Yabbying

Yabbying (with shoes).

Today, as I wandered the corridors, I came upon my new registrar looking rather dumbfounded. He was a nice fellow who had arrived from Europe only a few days before. (Many of our staff come from distant shores). I asked him what was wrong and he told me about the excessive swearing he had encountered since he arrived. He had just seen a man who was very, very sick, who had told him, “I feel like bl**dy sh*t, mate!” The newly arrived registrar had found this language rather shocking.

I assured him the man was not blaspheming in any malevolent way. He probably just wanted to impress upon the new registrar that he was about to “croak” (as indeed he was) and in the circumstance, “a bit crook,” as would be the normal response to an enquiry about one’s condition, wouldn’t do.

I set out to assess my registrar’s understanding of the local dialect and found he had absolutely no comprehension of essential descriptors such as “up to putty, mate,” or “fit as a mallee bull, mate,” or “mouth’s like the bottom of cocky’s cage, mate,” or “all bunged up, mate.”

As keen as beans, he asked me if there was a good book he could read in order to learn such colloquialisms. Sadly, I couldn’t list any texts on the subject at all but it did get me thinking. The local dialect is one thing but there are other ethnic and gender related issues of expression that the junior storm trooper must learn.

[Out of the whole of the population of 1977 Hollywood, could they not find someone better looking to play Luke Skywalker? (said Zimble with her new millennium anti-roman nose sensibility.)]

For instance, and I expect this may be a world wide phenomenon, young men with appendicitis can be identified as they approach the emergency department because they are doubled over, clutching their right iliac fossa and screaming, “help me, help me!” This happens because they truly believe they are dying and this is because very few young men have ever experienced visceral pain prior to having appendicitis.

In contrast, young women, already well versed in visceral pain, wander into the emergency department with ruptured appendices, four or five days after the event and only then because they have fainted at work a few times and their boss has sent them in. They’ll sit down and tell you it feels a bit like bad period pain and if it was all the same they’d like to go home.

There is also the response to severe illness and recovery from it. When an Australian male of a certain age has a heart attack, the first question on regaining some well-being is not, “when can I get back to work”, “when can I drive” or even, “when can I have sex”. No, the most important determinant is “when can I mow”. It isn’t quite so bad, since the drought, because the grass doesn’t grow very quickly anymore but in days gone by, particularly in the pre-press-starter mower era, if you couldn’t mow, then you just weren’t a man's man.

I tried to reassure my bewildered registrar that he was not alone by telling him of the story of Caroline. Caroline was a terrific, dedicated, intelligent London born 'back-packer' doc who was my registrar when I worked at a seaside hospital, four hours north of Bris.

One day, a man was brought to the coronary care unit. He had been out with his mates, on the tidal mud flats of the local estuary, yabbying. Whilst pumping hard with his yabby pump, he developed chest pain. His mates were a switched on mob and immediately gave him some aspirin, downed with a half stubby of ice cold beer from the esky. They got him back in the tinnie and sped towards the shore, calling the ambulance service on a mobile phone as they went.

Despite their best efforts, the man was a bit flat (ie in cardiogenic shock) when Caroline and I saw him. He needed some resuscitation very quickly. I gave Caroline some instructions and then set about what I needed to do, only to look up a minute later and see Caroline still standing at the foot of the bed staring at the man’s legs.

“What happened to his legs?” she cried.

I looked and saw two perfectly normal legs caked in black mud.

“Caroline, it’s okay. He’s been yabbying.”

“I know. That’s what he said but what happened to his legs?”

“Caroline, relax. I promise to tell you about his legs and about yabbying. His legs are fine but right now I really need you to… move it!”

The poor lass couldn’t conceive that anyone in their right mind would stand barefoot, up to their thighs in black mud for any reason, let alone to procure bait for an evening’s fishing.

Anyway, later in the day I saw my new registrar again and I'm very pleased to say that already he was starting to look a bit less like a stunned mullet.