Tuesday, February 26, 2008

workshop crowding again

I have stopped collecting computing equipment, but today my cousin dropped a couple of printers off to me. I don't really need them, but I don't want to see them go to landfill. He also tried to offload a scanner and a PC. No thanks Ted!

Before lunch I visited my mate John in the dementia ward of SCGH. He was bright and not at all anxious as he has been previously. He really liked the small bottle of ginger beer I took him and we had a long, calm conversation.

The conversation was a series of stories seamlessly interwoven without a break. He told me of the drowning death of his nephew on a farm. It wasn't in a water dam, but in a flooded paddock. His nephew, just 4 years old, was in the muddy water and was grabbed by a farmhand who was within 250 metres of the flooded paddock. The farmhand dropped the lad and took a long time to lift him back up out of the water. John told me that there were two cameras recording all that happened and there were indications about a suspicious death. He warned me not to talk to anyone about these suspicions. The story was very real to him.

In the 1950s, John and his father worked on outback farms doing the odd building job and I asked him if this took place on one of those farms. He shot back that it was 'now; currently', and the flooded paddock was just at the end of the hospital ward. He was quite emotional about the imagined loss of his nephew. The brain is a powerful organ.

A team of doctors and nurses visited whilst I was there. The Resident is a Chinese man and he had an African and probably an Indian doctor in tow. The nurses were of a similar mix.
I guess that most graduates from medical school go into private practice after their internship and of late, places in public hospitals are being filled by foreign doctors.

1 comment:

Fremantlebiz said...

It seems that your friend is no longer able to distinguish between bad dreams and actual events. They are merging into eachother. I think this happens to people not diagnosed with dementia too, sometimes from a young age. Loving parents can play an important role in encouraging children to differentiate. Perhaps it's a much more important contribution towards long term mental health of an individual than is generally realised? It's certainly something to think about.

Thankyou for sharing your experiences and observations Kevin. Paul.