Already a subscriber?“People who are stung by an Irukandji often say that there is a sense of impending doom,” Dan Bateman, senior public affairs officer at the Cairns base hospital, sort of questions me 48 hours after the “incident”.It feels like the end of the world is barrelling head on, while – fighting to breathe, limbs thrashing akimbo, chest steadily contracting, brain racing out of control – you know DOOM has arrived. No, Dan, “impending?” … not in the least.
We marvelled at cascades tumbling over the 125-metre Barron Falls, and swam in fresh water Lake Eacham. On the tablelands, it was much cooler than what Cairns radio – down on the coast – earlier had warned that with the humidity that day was going to feel like 48 degrees.Will Willitts Somehow I crawled out to the loungeroom’s tiled floor and tried to towel off. I wanted to stretch my limbs and … “Please God, let me get some air into my lungs” … but no such peace, as I thrashed in what was becoming a pool of sweat pouring off my lower body.my head didn’t do a full 360, but my arms and legs were doing their best to achieve such, flailing and writhing in all directions.
I’m immobilised at this point. Somehow they got me into a stair-chair, down the lift and into the ambulance for the 25-kilometre ride to the hospital.Kelly stayed by my side under the blinding fluorescent lights. “Will you’re going to make it, breathe … count of three … that’s the only thing that will help you mate,” I remember her saying as she strapped my legs down, and I felt a sharp pain in my lower back and my feet throbbing under the belt wrestling to hold them immobile.
Wheeled right back to the main station – Cairns emergency has 50 beds ready and waiting – I got more doses of the magic solutions. I remember counting five or six plastic IV bags being replaced in my stay there. I was grateful to be alive. Transplanted from Canada 25 years ago, I always thought it would be a spider, snake or a shark that would get me first, and I wrote to Ms Singh, saying: “Everyone who looked after me – the ambos, the nurses, the doctors were all extraordinary.”
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