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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Wednesday 22 May 2002 (Day View) – Sarah’s Birthday and Cairns hospital

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22.05.2002 – Wednesday 22 May – Sarah’s Birthday and Cairns hospital

Morning

• I woke up at 5:30 AM and got ready to go to Cairns. Left here at a bit past six and headed into town (a half hour drive, if one goes fast). Went to the ATM and got some cash out, then onto the hospital to get a form I had to take with me, then to my sister’s place to say Happy Birthday (its her eighteenth), then out to the airport (a quarter hour drive) and payed my fare and onto the airplane.

Cairns

• A short half hour flight to Cairns, smooth and clear. The plane is a small nine seater Cessna Titan; the motors make nice reassuring (sarcasm) stalling noises and appear to be quite hard to start. In Cairns, I got a taxicab from the SkyTrans terminal to the Bell View on the Esplanade where I had a dorm booked. It cost a little over $10 and the dorm is $19. Four room dorms, 2 beds and a double bunk. I was on the bottom bunk. It’s a nice clean and friendly family place, cheap, and right on the Esplanade. I would have to recommend it.

Hospital

• I then made my way to the cinema in the Cairns Central shopping complex, where I watched “Collateral Damage”, which brought me up to my appointment time, so I caught a taxi to the hospital and found the fifth floor in block B. Pleasantly they were having an “industrial dispute” which roughly translated means they had no admin staff. Because Cooktown Hospital is so well organised, no one had sent my latest x-ray down so I had to go have another taken. After I got back from the x-ray place the admin staff were back and I was taken through to the doctor’s waiting room and weighed and all those exciting things they do because they can’t believe their eyes.

Doctors

• I saw a lady doctor and her younger male compatriot first, who talked, looked, poked, listened and did various meaningful things. The head of thoracic medicine then interrupted and that’s about when it became unusual. I don’t think I normally would have seen him, but he came in to show the other two doctors (and me as it turned out) an x-ray, and asked us all if we could see anything unusual. He then put another x-ray on the light box and this time there was a very pronounced whiteness in the chest of the x-ray. They marvelled over this for a while then had to disappear for a while. The lady who was x-rayed weighed a total 35 kilos and I got the impression she wasn’t in a very good way at all. After the three doctors came back, they just sat around talking amongst themselves and answering my questions and discussing me and various other matters. It wasn’t at all what I expected, and I don’t think it was what was intended either. It ended up very informal and I probably talked for nearly an hour.

StarWars

• I then caught another taxi back to the bell view and went to Cairns Central Cinemas again, where I watched “Star Wars – Attack of the Clones”, then made my way to the City Cinemas (which aren’t far away) and watched “We Were Warriors” which brought me to midnight. I then wandered on back to the Bellview, taking a few night-photos on the way, where I promptly went to sleep.