Chapter 41 Stretching the Horizons

                                                Chapter 41 Stretching the Horizons
  
I’d had positive health results by consulting a chiropractor in the past, both for myself and for our son, and one I told about the M.S who had just returned from America before our last transfer, made a statement that would literally change my life.

    He said, "If anyone can help you, Laurie Power can." Luckily for me, Laurie Power was a chiropractor in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast who had also not long returned from the United States. He had also studied nutrition and other allied health courses while doing his chiropractic studies. He was an holistic healer.

    We loved life at the coast, and living in the fastest growing centre in Queensland in the early eighties, as the population increased, we also saw new doctors arrive to establish practices. Peter and I got to know and like one of these new doctors who set up rooms nearby, and so we discussed the need for me to have a tubal ligation. We had moved to the coast in January and the operation took place in June at the Selangor Private Hospital. Unfortunately, little Stephanie was sick at the same time and ended up in the Nambour General Hospital with a chest infection.

    Both my mother and Peter's mother, Alma, stayed at the ambulance house to help look after the children while I was out of action. One day they took the bus to Nambour from the coast to visit me in Selangor and Stephanie in the Nambour General, and when they left to go home, unfortunately, because it was just after three pm, the bus they had to take was also a school bus. The two of them sat there together in a seat unable to say a word to each other because of the level of noise from the childrens’ enthusiastic chatter.

    Eventually, unable to control herself any longer, Peter's mother stood up, and facing them, yelled in a loud voice, "Shut up!"  The noise ceased abruptly, but almost immediately resumed, and it was as if nothing had happened.

    Astounded by her impulsive actions back at the ambulance house that afternoon, both Alma and Mum laughed often, not only at her stand, but at the uselessness of it! Of course, every time they thought of the incident after that they dissolved into uncontrollable laughter.

    Stephanie was discharged before me and all was normal by the time I returned home.

    But Man later said to me, "Pete brought the little thing home and put her down on the floor and let her walk up those long stairs all by herself! I just wanted to take her in my arms and carry her."  Steph proudly carried her tiny school bag.

     I found Laurie Power’s chiropractic practice in an arcade in Nambour, and I made an appointment.

    On my first visit after a full examination, he said, "Well, we are prepared to accept you as a patient, and we are going to rebuild your body." 

    He gave me a full explanation of his work. A holistic healer, he treated all aspects of the body, not just the spinal system. This included diet and nutrition which formed fifty percent of the treatment, rest and relaxation, spinal adjustments which took care of the nervous system, and mental attitude. He offered to discuss spiritual matters if I wished. Basically, I was hugely impressed and elated. I felt saved! (At least physically.)

    At the time I was very run down. I felt tired and miserable most of the time. I screamed at the children like a fish wife, and Peter and I were having frequent arguments, as I was irritable, impatient and slept badly.

    But when I met Laurie Power I was absolutely inspired by what he had to say and I took the new treatment 100% seriously. At first I wouldn't even eat when we went out on a social occasion unless it was something from my diet sheet. Eventually Laurie explained to me that if I was out I needed to relax and have the meal that was available. 

    "Otherwise," he said, "you only make your life miserable."

    However, although I relaxed about the social occasions, I followed everything else Laurie said to the letter. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to recover, I knew I was going to get well.
   
    As well as the diet, he prescribed a large number of vitamins and mineral supplements. These were quite expensive, but I gave them top priority. Every day Peter came upstairs for his lunch, and in an endeavour to manage the budget, we ate frugally on many days. Baked beans, sardines, and toasted cheese sandwiches were common lunches. 

    All this time I was learning more and more about nutrition from Laurie, and sometimes went to lectures at his rooms. I soaked up the new knowledge like a sponge. His enthusiasm was infectious and unlike Peter I wanted to spread the knowledge. I shared what I knew and I spoke to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately though, I found many people were not ready to listen and most were not interested in changing their own lifestyles. I couldn't understand why doctors didn't have this knowledge. If I mentioned anything about diet to a doctor they immediately clammed up, and put up an invisible wall. Their manner became restless and their eyes dropped. Sometimes, they stumbled over their words and muttered about knowledge not being proved and the dangers of such and such.

    I gradually came to treat all doctors with suspicion. I couldn't help comparing their lack of insight into the body with the ability Laurie and his co-workers had to assess a health situation.

    When the chiropractors examined the body they saw it like they were reading a road map, but doctors had to operate so they could look inside, or test the skin all over for numbness, or take multiple x-rays. As time went on my dislike of the medical profession grew and my level of trust and respect for them diminished.

    These days acupuncturists have become so popular that they have gained a new respect even from the medical profession. I believe you can get their fees refunded by Medicare. Alternative health is now referred to as 'complementary medicine.'

    The main focus of my new diet was to avoid processed food, refined foods such as white flour and sugar, tea and coffee and alcohol, and refined oils, now called ' trans-fats,' and ‘recently discovered.’of course.

    I bought stone ground whole grain flour and whole grain rice. I learned to bake my own bread from pure wholemeal flour as pure wholemeal bread could not be bought, and the concept of organics was in its infancy. I ordered fructose through a chemist we knew as you couldn't buy it in the health shops at the time and I was a bit of a 'sweet tooth', so I used it instead of cane sugar. But it wasn't long before I learned to use honey instead of the fruit sugar. Honey was allowed, but only natural raw honey, (not processed or heated honey.)

    Although I had never been a chocolate eater, considering it too expensive for me and 'not good for you' anyway, I bought carob instead of chocolate. Eventually I learned to enjoy unsweetened food more anyway, and still do today. While we lived at the Sunshine Coast, one of my favourite breakfasts was cooked brown rice, sprinkled thickly with sesame seeds, coconut, chopped nuts, or any one of a number of other seeds, and moistened with apple juice.

    I loved this new way of eating and enjoyed the new foods tremendously.
Laurie Power didn't know everything there was to know about health, but he sure knew a lot, and he never failed to give me a sensible answer to my many questions. Also he inspired me with the enthusiasm to start reading and learning more about the wonderful world of health. I was totally energised and couldn't get the new knowledge fast enough. I read books, books, and more books.

    Laurie had warned me that my health would go backwards in little slips every now and then but each time I recovered I would go further ahead, feeling better and better until I reached optimal health. The thing was though, I felt so inspired by his knowledge and enthusiasm for this new way of living and embraced my new way of life so diligently, that I started to go ahead in health with no slip-backs at all. 

    Laurie couldn’t believe the speed of my recovery, and whenever he had a new assistant chiropractor working in his rooms he brought them in to meet "our miracle patient."

    With the coming of the new diet, came a new era in my life. I was content and happy, infused with new energy and enthusiasm for living. I’d never felt so well and so full of strength. I woke at six every morning, changed into my bathers and headed for the surf, where I had a short swim. I adored being able to walk just a short block to the beach. When I returned to the house I showered and dressed and by the time the children were getting out of bed, I had their lunches cut for school and packed in their bags, and their breakfast waiting for them.

    I had patience. Gone was the screaming at the children and the fighting with Peter. On weekends when we took walks along the beach, I was the one out in front leading the others.  Sometimes I took the camera and photographed the children on the rocks.

    It wasn't long before Peter became president of the Lions Club, which meant that I was president of the Lions Ladies. In the middle of that year the Lions Ladies became a Lioness club and I was their inaugural president. I also joined Nambour Forum, a very small, friendly public speaking club. Most of the members were there for the same reason and that was to gain some personal confidence. Although nervous, I loved being a part of that club. And, while I was president of the Lioness club, because of the small membership, I was also president of the Forum club. It was a six-month stint which boosted my confidence enormously.

    It sounds an impressive line up but really, the truth is a lot of it happened by accident, and I had very little confidence in myself. 

    At the Lioness meetings I often berated myself in front of the others over some silly little thing, "Oh I'm so stupid!" I often said.

    One of my friends, a dear sweet young woman, always reprimanded me for it, saying, "Gayle!  Don't say that!  You are not stupid!"
            
    Laurie had  said, "From now on your life should be sedentary, not too many highs and lows." But I felt invincible and wanted to take on the world. 

    As well as my involvement with the clubs, I did the usual run around with the children to swimming lessons, calisthenics, and school events. I worked behind the scenes with the Lioness club, making scones and lamingtons for stalls to raise money.

    In fact I had so much enthusiasm for living that I took swimming lessons myself, joining an adult class which I enjoyed tremendously. While we lived there I finally learned to swim properly and could actually manage four lengths of a 12.5 m pool all in one go! One day I scared the daylights out of the instructor by taking it upon myself to dive in. Without realising it at first, I had done a complete somersault under the water and must have come within a hair's breadth of hitting my head on the solid wall of the pool. When I came up for air she was ready to dive in after me and I was banned from diving ever again! 

    Unfortunately I burnt the candle at both ends, lost weight, and in time became run down.

    After three years Peter was not only getting restless but also getting run down. He was the officer in charge with only two staff to assist him and he was on call every night too.  Never a good sleeper, I was more alert to the front doorbell than he was.

      Because of his height, Peter slept from corner to corner of our bed, which meant that I slept in the top triangle. It wasn't common at that time for anyone to have a queen size or king-size bed, and like most other married couples, we had an ordinary double bed. To make matters worse, during her toddler years, Stephanie frequently came into our bed at night. Our bedroom window looked over the footpath, and being a very light sleeper, the noise of passers-by kept me awake for hours. If I heard voices in the street, I’d be wondering if they were going to ring the doorbell. If they paused and had a discussion outside the building I’d often wake Peter, telling him I thought someone needed help. 

    Sometimes they did--sometimes they didn’t. Peter would likely respond sleepily, "Let them ring the doorbell," and drop back asleep.

    Frequently we were woken by Southern or English visitors who had spent too long on the beach. Commonly it would be eleven o'clock or midnight and the pain of a vicious sunburn from a too-long stay in a hot Queensland sun would, by that hour, be unbearable, and in desperation they came to us for help. The ambulance had this 'magic solution,' possibly a combination of methylated spirits and potassium permanganate, which relieved the pain immediately.

    We were not long settled in when an accident occurred at the end of our street in which a young man on a motorcycle had overturned and was badly injured. Within a matter of days there was a second accident in our street, practically in front of the ambulance. A man was driving a backhoe and took the corner too fast, resulting in the machine overturning and crushing his skull under the roll bars. I was a bit shell-shocked, but thankfully this rate of disaster in the immediate vicinity didn't continue. By this time however, we could see that life was never going to be dull here! But unfortunately there would be some very distressing moments.

    Two doors up from the ambulance lived a couple with two small children. I always thought they were a little bit 'hippy' because the mother mostly wore long dresses, wore her hair long and loose, and they ate sprouts and tofu, (very unusual at the time.) One night the bearded husband arrived at the front door in great agitation. He called out to Peter that his baby had stopped breathing and they needed help urgently. Peter climbed out of bed and started to get dressed. I yelled at him to put on his dressing gown and go.

    He couldn't believe the sight that greeted him when he got to the house. The wife was obviously in such agitation that all sense of propriety was forgotten. There she was in the shower with the baby clutched to her chest and not a stitch of clothing on either of them. Apparently the baby had had a febrile convulsion, and after a preliminary examination Peter took them to hospital. I lay awake until he returned.

    On the other side of our street, on a corner, was a fast food outlet called The Chuck Wagon. It opened at all hours of the day and late into the night and naturally was frequented by the younger population, who could not leave the place without squealing their car tyres in a cloud of blue smoke as they negotiated the corner. It often happened when we were in bed at night and I envisaged being stuck at the ambulance on my own and having to cope with a severe car accident alone. I had no wish to test my ageing nursing skills to that extent!

    Another incident occurred, however, which affected me very badly at the time. It was about five o'clock one evening. Mum was visiting and she and I were upstairs with the children and alone at the centre. Peter had taken a patient to Nambour Hospital, and was still away. Mick, the other ambulance officer on duty, was at Kawana Waters, further down the coast, selling lucky envelopes from the little lucky envelope van.

    I heard the front doorbell ring, and leaving Mum in charge of the children, I hurried down to answer it. There I was confronted by a gentleman who was assisting a young man of eighteen with a dreadful wound in his upper right arm, such as I had never seen in my life. Blood was literally gushing out and the first thing the young man said was, "Could I have a drink of water?" Shocked, and needing to gather my wits, I turned and raced back up the stairs where I grabbed a cup of water and flew back down. Although he gulped down the water, it was only seconds before, weakened by loss of blood, he collapsed into unconsciousness, going down onto the concrete of the plant room floor. The colour had drained from his skin, and he lay there pale and still.

    Trembling with dread, I flew into action. First I rang the main centre at Nambaour, trying to find Peter, and was told he was still in the Nambour area, about to return. The senior officer wanted to have a social chat, but eaten up with impatience, I'm afraid I must have hung up in his ear. I knew Peter could not possibly return in time to save the young man's life.

    Next I called the doctor on call and spoke to his wife who told me her husband was somewhere on Buderim Mountain already visiting a patient. Again, she felt bad and wanted to explain at length. It was probably only seconds but it felt like hours.

    About 100 m from the ambulance centre in a new group of shops our family doctor had a practice. We’d got to know him quite well and he also had a daughter named Stephanie. During one of our conversations he had assured me that if ever I was in trouble and couldn't find the doctor on call, I was welcome to call him at home. 

    Like a drowning man clutching for a lifeline, I called his number and was answered by his wife. I think she knew by the sound of my voice that it was critical.

    She made no reply but immediately gave the phone over to her husband and he also wasted no words. "I'll come straight up," he said. (Later, I found out that he and his wife were in the middle of a large Chinese meal with guests)

    Meanwhile, I prepared an IV and cut-down tray ready for the doctor to insert an intravenous drip. A cut-down tray is only necessary if the doctor cannot find a vein, but I thought I should prepare for just such an emergency because of the young man's bloodless state.

    All this time the driver of the car had been crouched on his knees holding a tourniquet above the wound, which was a huge tear through the left bicep. Of course a tourniquet was in vain but it was my desperate effort to stem the rapidly spurting blood.

    The driver gasped, "My back! My back, I've got to stand up, I'm sorry."

    "Yes, of course!"  I said. ”leave it” It had been a vain attempt, anyway.

    To my enormous relief, the doctor arrived within minutes.

    He knelt down beside the still form on the plant room floor.  "He has lost a lot of blood," he said. 

    Then he pulled down the lower lid of the boy’s eyes and found it was quite colourless.  "He HAS lost a lot of blood" he repeated. 

    Then he asked me if we had any S.P.P.S. (serum plasma protein solution,) which is not used any more in ambulances). I wasn't sure and I was unfamiliar with the product, but I guessed it would be in the back of the ambulance if we had any. I raced to open the back doors of the vacant car.

    My eyes flew up and down the shelves of medical supplies frantically and because of my panic, I couldn't identify any of them. With an enormous effort I forced myself to stay calm and look carefully, and almost immediately my eyes fell on the needed SPPS.  In record fast time  the doctor had the intravenous drip set up and let one of the bottles run straight in to the vein.

    Like magic the boy returned to consciousness, and the doctor set up the second bottle to drip in more slowly.

     Just then Peter returned to the centre in the other ambulance car and almost at the same time Mick returned from Kawana. They loaded the patient on to a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance and the doctor climbed in to accompany him to the hospital while Mick drove.

    Peter began the cleanup. A blood stained cement floor and a dinner-plate-sized clot of blood was all that remained of the drama. We spoke to the driver of the car and he explained the story.

    It appeared that he was holidaying on one of the upper floors of a block of  holiday units in Mooloolaba, a leading beachside holiday area just is a to suburbs away  from our centre.  The young lad was also in one of the units with his parents on holiday. He had returned from an outing to find that his parents were missing with the key to the front door. Apparently they were out walking on the beach. With the natural impatience of a young man he had decided to try to climb up the side of the units to an open window. He fell, ripping open the upper muscle of his left arm and severing the brachial artery on the broken wireless aerial of his car, as he fell across it. The injury, a four inch by two inch wide gash, looked like a piece of ragged meat.

     Desperate for help, the boy ran back in to the units, knocking first on one door and getting no answer, and although he got an answer at the second, when the occupant saw the copious amounts of blood, the door was slammed in his face. Luckily for the hapless teen as it turned out, the gentleman guardian angel was looking out over his balcony and saw the whole thing happen. He raced downstairs and bundled the boy into his car.

    We saw the driver again several days later at the ambulance and he told us he had to have a professional cleaning job done on his car to remove the blood from crevices around the seat.

    We liked living at Maroochydore. For me, it was enjoyable from a social point of view and the children enjoyed living so close to the beach, but of course, it could be very demanding on Peter. Working six days a week for four and a half of the five years we were there was excessive, and in the end it was largely due to his own stringent efforts that two days off a week was finally granted to all officers-in-charge in Queensland.  Pete handled the job well but the stress of being on call twenty-four hours a day eventually took its toll. When we first arrived at the centre he had two other staff only. One worked the day shift and one worked an evening shift. However, that still left four shifts a week when they were having their days off which resulted in Peter working alone. In addition to that he did all the night shifts on his own. Because the district was growing so fast, as the population increased, so did the workload at the ambulance.

    There are many other tragic incidents which Peter recalls, some of which he will never forget. Uppermost in his mind is still the case of a little grade three boy, who collapsed in the grounds of the State School just before classes were due to start for the day, as the result of a cardiac arrest. When Pete arrived the boy was not breathing and had no pulse. No one had done anything significant to help him. Peter commenced CPR, (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) and enlisted the help of a teacher to assist. It was obvious that extra help was needed and he called for backup, but the closest ambulance was a long way away. It was so far away in fact, that a bottle of oxygen was emptied and a second bottle was used during the wait. As he performed resuscitation, Pete looked down at a freshly ironed pair of brown boxer shorts that the young boy was wearing – just the same as Ashley would be wearing – and thought of the devastating tragedy developing before his eyes that would soon envelope a loving mother and father and any number of family members.

    Eventually the second ambulance arrived and the boy was transported to Nambour Hospital, the nearest help available. Peter had to continue one man CPR during the trip to hospital as the other officer had to drive the ambulance vehicle. Such was the level of staffing that officers worked alone, leaving no capacity to both drive and care for a patient. Hence it was common to enlist a bystander if possible, but that too was fraught with danger. The dilemma was: should an unknown person be enlisted to drive an emergency vehicle under the pressure of the emergency situation, literally placing everyone’s welfare and even lives at risk? Yet Peter could never see the logic in his just driving the vehicle while leaving a bystander to attend the needs of a patient.

    The poor little boy had no chance. This tragedy was to the forefront of Pete’s mind for many months to come, as the effects on the boy’s family, especially on his mother, ended up bringing her into the care of the ambulance service again. Her burning desire was to be with her lost son. She used to take food to the graveside, as she so sadly failed to cope. Peter knew that her life would never be the same again. The night after the tragedy, Ashley got some extra hugs and attention from a father very thankful and grateful for a healthy active son.

    I recall that there was also a drowning of a little child in a backyard pool while we lived on the coast and the worst of all in my mind was the death of a toddler, a dear little girl. She must have tried to climb up a cupboard in the bathroom and fell, tangling the front of her jacket around the knob on a drawer and innocently hanging herself. By the time the mother found her it was too late to do anything. How those parents must have grieved.

    Another incident that Peter has often recalled, concerns a group of young people, probably not much older than children, but old enough to drive a car. They screeched to a halt in front of the ambulance one afternoon and raced inside begging for help for a young girl lying in the back of the old Kombi van. Unfortunately there was nothing anyone could do. She had been dead for some hours from a drug overdose.

    Drug use was rife on the coast. The old house next door on the southern side of the ambulance building was rented by a large group of young surfers. They lived a charmed life, surfing all day and living on the dole. One day Stephanie lay in bed very sick with a high fever. Her window overlooked that house and the noise from the music was unbelievable. I went next door to protest and it was a challenge just to make myself heard at the door. A young chap who finally came to answer my knock looked dazed and half asleep, but immediately turned the music off after my request to reduce the noise.

    Of course the dramas didn't only involve teenagers and children. One day Peter got a frantic call from the wife of a man mowing his lawn. A broken mower blade detached itself from the mower he was using and became a missile, slicing open the calf muscle of his leg. He was in grave danger from excessive loss of blood, but thanks to the ambulance, made it to hospital in time. 

    And he never forgets the poor lady who got bitten on the bottom by a redback spider. Modesty was never going to be a top priority for her that day, as redback spider bites cause great pain.

    When all the men were out on jobs and I was alone at the centre one day, I answered the bell to be confronted by two fishermen. They'd been having trouble with an outboard motor and somehow one man ended up with battery acid in his eye. As luck would have it, Peter had been talking to me about treatment for acid burns to the eye only days previously. I had great difficulty however, washing out his eye under the taps of our old sink in the plant room, and eventually dispatched him off to the local doctor a short distance away.

    Many, many cases were interesting, and often disturbing, but are too numerous to mention here. There were times when Pete became a bit of a horse doctor, ripping off fingernails, syringing ears, and removing fishhooks from various parts of the anatomy. The ambulance centre became a halfway house to the hospital a half hour’s drive away. It is suffice to say that those five years are, for various reasons, memorable in all our minds.