An unexpected visit to The Hospital

Did we say there would be more challenges on this trip? 

Yup, this one is a beauty!!!

We had only been on the coast for 24hrs and Leonie slipped and fell on the rocks at a picnic spot in Batemans Bay, and ripped her WHOLE right heel off! WHAT??? Yes you read correctly, read the above again.

Below is Leonie having her dinner, moments before the incident. So peaceful life was at that time... Thinking of going for a run and a swim in the morning. Read on to see what follows...

OUCH (NO F***ING WAY)!!! All the nerves in her heel were exposed and only the soft white  flesh was exposed, no blood and no pain until about 30-60seconds later and then the pain and blood followed! Oh boy!! Luckily Tanya (Leonie’s bestie) had provided us with a first aid kit for such disasters. We wrapped the wound and decided to rush Leonie off to the hospital to clean it up and get it seriously looked over. Given the amount of flesh that had been ripped from her heel...this needed to be seen by a doctor. We WERE going to check into our first hotel (on this trip) for the night, but a hospital bed would have to do.

So...with Leonie laying in the van in intense agony and tears, Dom ran across the road to a lady sitting on her porch to get the directions for the hospital. Off we went!!

Got to the hospital and because it was a Saturday night it had quite a few patients already in there; Little girl with head injuries, drunk bikies, car accident victims, etc...we had to wait a while until a nurse could look at Leonie's foot.

About an hour later we were seen by a lovely nurse, Berni her name was...

She undid the dressing that we put on, and said that she would have to clean the wound out as there was a lot of dirt in there. This meant that she had to squirt saline solution into Leonie's exposed nerves and clean up the mess.

Leonie’s words:

'Oh F**K!!! Oh no you don’t...' 

She already knew that her nerve endings were hanging out and to have someone messing around there was going to cause more pain. Leonie was ready to punch anyone out if they even got close to it. (she's like a wounded tiger, ready to lash out if anyone comes close when she's in pain!).

But then Nurse Berni said she would put Leonie on the 'gas' while she cleaned it out. Leonie had never had the 'gas' before and because it's been affectionately know as ‘laughing gas’, how bad could it be?

It started off as being o.k. and a novelty, but in reality...she hated the gas! It slowed everything down and even though Leonie couldn’t feel the pain, she also couldn’t make sense of anything around her. At one stage she thought she could hear dance music whilst the cleanse was going on. Dom and Leonie even had a couple of laughing fits together. 
However, the worst thing, is that the gas wears off in 20secs...so Leonie was told to keep sucking on the gas and SHE HATED it! But if she stopped sucking on the gas all the pain would come back and she could feel every little nerve ending in her heel being rubbed up and tormented by cotton buds and saline solution. 

What could we do? Poor Dom had to hold Leonie down (forcefully), because there were moments where she just wanted to get up and walk away.....oh...and punch out Nurse Berni!

At the end of the 6 hours at the hospital we thanked Berni, and Leonie left on crutches. She is on them now until the new skin on her heel grows back.

When we walked out of the hospital, it was 11pm, and we had no where to go. Leonie was traumatised and it was too late to get a hotel or motel and all the camp sights were closed. Our only option was to sleep in the van (thank god it is fitted out for sleeping in) in a car parking lot! 

Leonie's foot the next morning.

So a lot of our plans had been taken over by our hospital visit and there was only one thing to do..Go to the Beach!! Yippppppeeeeeee!!!

Pic above is the NSW National Parks Licence we got so we could enter to beautiful camp sites and coastal beaches. Pic below is Dom putting together his cray net, unfortunately his cray net was stolen... we presume that he had crays in there and they cut the rope....Dom was REALLY PISSED!!!

Below Leonie capturing her surroundings with her camera...on Depot Beach.

Time to learn how to play the guitar as walking or running was out of the question :(

Getting some vitamin D and a bandage tan line...lol!!

Our new neighbours at Depot Beach Camp Site....love these guys!

Below would be the cheekiest little kangaroo there ever was! At breakfast time he just strolled up and started poking his nose around to see what he could eat... we gave him nothing. Our diet isn't his.

Dom and Kanga having a debate over the food.

In the end Leonie offered him some grass and he wouldn't take it, he only wanted the bread and anything else he could get his nose into...haha!!

Leonie getting right into nature...lighting the camp fire (our first use of our funky camp fire kit).

Giddy Goanna (the next morning)...they're pretty bold and walk around like they 

own the place...love it! One even charged Leonie when she was in his way taking its photo!

Best mushrooms we have ever eaten!!! BBQ baby!! BBQ!!!

And the cheeky Rosella's who thought they could just invite themselves to breakfast and 

take off with our blueberries.

Its been 3 days since the hospital and we're surprised and happy to see that Leonie's heel is healing faster than we thought. In just 4 days new skin is growing! And Leonie has ditched the crutches and is hobbling around slowly.

Next stop....looking for work.