EMERGENCY OH-OH-OH
So in case you didn’t know, to get emergency services in Australia you dial 000 instead of 911. Luckily, we didn’t need to resort to this yet, but I did have my first incident requiring medical attention in our 10 months of travels. It was a bizarre sort of injury that only happens to a cyclist who spends too much time on a bike, as we have been so lucky so far to avoid any major mishaps in our 10 months to date. We’ve survived auto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, open buses, dodgy ferries, and even a night taxi drive in rural India (the most dangerous thing ever by far!), and had barely a flat tire while cycling the South Island of NZ for nearly 4 weeks.
So we were enjoying a nice day out to the Sydney Olympic Park, which is a huge (~1000 acre) reclaimed and redeveloped area about 20k from the city centre obviously created for the massive 2000 summer Olympics. It has dozens of stadiums, centres, fields, pavilions, but best of all, they’ve created the legacy of a usable park for everyone to enjoy which contains bikeways, paths, and natural areas all the along the Parramatta River and its estuaries. Unfortunately, like most of Sydney, it suffers from somewhat poor signage. The bikeways are sort of signed in places, but you frequently come to roads or 3-4 way intersections where there is no clue given. But they do have park maps located at many places, so we got in the quick habit of pulling over to look at these. Unfortunately, I stayed on my touring bike seat and leaned forward to look at the small map and my front wheel dropped into a little depression/hole between the sign and the paved path which was hidden by the shadows. Crazily, my right foot was clipped out and angles sideways a bit just in the line of the dropping outer chain ring. It made an impressive slice into my leg, removing a small chunk of flesh (better clean my chain), and leaving me with a bloody wound that Cheryl and I both agreed needed more than our normal trail side medical attention.
Ahhh….behold the amazing bandana Tourniquet
So we headed to the information center, which was also poorly signed as they still had signs for the old center 1km away in some places just to mess with us I think?!? But as always in Australia, the staff at the info centre were really, really nice and very helpful. They immediately called the park ranger and about 10 minutes later he arrived and pulled my makeshift tourniquet away to exclaim “Crikey, you need to go to doctor, mate!” (Or something to that effect).
THE WOUND BEFORE STITCHES….KINDA GROSS
So the staff called the local medical centers and a taxi and we all decided that it was best to go the nearest ER as the cut needed to be cleaned up and probably stitched. I’m thinking “Crikey, the ER? This is going to cost us $1000.
THESE 3 LINES OF PAPERWORK ARE BRUTAL!
So after almost no paperwork and an explanation that it would cost us AUD$95 (~US 80) for the doctor to see us, we waited for about 20 minutes. I was seen by a really nice young Filipino doctor that we immediately bonded with as he was so relieved to have patients he could understand. He had been born and raised on American English and said he had a really hard time understanding the local dialect, especially since we were in a more working class neighborhood where the accents were really, really heavy. He did a great job stitching me up and even provided some extra bandages for us.
ALL DONE…5 STITCHES! (LARGE IMAGE FOR DR. BRINKMAN’S REVIEW)
And yup, the total cost for everything was the 95 bucks. It’s barely worth saving the receipt to claim, especially since this is our first dip into our $1500 deductible insurance year while travelling. Medical care really is cheaper everywhere but the US. and now I understand why people freak out when they travel to the US and need outrageously expensive travel insurance.
THE HAPPY DOCTOR AND PATIENT AFTER A JOB WELL DONE
My other rather egocentric thought right after the accident was “Oh crap, no swimming for the rest of our time in Sydney”, so I was extremely relived to hear the doctor say, “Yes you’ll need some stitches, but you can swim after 3 days!” So the wound has healed nicely and I’ve been back in the wonderful ocean here the past two days again thinking, “How Am I going to go back to work after this trip…?” The water is so clean, clear, and liberating….tomorrow I get the stiches out and we are going to an evening symphony performance at the SYdney Opera House……How indeed will I go back?
-R
Tags: Australia, Sydney, Travel, Travel, Tag Index
rich.coffin
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
hey mate glead you are alright !
i am in oz till the 14th up in brisbane ! if you guys want i have a sofa to crash ! would be awesome !