Medical Evacuation to Cairns, AustraliaI

I am back in Ukarumpa, safe and sound. What an adventure I had this week . On Tuesday, we (another nurse, Karen Wood, a patient, his wife, and I) left the local Aiyura airstrip at around 3:00pm. We took a man that had been having abdominal pain, and we suspected appendicitis. We are not able to do surgery at the clinic, so we had to fly him over to Australia. The plane that we usually use for medical evacuations (med evac) is our King Air, which was recently struck by lightning and the engine is being overhauled. Another mission has very generously offered to help us out with med evacs while our plane is out of commission, so their plane and pilot picked us up at our airstrip here and we set off for Cairns. It was a 3 hour flight,with no trouble, and the patient tolerated the flight fairly well, just had pain and some nausea, which we had medication for. We flew into the overcast and rainy, but warm town of Cairns. It is a lovely town of about 30,000 people. There was only room for 2 extra people to ride in the ambulance with the patient, and seeing as this trip was for me to learn the ropes of a med evac, I went along with the patient's wife in the ambulance,
We walked into the lobby of the hospital, and it was so nice that I was worried my shoes would get dirt on their nice carpet. I had to bite my tongue not to exclaim how clean and nice the hospital was, I think it's the nicest one I've ever seen. I reported off to the nurse there, and then went to catch a cab. I got a ride to Treetops guesthouse, which is also lovely. Karen (the other nurse) and I had a car from the guesthouse, and headed in to town. First on the agenda was a trip to the grocery store, because we had a moderate-sized list of requests from some of the clinic staff for items that you just can't get here in Ukarumpa. I even bought myself 2 packages of feta cheese!!! And of course, picked up a treat for Paul - Cadbury Flake chocolate bars, which I knew he likes. Next we were in serious need of some supper. So we drove around town, and settled on a Chinese restaurant, and the food was superb. We also got to shop around at the night markets for about 20 minutes, before they closed at 11 pm, and I bought a hat! We had to leave early in the morning, so up at 5 am, with only about 4-5 hrs of sleep. But it was worth it! It was so weird to be in a developing country one morning, and by evening, be enjoying some of the sights in Australia! I am thankful for this experience, and for the safety we had during our flights and also that the patient got to Australia on time. We hear that they took out his appendix about 1/2 hr after he got to the hospital! He and his wife will stay in Cairns for a time while he recovers from surgery.