The December Blog 2015

Before I start on “my journey through life” I would like to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and I hope that 2016 grants all your wishes. I want to thank everyone who has visited my business over the last 12 months and I look forward to seeing you in 2016.



These blogs are based on areas of my life – both as a person and as a veterinarian. I have started explaining the journey that led from me joining an outrigger canoe club to where I was involved with the world’s 3rd longest outrigger canoe race this year (our canoe got a 3rd in the Open section).
But this month I would like to comment on a “walk” I had with my wife (Rhonda) up a mountain called Wild Horse Mountain (this mountain can be seen on the left side of the road as you drive the Brisbane – south of Nambour) in November this year.

It all started whilst driving to Brisbane on family errands when the conversation got around to how fit Rhonda was especially compared to myself. Now I know that these comments were aimed to hurt me psychologically because anyone who has seen me in the last 12 months knows what peak fitness I keep myself in. 
It is only in the last 2 months I had visited our family doctor who, in 2014,had compared my body and fitness to a whale (he actually recommended that I should not swim where there were Japanese and a harpoon gun) and this year congratulated me on my achievements and said that if I was only 8 foot 7 inches tall then I would be in my ideal weight range.
So here we were driving down the Pacific Highway heading to Brisbane when on our left side was a notice telling us of the lookout on top of Lone Horse Mountain. We had plenty of time and I had been listening for the last 2 hours on how she was getting “old” (it is necessary to let you all know that I am 8 years older than Rhonda so every time she complains about her age she does not get a very sympathetic ear). At the same time she was commenting on how fit she was and “what a slug” I was becoming.
“Why don’t we go walk up the mountain?” I said as passed the sign. I had seen this lookout many times from the road and thought I would like to go up there one day – I knew that you cannot drive up there and I thought it is about time someone taught this woman a lesion.
My intention was to “flog” her up the mountain and when she collapsed in an exhausted heap half way up the mountain then I would save the day and help her the rest of the way and when at the top I would remind her that age does not play a role and even though I am 8 years older I am still in peak form and she should be proud to have me as her partner.
“OK” she said “But no taking off and leaving me behind – I may need your arm to help me get to the top”.
 “No problems” I replied whilst thinking – little does she realize how fit I really was under this facade of “flab”.  Why it was only the other day I finished a training session at the local gym and the trainer did not have to use the oxygen mask and it only took me 10 minutes before I could stand up – yes I am a man of steel and would charge up this mountain leaving a gasping wife in my wake.
So we parked at the bottom of the hill and headed on up 
Now this path up the mountain is divided into basically 5 sections with a blind corner at each section so that you cannot see the next section until you turn the corner. The path is approximately 1 kilometre in length and the person who made the path was a sadist (and a fit one at that).
We started up the first section – approx. 20 degree incline. At first Rhonda and I chatted pleasantly but by the end of the first section Rhonda was still talking but I was starting to breathe a lot faster and only answering her in grunts and monosyllable statements. I secretly knew that she must be hurting inside and I was holding myself in reserve for the final push ahead. 
Then we came to the first corner.
The incline increased by around 10 degrees. By now Rhonda was exclaiming on the beautiful view and I was having a panoramic view of my shoe laces. Up we go – I am struggling but I know, deep inside, Rhonda must be hurting a lot even though she is putting on a brave face and trying to pretend that she is under no stress and doing the climb easily. 
Then we came to the next corner.
It seems to me that now the incline is more like 60 degrees. By this time I am bent parallel to the ground and the arms are pumping hard. Up ahead I can hear Rhonda talking about the view and taking photos as she walks. At one time she suggests that she should take a photo of me but after I pass an opinion on what the camera is going to look like when they eventually find it at the bottom of the mountain so she decides it might be best to just stick to photographing the scenery. By now my lungs are busting, the heart is pumping and the sweat is pouring off my forehead but I am still next to my wife.
Then we came to the next corner.
I am sure the incline increased to 75 degrees. My eyes cannot see because the sweat is pouring down my forehead and into my eyes. My lungs are busting, I am sure I am dealing with altitude sickness and my brain has basically ceased to function. My tongue has swollen to 3 times its size and I am sure that my head is so close to my shoes that I could lick the dirt off the toe area. I am weaving from side to side of the track and my knuckles are dragging on the ground. A little old grey haired man passes me pushing his “walker” and then kindly offers to let me use the “walker”. A family pass me (heading up the mountain) – I look up to see in their midst a grandmother on crutches with a broken leg still talking to the rest of the family about the scenery and what she is having for lunch when they get back to the bottom of the hill. My wife had disappeared – “ha ha I have outdone her” I thought to myself. Only to hear her calling my name form the top of the path at the next corner.
“Come on David – you will love the view from here and the next section is only a short one”.
Then we came to the last corner!
I am sure Sir Edmond Hillary used this last section to train on before he climbed Everest. I will swear that last section was a shear 90 degree straight up. By this time I am down to my knees and pulling myself along with my nails. I looked around for a climbing rope only to see a 2 year old child passing me whilst holding the hand of her great great grandmother who was walking with a white cane while holding onto her Seeing Eye dog who struggled up the path because of the cast on its broken back leg.
Meanwhile my wife is calmly talking to a group of tourists about 200 meters ahead and pointing out areas of interest and assisting them taking photos.
I eventually did make it to the top and Rhonda tells me the views were fantastic but everywhere I looked I could only see a red haze. Rhonda had got tired of waiting for me and she was concerned that the noise from my gasping was starting to upset some of the babies that were in the strollers that the parents were pushing up.
I would like to thank the group of Japanese tourists who assisted in giving me CPR and I would like to thank the ambulance workers who braved the heights of the mountain to assist me back to the car (they must have been telling jokes amongst themselves all the time because they kept sniggering and laughing all the way down the mountain).
I would also like to thank the Lions club of the area for donating the oxygen therapy equipment the ambulance workers used to ease my breathing as well as the local Heart Foundation for the use of their defibrillator that was used to “stabilize the beating drum inside my chest”.

I am now in intense training for the next assault on the mountain and I have told Rhonda that by the end of 2016 I will be beating her to the top.

November 2015 - Part 2

A few months ago (on my last Davo's Corner in the monthly newsletter) I wrote about joining an elite team of paddlers and heading to Cairns for an ultra marathon race using 6 man Outrigger canoes that race in "Open water".

This is my story of the lead up to and the actual event (and I may add some of the after-story).

This will take a few blogs (or longer if I get side tracked along the way and discuss other aspects of my life)

It all started a few years ago - I was in my normal peak physical fitness (along with good looks and radiant personality), for example I was able to jump puddles in a single bound, I could lift heavy weights with ease (it was not uncommon to see me lift two bottles of beer – whilst they were full – above my head), my muscles were bulging with energy (in fact my  chest muscles had expanded to extend to my waist) and I was able to “run like the wind” (my wife did point out at the time that the only wind I could outrun was the hot air coming from my mouth – but she has always been a cynical person who has envied my fitness).

Over the last 15 years of intense training I had tried different sports - dry land synchronized swimming, backward mountain bike riding on flat ground, competitive belly flopping off the side of  a pool, upside down buck jumping on rocking horses and (my favourite) - 3 legged racing with only one person.

There was no doubt (in my mind) that I was an elite athlete and I was disappointed (and surprised) when Olympic selectors did not recognize “Greatness” even when I was willing to send YouTube's and Facebook photos of myself in training (in fact I was threatened with court action if I ever sent them another photo of myself in purple "Speedos" before a Dry Land synchronized Swimming training session I held at the local park).

So I had decided to look at other sports and felt that sitting in a canoe (I already had the big bottom, so I would not need any form of padding on my seat) and paddling was the sport for me.

So I joined the local Outriggers Club (at the mouth of the Burnett River) and started on a journey that would see me off Cairns in mountainous waves racing towards Port Douglas with 5 other fit and insane men (who seemed to enjoy the pain and the suffering that is part of ultra marathon racing).

But I get ahead of myself.

I joined the club and immediately I was recognized for future greatness by the rest of the paddlers (they obviously recognized that by having me in their boat was a huge disadvantage to other crews and that the other boats would not be able to keep up - so as a group they all voted that it would be best not to be in any boat or at least not in their boat). It was often stated at training, that they would prefer me to go on a single man canoe and preferably in the opposite direction then they were going.

If I went in a 6 person canoe the other paddlers would be concerned of the tremendous advantage they had and were often heard to yell "I want to paddle in another canoe" or at one time 5 of the crew I was with suddenly got emergency calls and had to go home before we could start.

It was not long before I became a "valued" member of the club and earned a nickname - "Ballast". (We all know that earning a nickname means that you are respected and well liked in any sporting club.)

So after 3 days of intense training I was ready "to take on the world" and I was surprised when I heard that it normally takes people up to 2 years of intense training to get ready for racing. It was fortunate that I have that natural ability to "lift" and become tuned for the high level of sport.

I was lucky that there was a race event that the club wanted to compete in and they were missing one crew member - so in I grabbed the opportunity and entered my first race. It was only sprint racing - over 2Kl. "It will be over before you know it" the captain of the team told me.

What they did not tell me is that a top canoe will travel around 12Kl/hr and that means that the race would take around 10 – 15 minutes. I am not sure what went wrong in our race but I swear our race took 2 hours (the rest of the crew disagree but I am sure it took that long).

I turned up on the day “ready for action” - I was wearing my yellow lyrca shirt and pants (in case we flipped and the rescue boat would be able to see me), I had on my green "legionnaires cap" and my pink gloves. I had drunk 6 liters of water to stop dehydrating and I had eaten 8 protein bars and 5 bananas (for potassium). In my research I had found the biggest reasons why people "hit the wall" is because of lack of energy or from dehydration.

I know that I "sloshed” as I went from the beach to the boat and I know I sounded like a waterbed as I climbed over the edge of the canoe and got into my seat but I was not going to let my crew down.

I was wearing my heart monitor to make sure I did not enter into the anaerobic zone "too early" and I knew my maximum heart rate was 180 per minute. As we paddled out to the starting line I noticed my heart rate was now at 280 beats per minute - "the energy and protein bars are working well" I thought.

In OC6 racing the starter uses different coloured flags and the captain of the boat calls these out "We have an orange, now it’s yellow, green is up" etc. This means that the canoe and its crew must get ready to edge up to the starting line, stop on the line and then start when the green flag is dropped. But I was not aware of this at the time so when the captain said "We have an orange" - I replied that I only had one banana but I did have 2 protein bars and I was more than willing to share.

The green flag fell and we were off! The other boats surged ahead as the members of each crew paddled in unison and drove their canoe forward. When I say “the other boats” what I really meant was that ours seemed to have something holding us back – maybe the captain had thrown out a sea anchor or something. We more or less “staggered” over the starting line and seemed to decelerate from there.

The crew were yelling at me “to slow down and stop thrashing” – I was a virtual whirlwind of action. My paddle was going in and out of the water at a great rate – I was throwing water all over the people behind me and filling up the canoe with sea water at a rapid rate. So I grabbed the bailing bucket and started throwing water out of the boat but in my haste I was now drowning the crew in front of me – at least now everyone was in no danger of overheating from the sun.

The crew member in front of me grabbed the bailing bucket and started to lower the water level in the boat whilst the other members started to paddle. By now the other boats were at least 200 meters ahead of us but all was not lost – we had a plan. If we all paddled to out maximum and stayed in unison then our superior fitness should give us a good chance to at least not be last.

So we settled in – stroking around 75 strokes per minute and looking good.

We seemed to have paddled for a long distance when the cramps started to occur in my body (the crew stated later that we had only gone 100 meters but I find that hard to believe).

The first cramp hit me in the right leg causing my leg to bend. Then within a minute or so the left side of the abdomen started to cramp causing me to start to bend to the left at the waist. Then the right arm started to cramp in the biceps. By now I was a cripple – contractions hitting me from every side and not able to move my arms or my legs properly causing my paddling technique to become nonexistent (surprising it was reported later that it was about this time our boat started to go faster and catch the other boats in the race).

Then the pain started in the chest!

There is talk that there was squealing sounds “like a girl” coming from the canoe as I clutched my chest and dropped my paddle over the side of the boat. There is malicious talk that I went “white as a ghost” and started sobbing but I find that hard to believe. (I am used to pain – it was only the other day that I stubbed my toe on a toadstool and did not make a sound).

Obviously the crew was concerned and amidst cries of sympathy such as “Bloody hell!” and “Bugger” we headed back to the beach.

After extensive tests and emergency treatment I survived (obviously I would not be writing this article) – there was some talk about “Gas associated with the overabundance of fluids and fruit fermenting in the stomach” but no one was completely sure of the cause of the pain. All we know is when I finally loosened my lyrca pants and removed my shirt, I burped (and passed wind from other areas) and the blood returned to my face and the pain seemed to go.

I would like to thank the ambulance workers, the air sea rescue, the volunteers on the shore who carried me to the hospital tent, my crew members for being so understanding and my wife (for not putting photos and messages on Facebook).

Next month I will continue the saga that lead to me paddling in a canoe around 8 Kl out to sea off Cairns in high seas and strong winds and heading towards Port Douglas (I was not scared – I just acted that way to make the rest of the crew feel brave). 

Dr David

November 2015 part 1 - AND IT BEGINS!!!

Davo’s corner was started in 1995 when I was starting writing monthly newsletters and I wanted to document my personal life and goals. It is my way of laughing at myself and the world that I live in. Most of the issues discussed in Davo’s corner are based on real issues and real events but with a touch of satire and a smidgen of imagination and fantasy to aid the humour or the warped way that I see the world.

In my journey of life, I am aided by my wife Rhonda who has to suffer my sense of humour and my view of the world. She has been suffering my company for over 35 years and has developed a “way of coping” by letting me rave and rant and then reminding me of the reality of life. She is supported by everyone she meets – it is very usual for people to say “You poor thing”, “How do you cope?”, “Have you ever thought of leaving home?”, “It is good of you to sacrifice your life to care for him”, “You are nothing like I thought you would be after reading his comments”, “There will be a place for you in heaven after living hell here on earth” (and these are only the good comments people make after dealing with me and then talking to Rhonda).

For the last 21 years Rhonda has been assisted with our child Matthew who is totally embarrassed by his dad (that’s me) and like all young men he wants nothing to do with myself or anyone else in authority. He has a keen sense of humour (developed after living and growing with me over the last 21 years) and enjoys lazing around and basically living off his parent’s goodwill and money (hence we do not have a lot of money).

Then we have our dogs – they are all Boxers and are as mad as Boxer’s can be and they enjoy life to the full whenever they have a chance. I am often seen walking my dogs in the early hours of the morning (usually before the sun comes up) either in some paddocks or on the beach at Woodgate. I can relate to my dogs very easily – we are all mildly insane and we all love life and I am trying to learn to wag my tail so that we can all madly become excited about the simplest of things that happen on our walk. I must admit I am struggling to run around with a stick between my teeth and I do not fancy eating kangaroo poo but otherwise we are all the same.

Over the years, since I first started writing Davo’s Corner, I have had lots of different areas of life to write about but one area is still the main area of topic – my desire to represent my country in some form of sport. I would love to go to the Olympics as a competitor and I have tried many different sports trying to excel.

There is a few things holding me back (as my good wife Rhonda has pointed out on many occasions) – the main one being a lack of talent for any sport but there is also my age (I now have qualified for a senior card for a number of years), my weight (if I was 7 foot tall I would be the perfect weight but I am only around 5 foot 6 inches tall) and the fact that I struggle with hand eye co-ordination (and hand feet co-ordination along with eye feet co-ordination).

But I see these as small speed bumps on the road to success and I continue to surge ahead in my quest for greatness.

I know below this quivering exterior there is an athlete that is struggling to get out and to have the recognition of the world for his greatness. I may look middle aged (“What is that snigger for, Rhonda?”), I may look a little podgy (“Again with the snigger dear”,) I may have slightly thinning hair (“You really do need to work on controlling your snorting and sniggering Rhonda”), I may throw “like a girl” (“What do you mean “like a girl Hippopotamus”, Rhonda”), I may be a bit clumsy when I run (“Try to control your sarcastic laughter Rhonda”) and my ability to stay upright when riding a bicycle may leave a little to be desired (“Get off the floor and stop laughing Rhonda”) but deep down inside I know I have the ability to be “the best” in a sport and stand on the podium “as a winner”. I dream of accepting the gold medal at an Olympics and I will continue the search for greatness (and then I may look at changing my wife to someone who appreciates me).

I seem to run out of room on my newsletters by the time I get to Davo’s Corner and I can only occasionally write about my quest “for gold”. Then someone mentioned that I could start a blog once a month and write about my journey in a page of its own. I initially scoffed at the idea but the more I thought about it the better it seemed. This “blog” would give me a platform to express my ideas on a range of topics (all about me) and I could fool myself that someone may actually read them.

There are times in the following blogs I will revisit some episodes in my past that I feel may be relevant (or I have run out of words to say and I want to make it easier for myself) but most blogs will involve issues that are happening “now” or have just happened and I am looking back on my journey through that issue.

So let us get on with it – the Davo’s Corner Blog in all its non edited and raw form straight from my computer to you. Over the next few months or years we will visit many different facets of my sporting life – the first one to discuss is my quest to represent my country in the sport of paddling Outrigging Canoes.

Dr David