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Incommunicado continued

So, as I was saying, we were cut-off.

I turn to the midwife. “Do you have MTN?” I have found on a few occasions that when Vodacom and Telkom fail, South Africa’s other major phone network inexplicably seems to survive. We check all the midwives phones and one has MTN. She only has a few minutes credit but graciously lets me make a call. I phone Nicky, a colleague at Hlabisa.

“Nicky, can you call me back straight away?” She does and I explain the situation. She gets on the case, phoning all our nearby hospitals. The midwives and I chat whilst we wait, the groans from the woman next door getting louder and louder. It seems an eternity before Nicky calls.

“Bad news I am afraid Ed. Nongoma only have one doctor and all the other hospitals said no.”

“What?” I reply, righteous indignation rising like bile in my throat.

“I tried to explain things but they all said that you should send the patient somewhere different.”

I swear again, this time not under my breath. “I will have to send them to you at Hlabisa then.” Nicky gets on the phone again to speak to the Hlabisa on calls and minutes later our medical manager phones back on the nurses phone – he is on call mercifully. I explain the situation and then he rings off promising to sort something out. Two hours have passed since I arrived in maternity.

I nip back to the accommodation and grab a coffee with Olstein. “How will you transfer her?” he asks. We are at least an hour from the nearest ambulance base and they will not come to pick up until we can confirm where she is going. Her transfer is going to get dangerously delayed. As we walk back to maternity an ambulance passes us on the exit road from the hospital having just dropped a patient in OPD.

“Run!” shouts Olstein. We both peg it down the hill to the hospital gate after the ambulance.

“Stop! Stop!” The guard is opening the gate.

“Don’t let that ambulance go!” I shout. The guard is waving it through.

“Stop!” The guard looks up and can only be startled to see two crazy visiting doctors with shaved heads hurtling down the hill, limbs flailing and yelling. He bangs on the ambulance as it drives through. It halts. Breathlessly we both catch up with it. The driver looks at us somewhat quizzically. We explain the situation and, unlike our medical colleagues in other hospitals, he quickly grasps the problem. He radios the headquarters. They give him permission to do the transfer and we all head back to maternity. Dr Adam phones. Nongoma’s medical manager is going in to help their one doctor so they section can be done there.

We load the woman into the ambulance and watch it drive out of the gate.

“I’m definitely changing mobile network,” I say to Olstein as we head back to the house to put our feet up and finish watching "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

Comments

bwanapoakabisa said…
Phones.....sometimes you wonder what the real use of them is..... welcome to South Africa my friend.

PT
27 June 2007 at 19:24
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