Michmutters
On his heyday, Alan Clark was a gun centre-forward who left everything on the field.
Footy was in his blood. He earned best and fairest accolades at almost every suburban club he played for and as a player-coach proudly led the Frankston reserves to a gritty grand final showdown in 1971.
They lost to the boys from Brunswick that day and the outcome still stings.
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He flew in his single-engine Gipsy Moth on moonless nights or in torrential rain, often unlicensed, and at least once in his pajamas, with only a magnetic compass for navigation.
His name was Clyde Fenton – the tall, bespectacled doctor who, in the 1930s, clocked up 3000 hours and a quarter of a million miles, tending to the sick and injured across the Northern Territory.
This year marks 40 years since Dr Fenton’s death, and his legacy as one of Australia’s “original” flying doctors continues to live on.
It was 1934 when Dr Fenton arrived in Katherine to establish an aerial medical service and it wasn’t long before his services became relied upon.
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Ratepayers in rural Tasmania are being slugged with a medical levy to help prop up GP clinics, prompting fresh calls for the commonwealth to step in.
Councils including Glamorgan-Spring Bay, the Huon Valley and the Tasman have had to step in to keep local clinics open, and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) fears more will be forced down the same route unless Medicare funding is increased.
Glamorgan-Spring Bay Mayor Robert Young said the levy was necessary to ensure the municipality’s vulnerable population — where the median age is 56 — has access to health care.
Mr Young said about 60 per cent of the adults in his municipality were either retired or on some sort of government benefit.
“The levy is $90 payable every year by every ratepayer and it’s used to subsidize general practice and to encourage general practitioners to come to the east coast,” he said.
“It costs us between $550,000-$650,000 a year.”
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The mother who pulled her unconscious son from a car and cradled him on a busy north-west Melbourne roadside has been reunited with the good Samaritan couple who rushed to help her.
Madeleine Crawford, and 20-month-old Stirling, met Thi and Cindy Le of North Sunshine at an emotional weekend reunion.
It was the first time they had come together since Ms Crawford put out a call to find them so she could finally say thank you.
Suffering a fever, chesty cough and struggling to breathe, Stirling was being driven by Ms Crawford to the Royal Children’s Hospital emergency department on August 3 when he started having a seizure in the back seat.
Desperate for help, Ms Crawford pulled over on the corner of Churchill Avenue and Ballarat Road in Maidstone, grabbed Stirling from the back seat, and stepped onto the median strip.
Ms Le and her husband had been driving only a few vehicles behind and did not hesitate after spotting Ms Crawford gesturing wildly at passing traffic.
“I immediately knew something was wrong,” she said.
“I didn’t know what else to do so I told Madeleine I’d hold baby Stirling while she drives to the closest hospital.
“Thankfully my husband was a quick thinker and drove in front with hazard lights on to escort us to the hospital safely.”
They made it to Footscray Hospital where Ms Crawford ran inside and Stirling was immediately triaged by the nurses.
There was no time to exchange details.
Ms Le said when the pair arrived home, she could not stop thinking about what had happened.
“As a mother myself, I knew how distressing it would’ve been to have experienced that,” she said.
“But I would never have thought Madeleine would try to find us. I just did what I could at the time to help.”
Both families were reunited on Sunday after Ms Crawford put out the call to find them via ABC Radio Melbourne.
“It was incredible to be able to express our gratitude in person,” Ms Crawford said.
“It was a very special afternoon — lots of hugs and smiles.”
Stirling was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus but has since been issued a clean bill of health.
Ms Crawford said it was his seizure that had caught her off guard and urged other parents to learn how to respond to a similar situation.
In a twist, the Le family revealed their own granddaughter, Aria, had been through a similar experience only months ago.
Their daughter, Anita, had phoned them for help after her sick toddler started having a seizure.
According to the Victorian government, about one in every 20 children between six months and six years old will experience a febrile seizure while suffering a high fever. While alarming, it is not epilepsy and it does not cause brain damage.
“It is absolutely terrifying if it happens to your child,” Ms Crawford said.
“I would recommend parents read the guidance so they can be as prepared as they can if or when it happens.”
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IRVINE, Calif. — Police have arrested an Orange County woman for an investigation of poisoning her husband.
Police in Irvine say a man reported Thursday that he believed he was being poisoned by his wife of 10 years after he grew ill over the course of a month.
The man had video evidence he also provided to authorities, police said in a statement. He had internal injuries but is expected to recover, the statement said.
Yue Yu, 45, was arrested Thursday after investigators interviewed her and searched the couple’s home, the statement said. She is due to appear in court Monday and is being held on a $30,000 bail, online jail records show.
It was not immediately known whether Yu had an attorney.
Yue Yu, 45, was arrested after investigators interviewed her and searched the couple’s home, police said.
Irvine Police Department
Yu is a dermatologist in Orange County and attended medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, according to her office’s website. A message was left seeking comment at the office.
Providence Mission Hospital, where Yu can see patients, said in a statement Friday that the hospital is cooperating with police and the incident was a domestic issue and has not affected patient care.
Copyright © 2022 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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John Seccombe had regularly checked his skin and even had small cancers on his face removed, but nothing prepared him for the moment when the right side of his face went numb.
He was a fair-skinned boy who grew up on a farm.
Later in life, he managed a cattle station and a feedlot at Gurly Station, south of Moree in north west New South Wales, before becoming the chair of Casino Food Co-op, the largest meat co-op in the country.
He was aware of the danger of skin cancers, regularly went to the dermatologist, and had a squamous cell carcinoma removed in his 30s.
But the disease returned, and this time, it was a “rampant” cancer that was heading into his brain stem, crushing a facial nerve.
According to his doctors, it was a death sentence.
“I had to under go radiation for two years, at the end of that it was still growing and they gave me 12 months to live and said ‘go home and hug your children’,” Mr Seccombe said.
That was 22 years ago.
Mr Seccombe was saved by radical experimental surgery that involved three operations on his face.
“I had to have three lots of craniotomies, where they enter your face through the skull base,” he said.
“They removed as much damaged tissue as they could but it left my right eye left in a precarious position so I had to have another one, removed my eye, and I basically lost the right side of my face.”
Mr Seccombe is now living on a farm on the north coast of New South Wales and is the chairman of Melanoma Patients Australia, a charitable organization that advocates and supports people diagnosed with melanoma.
He is urging men in regional and rural areas to check their own skin.
That is because the statistics in those parts of Australia, often a long way from the beach, are shocking.
The death rates in farmers over 65 from skin cancer are more than double the rate of other Australians, while the total disease burden rate in remote Australia is 1.4 times as high as in major cities.
And it is expected to get worse.
About 8,000 Australians in regional areas were diagnosed with melanoma last year, and that is forecast to rise to over 11,000 annually by 2030.
That is because the population is ageing, and men are twice as likely as women to die of melanoma due to complacency about sun safety, according to the Cancer Council.
Early detection is critical.
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