MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

Warren Schaefer tagged me with this “Things You Didn’t Know About Me” meme.  He copped it from Jeff Wharton who, in turn, copped it from Mitch Denny, who copped it from Hugo Ortega, and so on.

My response turned out a bit long, so here’s the summary:
1: I was once a cavalry troop leader.
2: I was once a member of the Cape York Motorcycle Club.
3: Only twice have I waded into knee-deep crocodile-infested water.
4: Only once have I been trapped for a week by floodwaters between Winton & Boulia.
5: This last item is rated [MA15+].

1: I was once a cavalry troop leader.

OK, I did mention it once before, but it’s not widely known.  I thought I’d raise it again because Jeff Wharton revealed that he also drove armoured vehicles.

2: I was once a member of the Cape York Motorcycle Club.

While working in Weipa; bush-bash every second week-end, race meeting on the other week-ends.  I didn’t join in the race meetings, but my Honda XL150 trail bike was well suited to the bush bash.  When we came to a swollen stream, a mate and I could just pick it up and carry it across.  Some streams you wouldn’t, because…

3: Only twice have I waded into knee-deep crocodile-infested water.

The first time was to leave my family to go and get help.  The kids were screaming “Don’t go Daddy! Don’t go!“  We were stuck half way across Jim Jim creek on the way to Twin Falls in Kakadu.  There was the usual sign warning about estuarine crocodiles, plus another which said “Fatalities have occurred at this location. Parents are advised to keep children away from the water.”   The water was muddy and I had driven over a submerged log and down into a deep hole.  I couldn’t reverse back over the log.

The second time was a couple of hours later when a tour operator came along in a vehicle with a winch.  I asked him for a tow.  “Sure. But I’m not going in there with it“, he said, pointing at my 4WD in the creek.  He thought it was a great lark.  He could justify to his passengers why he was charging them $450 for the day trip, “Otherwise you’d end up like this clown.“

4: Only once have I been trapped for a week by floodwaters between Winton & Boulia.

November ‘73.  The wet season started early.  Chemical engineer mate Don Borchert and I were supposed to be working in Mount Isa.  (Where are you these days, Don?) Being city-slickers with city-slicker tyres we spent a couple of days spinning our wheels in the mud and consequently ran out of fuel.  Then we ran out of food.  Ran out of water.  Ran out of BEER!

I did a dangerous thing and left the vehicle and walked 12km to the Middleton Hotel.  When I got there, their generator had broken down and the beer was getting hot.  Of course, I had to help them drink it in a hurry.

Eventually, Don and I made it to Boulia at about 8pm one evening.  After a week’s lost wages, there was only about 200km of bitumen road between us and starting back at work in the morning.  We set out ignoring the dangers of travelling at night.  At about 8:20pm we hit a roo and were immobilised again. “Oh what jolly bad luck”, we said, or words to that effect.  Maybe we used just one word, but it rhymed with “Luck”.

5: This last item is rated [MA15+].
DO NOT READ ON, if you are squeamish.

In 2001 and after many years of problems with ulcerative colitis, including a toxic megacolon, I had a total proctocolectomy and now have a permanent ileostomy.

In layman terms, I have no backside, no colon and my small intestine comes out through an opening (a stoma) in my abdomen.  I wear a fitting against my skin and a plastic bag.  This fitting gets changed twice a week.  Because I lose a lot of fluid out the stoma, I need to drink slightly more than the average Joe or I get dehydrated.

I wasn’t going to blog about this (coz it’s a bit yucky) but I’m thinking back to the time I was making the decision whether to go with the surgical option.  I had tried all sorts of diet modifications.  I had even volunteered for trials of yet-to-be-released drugs.  Surgery really was the last option.  I umm’d and ahh’d for a long time.

However the decision to proceed with surgery was made a lot easier when I realised that the internet was full of people in my situation, eg, Shaz from Perth, Western Australia.  Just knowing that there was a ready-made support network out there made the decision so much easier.

Now life after surgery is not entirely without its difficulties, and over the past few months I’ve had to cope with an unfortunate complication, (have you noticed the slow-down in blogging lately?) but I don’t regret for a second the choice I made.  Wearing a bag is nothing compared to the difficulties I faced on the 45km drive to work in the years before surgery.

Plus! I never have to worry about putting my backside near any strange porcelain when travelling in SE Asia.  Plus! You can be damned sure it wasn’t me who passed wind in the lift that time.

So I’m putting my hand up.  If anyone in a similar situation wants to talk about it, just contact me.

Thanks to Gough Whitlam
On a side note, every day I have occasion to give thanks to Gough Whitlam.  It was his government which in 1974 instigated the Stoma Appliance Scheme.  This provides stoma appliances free of charge to ostomates through volunteer organisations.  My local association is the Queensland Colostomy Association at Moorooka.  (Thanks for all the hard work, folks!)

We all live in fear of on-going reviews of the scheme by the Howard government with its leanings towards “user-pays”.  Why do I get the feeling the cost of the scheme is constantly being weighed up against ostomates’ voting power?

If you have read this far, congratulations and “Tag! You’re It!”  Tell us 5 things about yourself that we didn’t know and put a link to your post here in the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 23:51 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.