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I’ll warn you now – this is going to be a long post.

It’s been ages since I last blogged (apologies but, well, I’ve been a little busy) and a lot has happened over the last few days.

My last few shifts at Flinders were really quite gruelling – I’m not going to bitch and moan though as I really think that everyone I saw over the last three late shifts needed to be in hospital (if you haven’t worked out by now, that’s very rare!). The highlight of my last shift was teaching a medical student how to reduce a dislocated shoulder. I knocked him out (the patient not the student) with some Propofol and Fentanyl and the student managed to reduce the shoulder in a single attempt. I like teaching and it was really nice of Derek to let me run that one in resus. What was even nicer was that Fi (the nurse) had come to find me to reduce the shoulder in the first place as she knows I enjoy that sort of thing. I will miss nurses like her.

One thing I won’t miss about Flinders ED is the sheer ‘feral’ nature of triage. I arrived on my final shift at 15:00 to find three patients in the ‘al fresco’ area (trolleys by the ambulance bay doors) and three patients on trolleys (or barouches to the Aussies) in ‘gold class’ (a.k.a the waiting room).

I found my last shift, on Tuesday, a bit of an anti-climax to be frank. I had a nice chat with Brenton the ACIS nurse when he went off shift at 19:30 and another chat with Palani when he came on at 22:30 but that was about it. There was no fanfare to my departure at all. Even the cheesecake Sandy had said she’d make for me didn’t materialise (although I think she did actually make one). When my shift finished I just left and drove to pick up Fi. Rather sad really. It’s not all downbeat though, lots of people have said they will miss me and have tried to get us to stay out here.

Poor Fi had a rough run at work. She had to work eight shifts in a row, finishing yesterday at 17:00. Lots of those shifts were late shifts and on one occasion (Australia Day I think) she didn’t finish until 03:00. That was annoying as I was sat outside the children’s hospital in the car for an hour-and-a-half. Not fun in hot weather.

Ah hot weather. Now there’s an interesting topic to talk about. Adelaide is in the middle of one of it’s worst (or best, depending on your point of view) heatwaves. Wednesday was the hottest day in the city for over 70 years. It hit 45.7 degrees Celsius. I’d also like to point out that Wednesday night was the hottest night EVER in Adelaide. The coolest it got that evening was 33.9 degrees Celsius. People moan about the cold in the UK but at least you can always put more clothes on – you can’t take your skin off! Even Adelaide is struggling with the heat. Most of the trains and trams couldn’t run because the railway lines buckled. We’re talking solid iron tracks here people! We were lucky in some respects, at least we weren’t one of the 100,000 people whose power supply failed with the heat. Guess what? No power equals no air-conditioning.

Marion came around in the midday sun to collect our BBQ. I didn’t thought that she would need me to dismantle it. Guess what happens to a metal BBQ when it’s been sat in the heat for days – it gets bloody hot. I had to lift it with an overglove!

Why am I prattling on about the heat so much? It’s because I’m on the plane (currently somewhere between Adelaide and Singapore) heading back to High Wycombe where the forecast is for 3 degrees. This blog entry will serve as a reminder that I’m not crazy for coming back to chilly Blighty!

Yesterday was another hectic day. I got up at 07:30 and my chore day didn’t end until I met up with Fi at the children’s hospital at 17:00.

Liz came around first thing in the morning and took a load of our stuff (pots and pans, etc). I then had to drive to the Repat followed by Flinders to get some forms signed in order to allow us to get our ‘super‘ (read: pension) released to us when we leave. The bloody Repat is a mammoth rabbit warren of a hospital and I must have spent 25 minutes wandering aimlessly around it trying to find payroll in the 43 degrees heat. Unpleasant.

After Flinders, I rushed back to the flat as the carpet cleaner guy was arriving at 11:45. He also happens to be Holly, Murray and Lynda’s landlord. He did a good job of cleaning the carpets but it cost me AUD$135. That was annoying as I didn’t have enough cash on me and bloody Telstra had cut our phone line prematurely (idiots) so he couldn’t use his EFTPOS machine. This meant I had to whizz off to the cash machine in the car to get some money.

By this stage, I was hungry. It was 13:10 and someone from McCranor Property was coming around at 13:30 for the final flat inspection. I thought I had time to dash to Glenelg in the car to grab a bite to eat but no sooner had I arrived back home than did I see the inspection lady. She spent an almighty 45 minutes taking pictures of the flat. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and she said I would need to sign the bond (deposit) release form at 15:00.

After lunch I drove to Marion (the shopping centre, not the person) to get my hair cut and some chocolates to say thank you to Jess for lending us her car. Randomly, I developed a nose bleed (or ‘blood nose’ as the Aussies call them) whilst in the hairdresser’s waiting area so I had to dash off to the loo to stop it (lucky I’m an ENT surgeon eh?). It stopped pretty easily so I was able to get my haircut.

I then took the car to the car wash and headed to McCranor Property to sign this bond form. Very annoyingly, the office was unattended. I checked my mobile and I had a voicemail telling me that they had left the form in an envelope by the bins and all I had to do was sign it. Dilemma? No bloody pen! I then had to drive somewhere and buy a pissing biro to sign this form.

By this point in the day I was very hot and flustered. I drove back home, showered and then drove the 30 minutes to Jess’ place to return her car. She is a star. She drove me miles out of her way to drop me off at the children’s hospital to meet Fi.

From that point onwards, yesterday was lovely. We had a couple of drinks in north Adelaide with some of Fi’s work colleagues to say goodbye. This included John, Bec, Dougie and Serah.

We then caught a taxi back to the (now essentially empty) flat and met up with Anit. We grabbed some takeaway pizza from Good Life and walked to Nick & Emma’s place (where Marion also happened to be). We spent a couple of hours chatting and saying goodbye.

We rounded off the day by walking back home in the warm night air along Glenelg’s foreshore reminiscing.

We’ll miss Australia. It’s been a great experience.