stall, who happens to live just down the road to where we’re staying. Hurrah! So that brings us up to date. What an adventure!