Our Pad for the month.
Last weekend Roberta was on call, so we just stuck around Palmerston North. I went with Roberta and the attending student on the calls. I basically sat back and shot the shit with the farmers while Roberta and the students did the job. There were 3 pulls that resulted in 4 live calves which is quite rare here. One of the students said it was the first live calf she had seen after a dystocia! Most of the time things are quite rotten by the time the vet gets called out, so it was nice for them to experience a happy ending. On Saturday night, we went out for Alex's celebration dinner since she was now a human pathologist after passing her big exam the week before. We met a lot of good people, all of whom were "real" doctors. I had been warned by my fellow countrymen before about the steak in New Zealand and in my opinion they were right. It just doesn't compare to a North American steak. I will savour the first one I have when I get back home in a few months.
Last week I went with Roberta to work for a day. We spent the morning disbudding dairy calves with the students. The farmer wanted us to watch the students carefully because the last time they were done some still got some horns. They did great though and things went quite smoothly.
I also spent two other days riding around with some dairy vets at a private clinic. It was good to get a glimpse of how things are done in private practise here and see some new country. We did some pregnancy diagnoses, some liver biopsies for copper and selenium, some metri-checking, and some metricure infusions for all my vet friends.
On Saturday, we had job interviews at a clinic in Taumarunui. It is located around 220 kms north of Palmerston, in the central part of the North Island. We had decided we would make a weekend of it and have a look around the area as well. Little did we know what was lying in our future.
The drive on the way up to Taumarunui was quite nice (Of course I forgot my camera). The landscape changed from quite flat to rolling hills to rugged hills with a lot of sharp curves in the road. I think that New Zealand made the roads so winding so the country would seem bigger! We were bucking it up one of the hills into the gusting wind when the oil light started to flash. I wondered what the heck was going on because the oil level was fine when I checked it before we left. Then I looked at the heat gauge which was in the red. Oh Sh%$! I quickly pulled over as the van stalled. Once stopped we could hear the sizzling of a cooking engine with some smoke coming from under the hood. Not good. After a bit of a fit, I called the AA which is like our CAA. I tow truck driver came, had a quick look, put some water in the rad, and said that probably the radiator hose blew or the radiator had plugged up and probably had blown the head gasket. For the non-metal heads this basically means the engine is buggered as I had suspected. We got towed back to the tow truck driver's vintage car wrecker yard which was an interesting/hillbilly place. He rented us a car to head the rest of the way for our interview. We headed up to Taumarunui and had the interview which went alright considering the circumstances and then headed back to the wreckage yard. By the time we got back there it was 5 o'clock. I had gotten the AA Plus package which allows you to get your vehicle towed anywhere for no cost, so we decided to get the van towed back to Palmy. There was no one that could do it that night, so they put us up in a hotel in Ohakune that night for free. It was quite a nice place with a hot tub and all.
Yesterday we got towed back with our decrepit van back to Palmy and I had it taken to a mechanic so he could have a good look and see if it's even worth fixing or if we should just scrap it. You never really know what you are gonna get when you buy an old vehicle. Don't really know if it was just bad luck or if the guy sold me something that was messed up in the first place. So now just waiting to see what the mechanic has to say and go from there.
Oh well just a little bump in the road.
Over and Out.
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