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[Music] Dr inati the Ultramar doctor welcome to my podcast K well thank you thanks for
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having me mate I'm so pleased that we finally um uh connected and made this happen 2024 insane year for you yeah
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yeah pretty nuts actually really I didn't think it was going to be that that crazy but I probably didn't fact
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during all the travel time and recovery time and stuff but yeah it's pretty nuts
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yeah explain what you're doing um so I'm trying to run a self-supported multi-stage ultramarathon on every
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continent and uh I just took the piss a little bit and said oh New Zealand's its
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own continent so I started there so about halfway through now well I am halfway through done four so far yeah
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and for the uninitiated what are these races yeah so um typically they're on
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the same format as I guess the Maran TOS was the first the big one so for seven days typically six running stages um you
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carry all your own gear while you run as well so everything you need to eat and look after yourself for that seven days
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um and typically the organizers just provide you with a tent or something equivalent to sleep under and a water
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allowance each day so you're running with about a um 10 to 11 kg pack at the
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start and you just eat your way through it right and and um no the sleeping bag does that stay in the in the tent no no
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everything stays with you so they just give you a shter to sleep under if you're lucky it's a tent um and some
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races I've had to carry my own um hammock in that um yeah and you run about a marathon a
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day and then they'll have a long stage where you do about a double do about some around 80k or
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more and and um yeah because you you're carrying your food that you eat um I
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suppose the the the one good thing is the pet gets lighter and lighter as you get on um but just the logistics of each
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of these races like I mean you must have it down down pat now in terms of what to
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take but what what are you eating is it like radex meals or yeah so pretty much um yeah dehydrated meals makes up a lot
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of it CU obviously it's just lightweight and then I usually take um oh there's a
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couple of New Zealand companies of stuff though like real meals uh Manuka performance um curs and then typically I
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take a backup of two-minute noodles cuz I found that um if my gut shut down like
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if it's really really hot I can still for some reason eat just cheap old two-minute
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noodles they're very light as well they're very light you can squash the
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packet down to a really quite a small size and you know so you can fit a lot of two-minute noodles in your pack and
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um you you need to carry emergency gear or anything like that like a there's
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always a compulsory kind of gear like sometimes they make you carry um a GPS tracker um but there's always like
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emergency survival gear compasses all that sort of stuff as well and they'll
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typically have a set um clothing as well in terms of warm kit cuz otherwise Runners being Runners You' just take
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like one set of undies and one set of shorts and that' be it you know unless
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they said hey you need two pairs of socks you just take one and just rough it which is generally what I try to do
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yeah why um you you're going to be if you if you manage to get this done which
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um at at the time we're recording this it's July and you're halfway through and
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you are on track you'll be the first person in the world yep so no one else has done it there's been a few people
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that have said they've run a self supporter race on every continent most of them don't um get the distinguish the
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idea that like New Zealand's not part of Australia so they bugger it up that way
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and none of them have done it in a year they've always done like 2 to three years I think yeah two years might be
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the shortest so far yeah so so where did the year run us through the year in the
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um the um yeah so it started off in I think it was March uh with the Southern Lakes Down South um then I went over to
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Namibia about five weeks after that um then it was a reasonably short turnaround I went off to the Jungle
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Ultra in Peru and then two weeks after that I was off in Mongolia and I got back from Mongolia about two weeks ago
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and then I'm off to Romania and about another two weeks oh my God yeah yeah um I I follow
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you on Instagram Ultramar doctor is your handleing I'm an awe of what you do but
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these um these trps you're not [ __ ] around he you're on the plane you're
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over there you do the event and then you're basically straight back on the plane back home yeah I try to like at
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least have maybe one day or two days or something that I can at least see the local sites cuz it seems a bit of a
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waste otherwise but it all really comes down to work and leave um like I've used
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up all my annual leave leave that I had stored up when you couldn't go away over
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the co period and then um to get out of some shift I've just swapped with other
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people at work so if I've got a little bit extra time I'll try to stay but most
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of the times yeah it's literally run the race the next day you're on the plane
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and you're making your way back and you're flying I'm business class of
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course cuz you're you're an emergency doctor I don't think I've ever fown
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business I think the only time I ever flew business class is with the military every time it's just like the cheapest
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cattle class down the back with you know like Southern China Airlines or Malaysian it's just whatever whatever's
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going the better you 11 to 17 hour flight sitting in the back and when you're sore after a race and there's not
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much leg room it's lucky I'm a short fell you know if I had long legs like
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you I'd be bugged you'd be what what is what is wrong with how you're wired you
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you just love doing hard stuff he the harder the better no I just reing I'm old and slow like I tried doing marathin
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like about 10 years ago and I just feel like the fastest I could ever get I think was like 3 hours 30 five or
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something and I was never going to get it quicker cuz I'm just you know not built for it built for Comfort yeah you
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know what do they say bit more of a diesel engine than a petrol so I find I can go long distances and through like
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quite hard conditions and it doesn't bother me too much in fact I enjoy it and I just can't do that fast stuff so
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older and slower and and if you look at your results you seem to get better in these events as as the the time goes on
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like um a lot of your finishes you're sort of you the pointing into the field
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you're up the top 10 yeah I'm usually getting in there and I a bit of it's
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like experience like generally I do get a bit better like my body sort of warms into it and thinks oh you stupid [ __ ]
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you're doing this again um so it sort of just goes into that sort of mode and a
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bit of it is like you warn the especially the young comps and new ones like don't go out like the clappers in
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the first couple of days and none of them listen so typically you'll go up the pack because you're maybe getting a
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bit quicker and a lot of them have like burnt themselves and are dropping out or
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dropping back pack so yeah usually start out pretty slow and get better especially on the long day is typically
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when I sort of hit my strides you still get um nervous before these events or anxious with the pain that's ahead or
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have you done so many now that you sort of just know what to expect I get more nervous with the travel I hate it sounds
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I hate travel I hate airports I hate transfers I'm always worried that my Kit's not going to show up or something
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like that but once the race starts now I'm pretty pretty comfortable with it
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yeah could you not um could you not just take your like essential kit for the run
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as um carryon yeah I do try to fit as much as you can in your carryon like in your race pack um the only downside is a
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couple times you've shown up they've lost your bag and you've lost all your
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race food and stuff and some of the places you go you can't get like dehydrated food you'll be eating
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whatever the locals eat or oh it's very Niche isn't it yeah very Niche you'll be
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getting sick you know but yeah yeah yeah and and what about the scholarship um this is part of your your big goal for
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this year and um just before coming on today I looked at the give a little page and it's um a lot less than what it
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should be at the stage of the year um hopefully after a little push on the podcast we can um get a few more dollars
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in there but this is this is really Noble of you the scholarship idea yes I think it just came to the part of my
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life where I'm sort of a bit more comfortable with work and where I am and I've really wanted just to sort of
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um yeah give back a little bit but give other people opportunities to do things and so we started up the scholarship um
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myself and Vicki my partner called K kior and we're just looking at getting um final year or you know close to final
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year students at school um who possibly haven't had the opportunity to like you
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know Express themselves or show what they worth um the opportunity to develop and that through running ultramarathons
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so we will you know fund them look after them train them and sort of mentor them
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and hopefully not only get them to do something like this but to help develop velop them further to go off and pursue
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whatever they want cuz um I mean I found when I was growing up um I was lucky I had to support a family but School
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wasn't that supportive and you know people were quite negative to you when you're a student and sometimes when
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you're young that's quite you know it's quite bad for the rest of your life
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that's detrimental Yeah Yeah you sort of start putting yourself in a little box
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of what you think you can do um well if you hear something often enough you start to believe it don't you yeah so I
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mean if you're a teacher or somebody body in your life just keeps on telling
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you you're worthless and you can't do things then you'll put yourself in that
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box that you can't whereas everyone you T to that's done like a multi-stage race
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wherever they've come from and people come from pretty diverse backgrounds the
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one thing they find out about themselves at the end is like you know [ __ ] I've
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just achieved something I never thought I could do in my life and a lot of them go on to change other aspects of their
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lives as well I mean I've done it since I've started running and um I think if
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you can get younger people to break out of that sort of self-imposed or Society P you know imposed restrictions at a
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young age then it'll change their direction for their lives and that's what we're aiming to do man oh that's so
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cool go there's um there's so many directions to go in just from that one
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answer um might stick on the running and poke around that for a while and then get into get into your childhood your
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early years and then and then your job and just how you fit everything in it's
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um you and I are about the same age I feel like a sack of [ __ ] I think about what I've done over
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the last 20 years and oh my God I feel lazy it's crazy what you're doing bro uh
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yeah you're just like you it's it's like um you're just like squeezing everything
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out of life well I'm trying to now I think I yeah like like I said coming out of
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school I probably wasted a lot of years cuz I just didn't think I could do a lot
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of stuff stuff sorry like when I was at school my um exit interview with the Headmaster was like you know stay out of
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jail and I was just like it's pretty rich thing to say to a young person were
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you a bad kid no I don't think so like I you I was in the top academic stream at
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school I played for some of the top sports teams at school I just probably suffered a lot from um a you know being
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harassed for being a Mal at mostly Park our school I suppose back in those days but um and that would get turned you
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know to arguments and violence and other stuff but um I don't think I was a bad
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kid well why would why would a principal say that do you think do you think that
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was um casual racism as well yeah possibly that's a terrible thing to say been a terrible thing to say I
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understand if you were you were sitting in um sitting in a chair in the Dean's
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office every [ __ ] day but if you're a good kid what a that's a that's an
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appalling thing to say yeah I just don't think that anyone really really understood like what you
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were going through back in those days I mean it's a bit different now I guess
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with you know the days of smartphones and media and people video and things and people you know all those sort of
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aspects of stuff whereas back in the old old days I think there's a lot of stuff
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that sort of slipped under the radar in terms of you know when we were at school
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what kids would do to each other or sort of you know the harassment and stuff that was going on and I think obviously
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like you know being young and and dumb and not a fully developed brain back then you did deal with things probably a
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little bit differently than you would now you I've heard that this is um like
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I suppose during um secondary school this is where you sort of gravitated towards running just to sort of um like
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regulate your emotions or let bit of steam what if you want however you want to phrase it yeah well I used to um go
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out and run just when I felt like I needed to burn off some energy and stuff like that rather than you know getting
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in a a fight or getting in a confrontation with people and the school caught me doing it and then they
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basically just said you're allowed to do it so the um the chaplain at the time
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would sort of supervis things and if I needed to you go talk to him but I was pretty much allowed to go out for a run
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after hours because they knew I was just going for a run whenever I sort of really felt like it and next probably
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how I sort of got into running back in the day you know it was just burning off all that sort of excess energy and yeah
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what's it what's s the distances I never really I know I think actually looking
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back at the Loop Le used to run R score I think it was around about 7even or 8ks
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I sort of had this Loop that I just go out and blast through and then sometimes there'd be um like you know proper
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Runners from the running club at school and you areas yeah you try to like hold on with them when they went for the sort
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of longer stuff you know like the 10 to 15 and the week weekends you know you'd
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hold on to about the last couple of CAS and then they'll just drop you in the
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bit Yeah so um so so for these um desert Ultras like what sort of um like what's
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what sort of training goes into it and how do how do you fit it in with all your work well there thing I I can't fit
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in as much as I really want to I guess with work and timetable but I did most of it last year so I put a year of um
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distance running in when I could like if you got a weekend off I'd do sort of
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backto back uh mid to longest runs in the bush what's that like four was yeah
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so like anything depending on how rough the terrain was from 20 to 40ks and do back to back and then maybe I'd get one
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sort of shorter run with a run Club in during the week but I spend a lot of time at the gym um just putting on
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weight and trying to put a bit of muscle back on in your old age because the one
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thing that happens with these events is regardless of how much you eat or how fit you are you can't eat enough so your
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body just choose for your own muscle stores for energy so if you haven't put
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on some weight then there's no way you'd get through like you know the aim
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of getting through eight races in the year I mean I've dropped 10 kilograms this year already from putting on weight
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on purpose is that right yeah so I started off the year ' 87 um I came back from the last race um to be fair
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dehydrated so 75 back up to 77 a couple days later and then um thanks to the In-laws I managed to Pig myself back up
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to about 80 within a week and a half I'm still fixated on the um on uh your your training schedule so you you
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don't have a coach or anything no I don't have you just sort of run as you
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as you can yeah I've tried having a coach before and they just wrote like these ridiculous things that You' have
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to do for what they said to be able to do Ultram marathin but I could never fit in with work you know so I just sto
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paying a coach and just run how I feel really so so the longest what would your longest week be like 50
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60k um or when I'm not racing yeah probably um you'd be lucky to get yeah
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50 50 60k yeah you'd be lucky I never get up 100K week never no no no one would advise that right no I mean I see
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people coming into people come into the races and they they sort of like advertise their their running scheme you
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know what they've been doing on St yeah you know the race Facebook pages and
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stuff and they be like I've been running 100K weeks with a pack on and stuff
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you're like [ __ ] this guy's going to take it out and you get there and they
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don't but it's just well you know they're doing way more training that's um so um so it's just
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like mental toughness and resilience in a way you're just getting through on
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just like grit in a way um there's experience like there's what to know and
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what to expect that's a huge aspect you know like having your kit and everything
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down packed you know a lot of people pull out for like a few reasons like true injuries are rare most people pull
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out for blisters rashes or they basically their bowels give up and they [ __ ] themselves or something stupid like
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that you know and those are the most common things but with experience you know like you know how to keep your
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Bells good how to prevent blisters how to prevent R all those sort of things and muscle aches that people complain
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about you learn that with experience and then the other side of it is just that um mental aspect a bit like you've done
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it before your Bo your brain knows that your body's done it before and it sort
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of accepts that level of pain and discomfort whereas some other people if they've never done it before they'll be
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like you know [ __ ] I'm sore and I'm in pain I'm going to stop whereas for a lot
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of us that's just part of it and your body knows it's just part of it so you
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just get on with it yeah it's like messaging from your brain a telling you that you should give up because you're
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in danger when really you're not yeah and that's when people have never pushed
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their limits in life you know if you've never pushed yourself to your limit you
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don't realize that it's actually not your true limit you know do you think
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you've come close to pushing yourself to your limits yeah I have come in One race
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I was probably close to blacking out or passing out that's probably yeah like I
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got that classic when you look back at it you know when your vision starts to narrow um your hearing still pretty good
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and I was sort of like I just pushed through this age station I just lied to these people they you know I knew they
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were going to pull me if they knew how bad I was I just sweet good just kept on going um had about oh 10 or so Cas to go
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Vision started going you know started wobbling around the place but made it made it for the end what was it was it
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um what time of day was it was it like desk or we was it was coming into dark yeah so it was a long day stage and it
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was in a race in China yeah but but was it like temporary blindness though didn't go completely blind got pretty
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close um you're you're a doctor what would you tell your patient oh You' be
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right it's only it's only it's called temporary blindness for reason it's only
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temporary you'll be right oh jeez no I wouldn't do what I do at times but it
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all depends on how much you want it what you prepared to to put up with or the risk you're prepared to take but was
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probably yeah that was probably cutting it but fine one yeah have you ever had a
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dnf uh and any of these races no touch wood no wow what at the worst Ines oh and
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what does it do to your body afterwards like when you when you're flying back
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home are you are you pissing blood or anything or no I have um had a little bit of blood in my pee once or twice but
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um that's usually just normal I mean sounds funny this normal traumatic stuff
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you know it's just from breaking up your red blood cells quite often um people
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from like you know heel striking or your feet and other bits and pieces it's not
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that uncommon but as long as you're rehydrate usually okay um typically when
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I finish you're sort of on that sort of run as high for about a week or so and
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um like I said I just did two races and they're only two weeks apart and I felt
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sort of high and good sort of most of the time between and it wasn't until like I've been back in New Zealand for a
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week and a half and your body starts to relax that everything starts to hurt it's
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your body goes from that sort of I guess you know that fun survival High mode just to recovery mode and it's just like
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yep now you're going to pay for it so I've been pretty sore for the past week
00:19:39
have you really yeah yeah waking up in the morning is pretty stuff and pretty sore trying to catch up with mates at
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run clubs and stuff and you'll be doing like a 5 to a 10k run and afterwards
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you're like yeah you're a little bit of a [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] yeah yeah I mean I mean you're only
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doing this as a like a onee thing like a special thing all the continents one year but um yeah it's probably not
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advisable eh oh I don't know if you really want to do it why not for sure people do crazier things in
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their lives I think I'd advise people toit be probably be a bit more prepared
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than I am um like in terms of the training or yeah cuz it's hard you got to balance your life I mean I've always
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told you I could be a better Runner or better at these things if I didn't have
00:20:23
to work but then I could probably be a better doctor in terms of you know being well read and maybe a little not more
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knowledgeable if I didn't spend my other time doing these things it's a life
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balance you know yeah you just seem like a dude that wants to do everything yeah
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before I get much older well you can do it do it yeah absolutely um also it's
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worth pointing out in 2014 you were the first and I believe to this point still the only kiwi to complete the four
00:20:47
desert Grand Slam yeah so any anyone else done it or yeah there's a couple other kiwis who have done the four
00:20:53
deserts but um all the races but it's taken them a few years so to do the grand Stam you got to do it in one year
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so so far even though I've been trying to get other people to do it no one else
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has um you know bitten the bullet and done it yet and part of that I guess is a you know the time commitment to do it
00:21:09
and the cost and stuff as well you know I'd love to see somebody else do it and
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do it hell of a lot quicker than me yeah you're your partner fiance y fiance fiance she she sitting in the
00:21:22
room I know her very well like she's um she's Kanye's vet um he hates her but
00:21:27
she's she's wonderful she she must she's she's on board with all this she she was
00:21:32
like working as your PA teeing up this Podcast chat um she does your social media she helps the logistics of the
00:21:39
travel yeah pretty much how did you how did you find a unicorn um yeah so I found her well I was looking for a
00:21:48
dog like I finally got my own place and I was mve up C I thought oh it's time to
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get a dog I was looking for a dog and I ended up getting a dog in a vet so it's
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great so two dogss in a vet now which does help but she does most she helps most of Social Media stuff CU I'm just
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old and a smartphone to me is like a bit of magic technology so I struggle with that stuff but yeah it's good to have
00:22:08
someone on board that can do all that logistic stuff cuz like I said I hate traveling so I like it when she comes on
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the trips you can just be that um what do they call it that travel Princess where you just hand over all your stuff
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and just show up and like you know in the background just follow along yeah like be a rock star isn't it with
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someone else organizing what gate you have to be at yeah cuz some of those flights like to get to what's involved
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in getting to say I don't know what's the what's the most far flung place
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would it be namia or somewhere else namia was the worst one I think it was probably because we tried to go super
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budget cuz everything's been pretty hard on the old pocket so we took a flight
00:22:41
from like Oakland to Dubai which was like 7 that 17h hour one plane and then I had to have like a layover for a night
00:22:49
in Dubai flew another 10 hours down to um jetersburg and then had another overnight and then another you know four
00:22:58
or five hours or whatever it was to Namibia I was literally spent more time traveling than I actually spent
00:23:03
physically running in that race so that was pretty horrible but it was cheaper than flying like to Australia and then
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across yeah although next time I'd probably pay the money yeah well this is um this is like super super in inspiring
00:23:16
and and invigorating CU I think um like for first of all most people would never
00:23:21
attempt one of these one of these runs at all not even as a bucket list thing but um for anyone that was interested in
00:23:27
it I think one of the things that would off would be just the amount of like pre-work involved but you know you you
00:23:32
got to show that if you've got mental toughness you can get by on just three
00:23:35
runs a week well I've always I've also said to people like so the rule of tens
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you know if you can run a kilometer easy like completely pay free no niggles whatever you could run 10ks you could do
00:23:47
a 10k race could you you know it's the same with this if you can run 10ks completely painf free and comfortably
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you can run a 100K race you're just not going to enjoy it but you can do it if
00:23:57
you put you your mind to it and it's the same with these you know a lot of people you know they can go out and they
00:24:04
you know they can run a marathon you can do one of these you just got to adjust your sort of set of what you think your
00:24:10
performance going to be like each day and enjoy the fact that like at the end of it you're not going to have a hot
00:24:15
shower and a foot rub and a you know nice feed in that you just got to get up and do it again the next day yeah I Reon
00:24:21
that's the thing that puts me off just the you know just you're finishing a
00:24:24
long run and just like then being in a tent and then doing it all over again yep and the same clothes for seven days
00:24:29
yeah yeah that's Grim I I feel like you froth on that though you love it I love
00:24:33
that side of it I've always liked that side of it though like I love like tramping and stuff at at at school and I
00:24:38
love the stuff even when you got on with the military as a doctor I hated being a
00:24:42
doctor in the military but I loved all that outdoor stuff you know it's just
00:24:46
great I love that like living rough and just like like a little kid that hates showers yeah pretty much yeah don't want
00:24:52
to have a shower you know the colder the weather the dirtier the better it's all
00:24:56
good fun when you work in a in a hospital or an office you know yeah um and what of what of these runs told you
00:25:01
about resilience that and and mental toughness that you can you know transfer and use in day-to-day life if anything
00:25:07
you I think the main thing that has taught me is like I was saying before is a lot of people have these PR perceived
00:25:14
limits of what you can achieve and literally if you give something like this a go and just you'll find that if
00:25:21
you if you really want it you can stick through it and you can do it and you can
00:25:25
just that builds up that sort of mental toughness it just shows you that hey other things in life that you think are
00:25:32
a little bit difficult really aren't that difficult CU you've done hard of
00:25:36
stuff in your life you know you can just push through if you really want to to a to a limit a limit to a limit we
00:25:45
just haven't found your limit yet yeah not yet I've been close I was hoping
00:25:49
there's a few things that would make me find my limit but there's a lot tougher
00:25:53
races out there as well in the end of the day I mean I'm doing a lot this year
00:25:56
and there's always the risk that one of these will break me which will be I suppose bad for what I'm trying to
00:26:01
achieve but will be quite enjoyable to find out what's that one um well you know if like something goes wrong this
00:26:07
year and like you know I can't finish that'll be you know bad on one side good
00:26:11
on the other side you know cuz you found something but there's all those massive
00:26:15
races up in you know Alaska and the Arctic Circle where they pull sleds and pucks for like you know 500 to 1,000 K
00:26:22
and all that sort of stuff I've heard about them yeah you've got to like P in
00:26:25
a bag and take your take your feces away with you yeah I mean poing in a bag's
00:26:29
not a big deal do yeah you on your social media yeah there there's a lot of poo chat a ton of
00:26:36
poo chat it's funny CU I think it's one thing that people Overlook and they get
00:26:39
surprised when they come to these races is is the pooing aspect and it's also a
00:26:43
lot of things that people enjoy everybody likes talking about a good [ __ ] or or more likely a bad [ __ ] you
00:26:48
know well no I find some people are really quite sort of prudish about it like some people will find it really off
00:26:54
pointing that we're talking about it here but it's like [ __ ] everyone does it
00:26:57
it is the most natural bodily function imaginable well there's nothing worse
00:27:01
than showing up to a race like the one we just did in Mongolia and finding that literally you know somebody digs like a
00:27:07
little trench in the ground you got to you know squat and planks either side where there's literally just sort of
00:27:11
like a hesy and Sack curtain up to about your shoulder height so you can see the
00:27:15
person next door and they find out that that's the toilet for the week you know
00:27:20
and they're already there and they're looking at you a bit it's like yep you
00:27:23
know get used to it how good um yeah we're about the same age there was like
00:27:29
when we were in our 20s there were no events like this it's just amazing the
00:27:31
explosion I think back then there was probably like like marathons were as far as it went and then sort of Ultras came
00:27:37
along and now there's backyard Ultras and there desert stage races what whatever whatever you can think of
00:27:43
really there's an event for it these days yeah it's definitely a huge explosion in the past you know 10 20
00:27:48
years and I think it's probably just that you know people have found that organize these events that there's a lot
00:27:54
of people out there that really want to push themselves a bit and you find the the average age or the most um
00:28:01
competitive age group is usually that um 40 to 50 sort of age group and it's
00:28:07
probably because it's our generational you know that have maybe now achieved
00:28:12
that sort of level of life where they can afford to do these things but they're also wanting to find out you
00:28:17
know where they're at or push their limits and yeah yeah there's plenty a
00:28:21
number of reasons for that maybe it's like a almost like a midlife crisis aspect as well where you you realize
00:28:26
that time is finite and you're not getting any younger and you know your your physical capacity to do these
00:28:31
things might might not you know last forever like you think it is in your 20s um I've heard I heard you on another
00:28:37
podcast talking about um type two fun yeah well that's the sort of stuff I'm
00:28:41
really into like yeah so type two fun is stuff that you typically hate while you're doing it but you look back and
00:28:47
you really enjoy it um and that's sort of the stuff that's the key that's the
00:28:51
stuff I like when it starts slipping into type three that's generally when you uh when you hate it at the time and
00:28:57
you still hate it after have you have you done any type three uh oh I suppose there was some
00:29:03
stuff that I did with the military that you hated at the time and you look back at your your time and Wu and stuff and
00:29:08
you still hate it now you're not in a great hurry to go back and do that but
00:29:12
then again occasionally it sort of slips in your memory back to type two and you'd probably give it a go again yeah I
00:29:18
I I love that so much cuz I think life's got so comfortable these days like you
00:29:21
know you're almost looking for ways to put yourself into some Force discomfort
00:29:25
yeah so like my job and stuff like physically it's not taxing you know mentally I suppose and I suppose like
00:29:31
you know mentally fatiguing and all the rest of it it's quite taxing but physically on your body it's quite soft
00:29:37
you know you get up every day you have a cup of coffee you know you're quite
00:29:40
comfortable you go to work you go home there's none of that sort of real big
00:29:44
physical challenge so you know my body craves doing stuff like that and I just got to go out and find it where I can
00:29:51
yeah somebody rang up this evening said hey bro you know it's pussing down with
00:29:54
rain let's go out and run over the night for 40ks or something yeah I'm tired and
00:29:58
sore but I'd probably say yes if they're Keen you got to give it a go oh my God
00:30:06
by the way um yeah you just I I just want to pick on this before we move on you know you mentioned your work's
00:30:10
pretty easy and comfortable or whatever but um we will get to that but I think a
00:30:14
lot of people disagree like you're you're an um an A&E doctor um which for
00:30:19
most people is like anything but cruising and relaxing I guess yeah when I say comt I mean like physically yeah
00:30:25
um like in terms of your stress levels and your mental you know side of it it's
00:30:30
you know it's it's horrendous to be honest and um I'm glad that hopefully
00:30:35
I've already got about 15 more years before I retire I think is it just not a positive way of looking
00:30:42
hey um oh by the way this podcast is sp sponsored by um generate the Kiwi saers scheme have you got your kiwi saers
00:30:47
ordered I feel like you're you're not going to have much money when you retire I'm actually I I do have some
00:30:53
kiwi saver and I'm lucky that I did all that sort of stuff really early on and
00:30:56
just keep chipping in I'm not saving any money doing what I'm doing okay I worry about you you get to
00:31:02
65 like I don't know where all the money went I know exactly where it went six
00:31:06
overseas trips a year okay let's go back to the um the real early years what what
00:31:10
so you're from um tanaki yes I'm from tanaki but never really lived there U
00:31:16
went back and worked there when I was a doctor for a couple of years but we moved around a lot so Dad um worked for
00:31:22
the Anglican marry Mission so I counted back when I was 16 I'd lived in 13 different places
00:31:28
so we would just pretty much put in boarding schools to keep the education consistent right was it what was it like
00:31:34
a minister or something yeah Anglican Minister for the mar Mission so we just moved a lot a lot you know so sometimes
00:31:39
you go to boarding school you'd leave from one place you'd finish your semester come out and you Mo and you
00:31:44
were somewhere else [ __ ] that's tough yeah I actually preferred to stay at school I mean it
00:31:50
sounds rough it's not because I didn't want to go home was just because the
00:31:53
consistency yeah and you had you had mates at school or you had people that you go out like you could do Sports of
00:31:59
you go running you could do whatever you go home in the holidays you knew no one
00:32:02
you know and you might be in some really sort of either rough places or shitty little places around New Zealand where
00:32:08
you know unless you knew someone there's not much to do so yeah and when you
00:32:11
reflect back on back on that now like what do you what do you think um you know it is what it is um
00:32:19
Dad was away a lot and he he did a lot of things for the mar miss that was his job and I can understand that but I
00:32:24
don't think it's something that I'd do with my kids we have some yeah it's just
00:32:28
it's yeah it's was a bit difficult but we were just I guess you know just
00:32:32
accepted that was part of it yeah they both passed now your parents te Tiki and Wilmer right yeah TI and Wilmer dad
00:32:38
passed away about four or five years ago mom's still alive she's living down on
00:32:42
the farm quite sort of stoically independent refuses to go into come up to Oakland or to go into sort of any
00:32:49
gear facility she just like staying on the farm of her dogs how old is she like late 70s she's like 81 now actually 80
00:32:57
oh God I'm going to get it wrong don't listen to this mom somewhere in the '
00:33:00
80s and what were your what were your biggest lessons from them like you mottos that you live by or anything like
00:33:06
that um I think it was just like you know it always seemed like um hard work was just what was expected you know um
00:33:16
you know we didn't you know we lived a pretty you starkly sort of you know tough life I guess you know we didn't
00:33:23
have a lot we had what we needed but you didn't have a lot there wasn't a lot of
00:33:26
like you know put it way we W well off but we went you I wouldn't say we were poor we just you
00:33:33
know just made use of what you had and um the old man was always a hard worker you know even just being a a being a
00:33:42
minister he's always sort of very physical person and did a lot of stuff for himself you know so it was just part
00:33:48
of you know cracking on and getting things done yeah and he he died of um pancreatic cancer in 2018 yeah so it was
00:33:55
one of those things that I look back at it still a little bit disappointed um I was quite busy with work at time and
00:34:03
trying to um help set up some other policies and M Health policies for the Emergency college and things and I
00:34:11
didn't realize dad was getting sick and be and you know he still wouldn't
00:34:13
complain about things when he was old and no one in the family s to let you know and I came back home and I saw him
00:34:19
and I hadn't seen him for about 6 months and he lost a lot of weight I was like
00:34:22
you know [ __ ] this ain't right and um members of the extended family sort of
00:34:27
been hiding a few things and it just turned out yeah like a uh I suppose a lot of Mai follows from his Generation
00:34:34
Um they think it was pancreatic canas the time he got found you know there was other stuff probably in his bow and
00:34:39
things and there was just nothing you could do about it so we just took him home you by the sound of things you guys
00:34:46
had like a really good relationship like he was your support crew and some of these runs early on yes we had um I
00:34:52
guess we started to reconnect with running later on in life because you know Dad working so much when we younger
00:34:57
and then after that University period and sort of moving back to tanaki we sort of I started running again and dad
00:35:04
started coming along to events and he was my support crew for Ultra marathons when I first started you know like 100k
00:35:09
events and things worst support crew in the world but he used to come along you know well he was always Keen to come
00:35:16
along cuz he got off the farm and without Mom there he could eat whatever he wanted to cuz you know he had
00:35:22
diabetes and gout and heart disease in old age and wasn't allowed you know bad food but he'd come along and he like
00:35:30
hey should we have a pizza yeah so before every race we used to have a pizza and a beer neither which he's
00:35:35
allowed and then during the events he'd just help himself to the eight stations
00:35:40
like you know the snake Lolly he'd be like oh you seen all these things and he'd be eating them and I was
00:35:45
like I was like Dad that's for the runners that's for you're not running
00:35:49
he's like oh they won't miss a few you just help himself but um if you came to
00:35:54
an a station you're supposed to be there and you wanted something he'd never be
00:35:56
there he'd be off having a feed or talking to someone yeah so not the most reliable
00:36:03
but he enjoyed it and I enjoyed having him along it was good fun well and you must have had a really good um
00:36:08
relationship by by by the time his life came to an end because um you even stopped running for a while after that
00:36:16
yeah it it did hit pretty hard I I'll admit and I think part of it was I felt
00:36:21
that I'd uh let the family down let Dad down a bit because I hadn't sort of
00:36:26
picked up on and being un well earli you know you're the F you're the doctor
00:36:30
and the family and you know you sort of feel that that's your sort of role and
00:36:33
then by the time I realized what was going on and you get him into to see the the medical system and then you look
00:36:39
back for his notes and you see how the medical system has actually probably L him down a little bit because they
00:36:43
should have been picking up on tests and stuff earlier then you feel bad from that side of it you know and like like
00:36:51
an element of guilt in away yeah I want to guilt and then you know we used to go
00:36:55
to the running vents you know that was what we did you know we'd catch up and
00:36:59
you know I'd take him away to these events and we'd hang out and do this
00:37:02
sort of stuff so when the young man passed away I wasn't really interested in going out and running and I was I was
00:37:08
running with um some of the guys from dirt church at the time and stuff and I tried to go for runs and like you didn't
00:37:13
want to talk to people you didn't want to so I just stopped running actually
00:37:17
for quite a long time all together yeah CU I found this photo online of him sh he looks like a fun
00:37:24
dude yeah hey he looks it's quite funny cuz look at that photo and the the man
00:37:31
that you described just a second ago you know uh I can see it he seems like very
00:37:35
checky very Charming very he was a very cheeky v um he yeah he did like to um rack people up a little bit it was a
00:37:43
great past time of his it was always in a good natured sort of sort of way but um yeah he was always good for a bit of
00:37:50
a bit of a laugh he had to take the old man with a grain of salt most people that know him would would uh would
00:37:56
comment on that yeah can you remember your last conversation uh probably not really you know towards
00:38:04
the end you know there was uh you know there was a lot of drugs and other stuff going on on board you know so yeah I
00:38:10
think he was still trying to pass on um as that generation would do like knowledge and stuff you know all through
00:38:16
the you know he knew things were coming to an end and he was just wanting to pass on history and knowledge and stuff
00:38:22
yeah yeah yeah well thanks for sharing that stuff um yeah just well you you got back into the running with um more
00:38:29
enthusiasm than previously didn't you you've done a hell of a lot since then
00:38:34
yes I I I did I've been thinking about doing this thing that I'm doing this
00:38:37
year for quite some time and then I just only really I suppose you know got the the kick from um viy to crack on and do
00:38:44
it you know you really what did say well cuz you can only do this attempt this every two years cuz there's only a race
00:38:52
down on Antarctic every two years so you've got to if I didn't do it this
00:38:56
year I'd be another two years M and if I didn't you know and I've been talking
00:38:59
about doing it and I've been talking about doing the scholarship and spending
00:39:04
more time with um like young students and stuff coming through and trying to encourage people and things she's just
00:39:10
like well you're not getting any young so your mouths and get into it now yeah
00:39:15
well that's what that's what you get when you get an Asian partner isn't it
00:39:18
yeah but physically um like you've got the the capability I think I mean no one
00:39:23
knows what the future holds but um I mean I'd suggest like looking at you now
00:39:27
Bally like you know you You' be doing this in 10 years time why not well I hope so like I just think like every 10
00:39:32
years I usually try to do something like I did that grand slam when I was turning
00:39:36
40 I'm doing this one turning 50 just trying to think of now what I'm going to
00:39:40
do when I turn 60 but um there's you see people in these events who are in the
00:39:45
60s and there's even um the last one there was a lady in his 70s from the states who finished you know so I mean
00:39:51
you know [ __ ] that's inspirational if they can do it I'm going to do it well
00:39:55
the thing that you're doing this stuff now with the bare minimal training imaginable like a dangerously low level
00:40:00
of training you imagine when you're retired if you got a bit more time to train yeah well the way I look at it as
00:40:05
long as you start these things injury free or relative injury free it's always
00:40:09
a good start you run yourself fit after time yeah do do you find that you find you get better and fitter as
00:40:15
you go along on these events yeah to a certain degree yeah if you're doing like
00:40:19
one or two a year I think you'll find yourself getting fitter um obviously if
00:40:22
you're doing a lot then there'll just be that um cumulative sort of muscle
00:40:26
fatigue and you won't be getting fitter yeah yeah your brain might be getting a
00:40:31
bit fitter but the your body generally won't until you have a decent rest yeah
00:40:36
right yeah so um okay so you finish up at school um you're a smart student at
00:40:42
then the principal sees for your future just stay out of jail um so incredibly low expectations then you got to Oto and
00:40:50
uh study physio yes so I went to University probably because everybody else was and I didn't really have
00:40:58
I didn't know what to do with myself so the other guys that I knew were going
00:41:01
down to University and my brother was at otago and he'd gone to University and my
00:41:05
sister had gone to otaga University so I thought oh that's what you did when you
00:41:08
leave school just go to university did it did at that time it otaga felt like a wrer passage didn't it yeah and you'd
00:41:15
never been down south so it was like you're literally it was almost like going to another country you know so I
00:41:21
went down and it was probably a bad move I mean I wasn't set up to study I think
00:41:27
and just basically what just age and stage in life or yeah looking back I probably would have been better to take
00:41:33
a year off and work or something or do something else first rather than just follow the crowd and go down cuz me I
00:41:39
got into physiotherapy I didn't even know what physios did like I thought it
00:41:42
was just the uh the guy or girl that ran onto the Rugby field you know during the
00:41:45
footy I was like oh that looks like a sweet job I'll just do that and you get
00:41:50
down there and you find out there's all this they're teaching all the stuff in
00:41:52
the hospital about working with stroke patients and doing all other stuff I was like well that's not what I rehab yeah
00:41:58
so rehabs I was like oh jeez I didn't really sign up for that so how long how long do you study
00:42:03
to become a physio a year more than I should have um yeah so five years it took me it's supposed to be four years
00:42:10
took me five yeah oh my God that's such a long CH Chun of your life so then you
00:42:15
complete that and you work as a physio for yeah I work physio for about six months that was probably the the worst
00:42:23
Phio ever no well worst Phio ever I'm sure there's somebody out there somebody there worse than me um I just
00:42:30
really wasn't into it like I got a job um at a private physio Clinic physio pay
00:42:35
back then was really [ __ ] and we're just seeing like you know sweaty Sports
00:42:39
people's ankles and other stuff and just common injuries throughout the thing and
00:42:43
decided this wasn't for me so was just mentioning it to the old man and somehow
00:42:48
i' mentioned medical school and what the med students look like and they seem to
00:42:52
always have the better clothes and the better food and better off and he said well go back to medical school and it
00:43:00
was always him that sort of makes stuff snowball and it just snowballed after that so he planted the SE yeah you got
00:43:06
some um yeah there some like medical history in the family like like doctors from previous generations yeah so yeah
00:43:11
so um all the um first doctors come from um tanaki the first Mario doctor to train overseas the first Mario doctor to
00:43:20
train in New Zealand they all come from you know tiwa down in Tanuki so and I didn't know any of this when I was
00:43:26
applying for Med medical school you know I'd never looked into it never thought
00:43:31
about it you know so he was actually quite Keen for me to go to medical school yeah as as someone that didn't go
00:43:37
to university like I'm just thinking about the physio thing like studying for 5
00:43:42
years and then having a job and realizing it's not for you would there be a lot of people that feel that way
00:43:47
and they just stick with it cuz they're like [ __ ] I've done the work this is my
00:43:50
lot yeah even when I got out of medical school like the stats for medical school
00:43:54
are quite interesting like you know if I don't know how many they're putting out
00:43:58
now but I think it was like you know they took 120 back in when I was in maybe 105 or something would finish a large
00:44:06
percentage of those relatively would either uh never work as a doctor they just wanted to finish so they you they
00:44:12
got their degree and they'd go off and do other things or they wouldn't work in
00:44:14
clinical medicine they'd go and work into some branch of medical it um or they' just leave and go
00:44:22
overseas so it's just one of those things I guess I got towards the end of phys I knew I didn't really want to do
00:44:27
it but it's like you know [ __ ] you've invested you know three years of your
00:44:32
life it seems a bit of a waste not to finish you're over halfway yeah so you
00:44:37
just finish it and you just hope that you never know once you start working you might enjoy it yeah so so you apply
00:44:43
for Mid school then um you you don't get in straight away you get in thir I got I
00:44:47
got turned out a it yeah I laugh about it now I to say like most you the most turned down person ever I got turned
00:44:53
down about three times before I finally got in so is there like an intake at the beginning
00:44:58
of each year or is it each term or yeah it been beginning of each year so I applied um for direct entry when I quit
00:45:07
Physio and to be fair they turned me down I can understand I mean my physio grades were pretty rough um you know oh
00:45:14
SE get degrees bro it was it was fully there like know I knew I was it was the thing yeah I knew I didn't want to be a
00:45:20
fizzy I wasn't really interested in study I just passed it you know so I can
00:45:24
understand they turned me down um and then I got told hey Health Science was coming and do the first year Health
00:45:30
Science degree and then um apply for second year medical school and I approached the um Mai and Pacific Island
00:45:38
admission scheme at the time and they said hey if you get the grades required we'll take you I was like okay so I
00:45:45
worked couple of jobs part time did the first year got the grades required went back to them and they said oh no we're
00:45:52
full we've got the people we want for this year apply for the general ad Mission
00:45:57
scheme so I apply for the general admission scheme as well after get turned down by them and then got turned
00:46:03
down again and I was sitting there going like [ __ ] what am I going to do now I've
00:46:06
just gone back to University for another year spent another like you know 15 20 grand of studying even though I was
00:46:13
working I'm piling up debt here and um luckily about a week before the medical
00:46:19
school started for second year I got a phone call and a letter in the mail and got it and um it's still a little bit
00:46:27
suspect how that came about I'm not too sure actually um whether it might have
00:46:32
been they say it was because I was like third on the waiting list and three people had deferred which could be the
00:46:38
truth but it was also um there was a um a Mali doctor and and government at the time working the political SE was Dr
00:46:47
Tony who was quite upset that I hadn't gotten and thought I was bit hard done
00:46:53
by and I think he may have exerted some pressure as well so I've always like thanked him and assumed
00:46:59
that he was part of it um but I really don't know how in the end it may have
00:47:05
been I was just on the waiting list it's a big mystery yeah cuz you must have
00:47:08
been a so say 100 medical students how many moldy in the class um oh back then um there was funny state there was more
00:47:16
of us training to be doctors at Medical School than there were actually doctors out back then and that was in 2000 when
00:47:23
we started um Dr roer from Shand Street was there you imagine that being Ro R so close I
00:47:31
got called I had the Dr rter jokes all the way from did you lot of qu jokes yep and even now when you come and see some
00:47:40
patient of that generation it's like oh it's like oh [ __ ] I thought i' got away
00:47:44
from that wait for it three two one yeah so oh back in our class here I don't
00:47:51
know there was only about I think there was about 20 M and Pacific island students back then H how how many do you
00:47:58
work with now in ockland um in Oakland there's one other um Mali doctor he's a
00:48:03
cook Island Mali fell um who works there as well so there's two of us and that's
00:48:08
probably pretty high so under represented though he like what percentage of the patients would be
00:48:14
molding yeah so um the emergency colleges looked at these stats um we helped them set up
00:48:20
their um their M Health portfolio um so literally depending on where you are in New Zealand um anywhere from 15 to 20%
00:48:28
of your patients coming in would be M so about 18% average and the percentage of
00:48:34
senior M doctors that they had in emergency was I think it was less than 1% when they first looked at it which
00:48:41
was about 5 years ago wow so they're trying to obviously encourage more trainers more doctors to come in because
00:48:48
they want to obviously balance up that representation but to be fair every specialty wants to balance up the
00:48:56
representation of Mal doctors and there's a lot better Specialties to do than
00:49:01
emergency so they've got a good M doctor but he's never there he's always off
00:49:04
these room yeah sh works three days a year yeah they have to go visit that other one yeah yeah do uh uh people
00:49:12
often surprised when they see a moldy doctor yeah it's funny there different
00:49:16
reactions in different age groups I guess you know like you get the classic really old um person you know in the 80s
00:49:23
or whatever that comes in they go oh it's you know like so polite oh so lovely to see a m doctor you know like
00:49:28
some old European lady that's probably never seen one in their life and it's
00:49:32
quite funny it cracks me up it's just like it's quite beautiful very us like
00:49:35
oh you m really it's like yeah there m doctors now you but they don't they don't mean
00:49:42
anything they're just like you know lovely and they're just like really happy to see you um to other ones that
00:49:48
are not so happy to see you but really does that happen oh yeah you still get you especially in emergency is such a
00:49:55
Charged environment you get every extreme from people that are happy to see you that people just like throw
00:50:00
abuse at you like if right c yeah yeah why why did you want to do that why do I want to do that why they want to do it
00:50:09
yeah no why why did you why did you want to work in A&E um seems like a chaotic
00:50:14
place to work it seems like a place where you You' I don't know do your time
00:50:18
for a couple of years and then move on to something else yeah I think it sort of self selects a little bit emergency
00:50:24
um I originally never wanted to do gency I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon like I'd gone through physio school I'd
00:50:31
come through i' done electives and stuff in Orthopedics was really Keen to do it
00:50:35
and then I just found that I struggled to sort of stand around in one spot long enough to do some surgery you know I
00:50:41
don't know if I was a bit fidgety or whatever and then um I don't know I just
00:50:46
didn't really fit in and I went off to do anesthetics I thought hey that's
00:50:49
quite cool and then um a couple of years like that I was like oh Jesus that's
00:50:53
pretty repetitive sorry all the anst out there but it's like you know little syringe
00:50:59
big syringe little syringe sleep all right you know so I'm sure you you offended just a
00:51:07
whole sector of your colleagues with that oh yeah I've got some good M there's more to it than that a you yeah
00:51:12
there's more I got some really good mates Forst so I rock them up all the time you know sometimes they're good at
00:51:17
like lighting adjustments you know and things like that but then I tried sports medicine I thought oh yep that sounds
00:51:22
like a great idea go work and practice do sports medicine and then I struggle with that cuzz um you know I always have
00:51:30
to be careful cuz I usually say most athletes are dicks but not all of them but there's some attitudes of young
00:51:36
athletes and stuff that you know maybe need to be adjusted but I just found I couldn't deal with that either so I just
00:51:41
ended up working in an emergency and it was always going to be a temporary thing
00:51:45
and then it just sort of temporized itself for about the past 12 years yeah so so so so how does how does it work
00:51:52
that's something that I don't have any idea about I'm guessing most people
00:51:54
don't so do you work like um week on week off no so emergency one of those horrible Specialties that no matter how
00:52:01
senior you are you still got shift work so in um Oakland and most hospitals about the same there's like about three
00:52:08
or four different shifts throughout the day so there's the 8:00 crew that start
00:52:12
at 8:00 in the morning and go through the like the 10 hour shifts to you know 6:00 at night and then there's like a
00:52:19
crew that comes on at 4:00 and then there's a crew that come on at like you know 10:30 at night who go through to
00:52:26
8:30 :30 in the morning so there's all these overlaps but you know you you got
00:52:31
to be prepared to do shift work for the rest of your life which is a bit of a just a bit of a downer yeah yeah that's
00:52:37
it's taxing on the body yeah it's super taxing I mean I got back from my last
00:52:41
run on a Tuesday morning I started nights on Thursday and didn't finish till Monday morning you know it's just
00:52:48
not the best way for you to recover or for you you know to yeah let's be honest
00:52:53
it's pretty [ __ ] on your body and the rest of it so I think this is probably
00:52:56
going to be my last year maybe of doing night shifts yeah what do you want to do
00:52:59
next oh I'll keep doing emergency probably but I'll just probably stop doing nights yeah um obviously you take
00:53:05
a pay cut for doing that but and sometimes work won't be that happy with it but they need doctors and you know
00:53:12
I'll just work on to day and afternoon shifts and just try to I've done my time
00:53:16
I think a little bit Yeah is is the money okay uh the money's okay I mean I never I think you know for what I think
00:53:23
a lot of doctors for what they do get paid quite well I just think you know the the cost of living the spos is quite
00:53:29
High I think some Specialties get paid better than others which is probably a bit more historical yeah um emergency is
00:53:35
probably one of the lowest paid Specialties um which I think is a little bit unfair considering the um the stress
00:53:42
and strain that they have to to go through and they've been expected to do more of everybody else's work these days
00:53:49
you know so that may change but who knows yeah and what would you say of the best and worst things about being an
00:53:55
ed um the best things I guess is like you're never going to be short of a job
00:54:00
like you're never you're never going to be out of work other Specialties you
00:54:03
know you're always trying to build up a a clientele in private and I got a lot
00:54:07
of mates who are like working really hard to build up that side of it because that's where they make their money um
00:54:12
we're never going to be short of a job if they start cutting other Specialties
00:54:16
out of things or you know advancing in medicine and things change we're never
00:54:20
going to be able to work if anything you know it's growing every year with less
00:54:24
doctors available so probably the best one of the things um the worst things I guess is you got to put up with
00:54:31
different attitudes of people at different times in their lives um some are really positive some really negative
00:54:36
some people you can really help which is quite good you know and other times you
00:54:40
just come home from the end of the shift you just want to have a drink cuz it's
00:54:43
been [ __ ] yeah do you when you're doing like one of those night shifts over the
00:54:49
weekend like do you how do you feel before you go to work are you like yes I get to go to work or are you do you have
00:54:53
anxiety so I still I do get a little bit anxious about going stud on to your night shifts
00:55:00
because you know it's just going to be crap you know like I traditionally do
00:55:04
like you know sort of those weekend night shifts you know it's going to be really busy um you know most likely you
00:55:09
won't have a full compliment of Staff either they won there'll be some doctors
00:55:13
that won't be there because they'll be sick or they just haven't managed to
00:55:16
fill the roster or the nursing staff will be short staffed there's never fully staffy Department of every aspect
00:55:23
and you know if there's some event on in town in Oakland that you just going to
00:55:26
get smashed with a lot of um drunken drugged up abusive type people at times or there's going to be a lot of um
00:55:34
traumas and accidents and other things that will just fill up your department pretty quick so yeah I always get a bit
00:55:40
anxious once you start you start you just get into it but it's the buildup tonight is usually the worst yeah yeah
00:55:46
just cuz you know I mean yeah just the unexpected is you know you know it's going to it's not going to be pretty
00:55:52
yeah you know it's not going to be pretty you know your brain's going to be
00:55:54
a bit cabbage for like you know or 3 days after and the stress that it puts on your private life and stuff
00:56:00
so is this what um yeah got you and your fiance viy you must say do you compare notes when you get home like she's like
00:56:07
well I had to put down a family's laborador today what did you do uh yeah I like looking at her stories
00:56:14
a bit more cuz she gets to work with like really you know fluffy patience and stuff but um and gets to do a wide
00:56:20
variety of things from like surgery to other things so that's quite cool um she
00:56:24
just knows that like typically don't ask me anything that requires a really intelligent response when I'm on night
00:56:29
shifts for a couple days after just cuz you're brain dead yeah pretty much yeah
00:56:33
yeah yeah is this is this part of the attraction of these runs just like being out there on your own clearing your head
00:56:39
not thinking about anything being on autopilot yeah I think it was one of the definitely was one of the biggest
00:56:44
aspects when I first started was the fact that although they were physically demanding it was like mentally for me it
00:56:50
wasn't I mean you had that same aspect every day like you know you slept you
00:56:55
woke up you ate something you went for a run you know you slept again he just repeated the same thing over and over
00:57:01
and over with a group of other people that wanted to do the same you didn't have to think about everything it's my
00:57:06
routine was the same every day and I just loved it cuz I could just literally at times switch your brain off and it
00:57:13
was great yeah I love that I can see the appeal yeah like a complete opposite to
00:57:17
what you're doing in your job yeah like quite often I don't take people take
00:57:20
their cell phones on their runs or they listen to music and stuff like that I will when I'm training but quite often I
00:57:25
go on these multi-day things take it I ditch it ditch all that sort of stuff I just find it great I just switch off
00:57:31
completely yes so so when you work um night shift on the weekend like um yeah we know about alcohol and how bad that
00:57:37
is what what about drugs what's the what's the issue there oh yeah meth is
00:57:40
the worst really still oh yeah so much um really yeah GHB patients and stuff like that are quite easy to deal with
00:57:46
because they're over asleep or they're awake um what's GHB oh one of those
00:57:50
party drugs that you know like a failed little anesthetic drug that people take for recreation you get your Jo a little
00:57:56
bit wrong and you're asleep rather than partying so that's easy you know they're
00:58:02
up they're down you watch them you know when they wake up and they've been wake
00:58:05
enough they can go um but um meth is just still huge and you know obviously the aspects of meth if they're coming to
00:58:13
us they're usually not nice characters yeah so well first of all that's that's alarming like
00:58:20
um I mean yeah I've got some friends that aren't Saints but the the sort of
00:58:24
drugs I'd see in my circles would be like MD ma or maybe some some cocaine but I I I don't know anybody at all that
00:58:31
would still be on myth yeah so I mean those sort of things we get rarely you know like it's pretty rare to get anyone
00:58:36
to come in with like cocaine or something like that you do get the occasional one but it's pretty rare and
00:58:40
it might be that you know the drug that they think they're taking is not they're
00:58:43
not taking or it's dirty or there's something wrong but meth is just huge
00:58:47
and um there's a lot of it unfortunately tied them with mental health patients
00:58:51
too and it's hard to differenti I guess you know which is due to the meth which
00:58:55
is due to underly health so we have to assess a lot of them um police are reluctant to have them in the cells at
00:59:01
times um and then there's just ones that do meth and do violent things and horrible things and when they come in
00:59:07
you know you can imagine like you know some newr female nurse trying to deal with some big Meed up person you know
00:59:15
it's not the best Security's been one of the biggest increases in emergency
00:59:19
departments in the past couple of years oh is that right also there's your security guard station there yes so
00:59:26
we've um since I've been working there it's it's great it's transitioned from
00:59:30
pretty ad hoc security to a pretty good security team now that are there fulltime we have our own team um that's
00:59:37
terrible though yeah it's terrible it shouldn't be necessary yeah it shouldn't
00:59:40
be necessary but they're pretty big group of guys and girls that are really quite professional um and obviously you
00:59:47
know their main role is just basically excuse me patient safety and staff safety so we do the best we can
00:59:54
but you could always do with more un unfortunately on the weekends so you get abused every other night oh yeah pretty
01:00:00
much like you know the things that you get called and usually you know you try to deescalate things and just to try to
01:00:07
talk to patients to find out you know what's going on and yeah but there's a
01:00:12
level of abuse that would just get so bad it's just like okay I can actually
01:00:16
tell from that and from your experience that this person you know over this one's really unwell and then we'll like
01:00:22
sedate them and do whatever we need to to do under sort of like a duty of to make sure they're safe and they're okay
01:00:27
all this one's just on drugs and alcohol and there's actually nothing else wrong
01:00:31
with them and they can go away with the police or something like that but that's
01:00:35
something that a decision making that comes with experience I guess yeah so you've you've been called the
01:00:43
seaword a couple of times oh yeah quite a lot this this um this week actually the what do you mean quite a
01:00:51
lot what's a what's a what's a he we well you know sometimes you'll have runs
01:00:55
of it you know you'll have runs of days where you've got like multiple sort of
01:00:58
patients of you know of dubious character that just want to come in and abuse people or get picked up from
01:01:06
somewhere because people don't know what's wrong with them you know and drop
01:01:09
them off at the hospital over the police or the ambulance and stuff and yeah so quite a bit you get runs of it and then
01:01:16
quite often being like um I suppose one of the male doctors it's not afraid to
01:01:20
see patients in the hospital if you got a lot of female staff on quite rightly they're bit scared at times to go see
01:01:25
these sort of people you get asked to see so I probably see a disproportionately large amount of um
01:01:31
drugged drunk or violent patients just by the factor of I am who I am I guess how how do you not retaliate especially
01:01:38
like at the end of a long night shift um I well that's the thing is like you try
01:01:42
to you have to stay professional as much as you can um at times you just got to walk away and leave it or at times
01:01:48
you've got to sedate people and do that um the only times that it's really got
01:01:52
physical is I've stepped in a couple of times when security for whatever reason
01:01:57
aren't there quick enough if they're somewhere else and like you know patients had to go some of the nurses
01:02:01
and stuff like that then um I've breached probably work protocol a couple of times before getting involved they
01:02:07
don't like us getting involved and a lot of like doctors and medical staff won't
01:02:12
because they're scared of the ramifications for work which I think is pretty poor and works just got to pull
01:02:17
their head back in a little bit about that yeah they should have your back right yeah I think so I think if it's
01:02:21
come to the point that a doctor's got to step in physically to try to protect one
01:02:25
of the staff members you know don't drag them over the Cs about it you know what what are some of
01:02:31
the more memorable cases that you've seen you spring to mind do you still get
01:02:35
immune to things after a while you do but like most of the memoral cases like I think of as ones that you can't s on
01:02:40
the radio cuz it usually involves you know um things in orifices and other stuff but does that actually happen oh
01:02:48
come on yeah it always happens you know um yeah I just trying to think of a like
01:02:54
a clean story but being an emergency worker we have a pretty um perverse sense of humor at
01:03:01
times well you have you you need you need a like a black sense of humor wouldn't you a as a coping mechanism you
01:03:06
do like I think a lot of like you talk to um emergency workers nurses doctors whatever they've got pretty um pretty
01:03:12
dark senses of humor stuff and I think if you're out of the no you're extremely
01:03:17
sensitive you probably don't like it but it is a bit of a coping mechanism when
01:03:21
you work in that environment they never mean anything bad about it it's just our
01:03:25
sense of humor are just a little bit darker than other people's I guess we need to if you don't laugh you're going
01:03:30
to cry right yeah yeah a lot of people like who don't have that sort of dark
01:03:34
sense of humor unfortunately are really good stuff and they don't last there
01:03:37
that long I think so it is's a bit of a coping making they just get chewed up
01:03:41
and sped out yeah like you can come on to the worst possible shift in the world but you can look around and see other
01:03:47
people like you know other nurses you know that have been different time and they're looking they'll see you and it's
01:03:51
like okay sweet it's going to be okay we're going to get through cuz we're all
01:03:55
just going to have have a bit of a a bit of a laugh about it just you know cuz we
01:03:58
can deal with that sort of and just hopefully there's you know there'll be a
01:04:03
time maybe when we can't and that'll be the time to step out but some of the
01:04:07
young people or some of the new ones just um unfortunately burn out or so the orifice stuff the I knew this
01:04:16
I shouldn't have said the word orifice you say stuff is like put it this way
01:04:20
there's always these always these these things on on social media and that but
01:04:23
the main thing is like nothing like on Tik Tok yeah yeah and it's true nothing
01:04:27
accidentally slips up somebody's butt at 3 in the morning there's no such thing
01:04:30
as a butt accident you know and that's probably the the main takeaway message
01:04:35
the the funny thing for me is that by the by the time someone's like okay I have tried everything I can't get this
01:04:42
out myself I need to get medical attention they've been trying for hours that's true that's true absolute and the
01:04:49
key is just be honest like emergency doctors and nurses we have seen everything before literally everything
01:04:55
you know Were You There When the dude came in with the e no this was a big public
01:04:59
event right this was a big public event no luckily I wasn't on that shift and I
01:05:03
wasn't involved in it which is lucky cuz there was so much ramifications from
01:05:06
that and I think we lost a very good doctor who was head of the department at the time who literally fell on his sword
01:05:13
a little bit and went back to the UK um I think he was always considering it but
01:05:18
um I think that was the final straw cuz I think he was a bit of an escapegoat cuz photos or whatever of the x-rays
01:05:25
what were released into the media and it probably wasn't the medical staff from
01:05:31
what I understand so but yeah that was a yeah obviously that was the one that made the paper so when something like
01:05:38
that happens does does everyone in the staff room talk well that's the thing is
01:05:42
like you know patient confidentiality the official answer is no no one talks about this no not
01:05:48
whatsoever good good answer um but yeah is there like a top five items top five items well I guess you got to consider
01:05:56
like being opposite the prison probably doesn't help um although you see less of
01:06:00
that these days but um vegetables are usually the one of the top items I think wow like
01:06:08
cucumber yeah things like that yeah pnps oh that makes sense yeah the the sharp end and then the fatter end I mean
01:06:19
the classic story is like a Pati I this happened a long time ago now and like some of the story will be fabricated so
01:06:25
I can't get done for it but the whole thing is like you say people have tried
01:06:29
everything for hours and um a nurse came out of a room and she was really panicked he says you got to see this
01:06:35
person they're in a lot of pain I don't know what's going on there the people
01:06:38
they're panicking I was like okay so when a nurse comes he says they're concerned you go over a look and I
01:06:43
opened the door and this lady came up to me and she said look it's my fault it's
01:06:46
all my fault I I was like just calm down what's going on and she said that her
01:06:51
and her partner had been having a sexy time in the morning and this was at night time
01:06:56
and they tried everything to remove this item from her partner's backside but
01:07:01
they'd also given him a lot of laxativ and stimulants so the pressure was just
01:07:04
building up in this F you know to the point that he was in excruciating pain so like you know after I you know had
01:07:13
the compulsory little um chat to them about everything about like it's okay we'll sort you out and that we got them
01:07:18
up to you know theater straight away cuz we couldn't get it out and the problem
01:07:22
was solved but uh how do you get it out well sometimes you can actually retrieve
01:07:27
things in the emergency department um like you can sort of like put regid tubes in and put some air in and if
01:07:33
there's something to grab you can pull them out but obviously a lot of these
01:07:35
objects people put in their backsides are smooth you can't get a grip on them
01:07:39
and then obviously they got to go up to surgery and the surgents could deal with
01:07:43
it this is amazing you've been you've been a really big Advocate over the
01:07:47
years uh about um men and particularly young guys like taking more care of their health and not um avoiding warning
01:07:53
signs and stuff um you so what's some of the like standout stuff that you've seen
01:07:58
from young guys like failing to take attention pay attention to their heal I can't understand how some young guys
01:08:05
um will just put up with like changes in their testicles and stuff like that you
01:08:11
know I don't know like I don't look at my nuts a lot or every day but I would
01:08:15
notice if something was changing yeah if you felt discomfort yeah and definitely with the size of
01:08:20
what some people the times that they were waste and I think it's just whether
01:08:24
it's a little bit ofar or people just don't want to but sometimes especially
01:08:28
young people see them come in with some horrendous sort of things that have been
01:08:31
going for a long time you know and that's just a bit sad you know that people don't feel um I suppose
01:08:38
comfortable or confident enough to talk to their medical professional and come and see things so yeah I wonder if
01:08:42
that's like an element of like bravado as well I was reading the you know the
01:08:45
Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong the cyclist yeah um yeah he had testicular cancer and in the book he talks about
01:08:51
that and how like his one of his nuts in particular was getting like bigger and bigger but he was just used to like
01:08:56
being in the pain cave so he just sort of ignored it and carried on and he's
01:09:00
he's a smart guy surrounded by surrounded by do do and medical experence it's just like generally if
01:09:05
something like you know changes in your body and it doesn't go away after a week
01:09:08
or so a couple of weeks you know and it's getting worse it's not going to go
01:09:12
away by itself you know and it's I think it's time to get someone to look at it
01:09:17
but then people do that for everything people get like worse and they breathing and away from the heart function some of
01:09:21
the other people and they think oh I just thought it was going to get better after a week or so doctor it's like
01:09:25
yeah and this is coming from you like a guy that does these events and then pisses blood or has temporary blindness
01:09:32
yeah but everything's like tery like if I was still blind the next day I'd see a
01:09:36
medical professional yeah if I was still pissing blood you know the next day or two days I'd go see someone you know but
01:09:42
um yeah then again a bit of medical knowledge can do a lot of harm and how how was um how was Co for you were you
01:09:48
were you in the emergency department during the the co years it was mixed it was absolute crap in the end um but the
01:09:55
start with it was glorious because no one would come into the emergency department so we'd go to work and then
01:10:01
it was all the shutdowns and you could just get to work really easily like you know there was nothing on the motorway
01:10:06
you'd go to work and there was bugger or people showing up cuz they were really
01:10:09
scared um and then the backlash of it was horrendous we've never recovered um
01:10:15
and the health system hasn't recovered just because of all the backlog of people that weren't seen by Specialties
01:10:20
weren't seen in clinics surgeries weren't done you know if someone was waiting for their you know
01:10:25
their cardiac surgery during Co and it got put off for like 18 months to two years they're not getting any better you
01:10:33
know their heart function is not getting any better and there's all those people
01:10:36
have just backlogged up from Specialties that haven't been able to see them into
01:10:40
the emergency department cuz the GP primary healthare system can't cope or deal with them so our job when I say
01:10:48
it's getting bad it's just got bad because of all the backlog and stuff is
01:10:52
still going on and all the demand on the system going on you know so what about you from a personal level how how hard
01:10:59
was that with all the PPE and there were there were super stuct protocols were there with you guys yeah
01:11:04
well it was interesting like um to start with there was no PPE and I think that was a little bit because there was none
01:11:09
around so you know a lot of the knowledge that or information we were getting about it was coming sort of
01:11:15
secondhand from overseas there wasn't really a lot of initially New Zealand medical Le lead information coming to us
01:11:23
um and we were initially told by work you don't need PPE you know you don't
01:11:27
need face masks you don't need all this stuff and they didn't want us wearing
01:11:30
face masks it would scare people and this was when Co was kicking off overseas and starting to spread and then
01:11:37
they just went completely the opposite and I think it was once they actually managed to purchase some PPE and we were
01:11:42
like you know literally head to tail standing outside with a tent blocking people out at the door and swabbing them
01:11:48
and stuff and coming in and it made your work days longer cuz you feel try breathing through like a an n95 all for
01:11:56
your entire shift and it's actually quite hard or quite tiring actually probably good training for
01:12:03
altitude runs yeah good training for altitude runs yeah yeah um when when someone dies on your
01:12:09
watch what what sort of impact does that have on you if any um well that's a bit of a tough one
01:12:15
I guess um I probably it's it's one of those things I guess you know that probably
01:12:20
doesn't affect you as much now as when you were a younger doctor um you get a
01:12:24
little bit used to it you don't really get that many deaths um on your watch um these days or not as much as
01:12:33
the old days um but then occasionally there'll be one there'll be something that will
01:12:38
hit you maybe a little bit more and it's generally because it reminds you of
01:12:42
something or they remind you of someone or something like that but um quite often now it's um it's just part of the
01:12:49
job I guess to a certain degree right that pays not to get too emotionally invested in some of these things because
01:12:56
otherwise um it will take too much of a toll on you I mean it sounds a bit um a bit callous if you think about it but I
01:13:04
think a lot of the young people coming in sometimes you know they got quite high ideals about how things will go and
01:13:10
their first couple of deaths really hit them quite hard and then they come a little bit more resistance to it well
01:13:16
you have to don't you otherwise otherwise it's you're just not going to
01:13:19
allow and the main thing to think of is or to remember is yo if somebody dies in
01:13:23
your department it's nothing that you've done that's done it they were always
01:13:27
going to die pretty much you know like medicine and stuff and the way we do things is you know so sort of good now
01:13:34
and there're so you with the really sick patients you're never on your own
01:13:37
typically in the hospital there's a team of you that working um and if they die
01:13:42
they were going to the way I look is they were going to die you know it's not
01:13:46
your fault it's what you got to remember a lot of the young people will think
01:13:49
it's partly their fault or something I guess [ __ ] yeah you you're yeah your
01:13:54
mental health really good like you seem to have like a real good balanced grasp on everything yeah on the outside eh on
01:14:01
the outside you say yeah yeah you even know what happens on no well that's that's true that's
01:14:07
true you don't but you seem quite Cas quite not chalant about everything I think I've got better as I've got older
01:14:12
cuz I've just got a little bit more accepting and a little bit more life experience as well yeah I think you get
01:14:18
over that initial phase in your life where you struggle a lot um and there's
01:14:22
always bad things that can happen in your life but then you get to the point you know there's things that you know
01:14:27
you can do or you know you can do better or you can fix and there's other things
01:14:30
you can't and it's like you say you know if something's really going wrong it's
01:14:33
like it's not my CC it's not my monkeys you know I can only do what I can do you
01:14:38
know the health system drives me nuts at times but then you just got to sit back
01:14:41
and think well it's not my fault the health system's broken I can only do
01:14:45
what I can do you know and that's the a lot of things you know in your life you
01:14:51
know if you want to be if I want to be more awake and more fitter more healthier do less night shifts you know
01:14:57
go for a run more eat better there's things that I can change and there's
01:14:59
things that you can't and I think that sort of helps your mental health quite a
01:15:03
bit better than the dogs taking dogs oh dogs are great he God we don't we don't
01:15:08
deserve them hey we as humans we don't deserve them I think in the fact I think
01:15:12
we should go out and get another one after this and I should have three dogs what about um PTSD no
01:15:21
PTSD no no I don't yeah no traumatic stress no I think probably the most one the most traumatic I think
01:15:30
probably the most traumatic thing I've had in my life would probably be you know the passing away of my dad and I
01:15:35
sort of like think about that and still have to deal with that sometimes and you
01:15:39
think about that on your your long runs and things about you know what you could
01:15:44
have done better what you know and that's probably the most thing that I worked for in my life but in terms of
01:15:49
work and Military stuff and that no no post oh yeah we haven't even talked on
01:15:54
yeah this is the crazy thing you've had such a like um diverse and interesting
01:15:58
first of all these the running stuff um but also career-wise as well that's right you you were um like a medic in
01:16:03
the Army in Iraq yeah so I mean I was in um like the territorial force it was back in the old days when you were at
01:16:11
University um did a couple years of that and then reenlisted in my 40s um because
01:16:17
they were short of doctors for deployments so reenlisted and went through a lot of training and stuff
01:16:22
again and then deployed off to Iraq as a doctor so what then tail um to be fair it was like a lot of um sitting around
01:16:28
and waiting I guess which is probably one of the main things the military does at times you know it's the old joke sit
01:16:33
around and wait but um or hurry up and wait but um yeah I actually enjoyed the lifestyle I enjoyed the regular hours
01:16:43
funny enough the meals and the exercise getting paid the exercise so I really enjoyed my deployment time I didn't
01:16:49
enjoy a lot of the um bureaucracy and other stuff you know I don't think the
01:16:54
military does Health well but that's a lot of Industries and stuff in New Zealand they do Health well they could
01:17:00
look after their soldiers better while they're in and with their out as well I
01:17:05
think um but yeah I really enjoyed my time so you you so you you were sort of in like a like a an army base rather
01:17:12
than like a war yes I was in an army base overseas um and it's all that stuff's been Declassified now long ago
01:17:18
and I was deployed of a doctor from Australia who was sort of like a GP trainee and most of the stuff we were
01:17:23
doing was General practice type stuff which he knew more of than I did cuz he was a full-time permanent military
01:17:28
doctor so he actually fortunately for him did most of the stuff dealing with the rashes in the feet and all the rest
01:17:34
of it and my role there was if anything kicked off was to be the emergency resuscitative type do and run those sort
01:17:41
of things and those sort of things were few and far between so a lot of the time
01:17:46
I was just um well almost like a bit of a Pampered Pooch they took me took me for walks feed me you know yeah there
01:17:55
was always young people Keen to go for a run or do something stupid you know we'd
01:17:58
come up with some stupid exercise things just to test ourselves out and it was a
01:18:02
great time I enjoyed that yes enjoyable experence yeah would you see more more more gunshot wounds as a like a medic in
01:18:08
Iraq or at Oakland Hospital on an average week or Hospital hands down actually I was joking is that right
01:18:14
hands down like especially in the past what 10 years I've been working in emergency you know 10 years ago if
01:18:20
somebody come out with a gunshot wound to Orland Hospital you would have every man in his dog down from every in the
01:18:25
hospital wanting to see it now I had one week we had three we had three people shot in a week you know which is a high
01:18:32
week for it and abnormal but three in a week it's like nobody not everybody shows up anymore you know they're like
01:18:38
oh where is it get a scan of it where's the W going what's blah blah so um your
01:18:43
violent crime in New Zealand in terms of weapons has definitely ramped up in the
01:18:48
past few years like past few years has in postco or just yeah postco especially yeah it seems like there's a lot of I
01:18:55
mean you you'd know this um more cutely than anyone but it just seems like there's a like a just a a lot of rage or
01:19:01
anger around yeah it's a good way of describing it there's a lot of hate in
01:19:05
society or people that just aren't moderating their behavior just will turn violent for the most little things I
01:19:11
mean some of the stuff you see coming in it's like you got hit or assaulted over
01:19:15
that you know just completely I mean you used to laugh in the old days the C answer was oh yeah
01:19:20
some dudes hit me you know some random thing in other words this person got drunk started a fight and knew who they
01:19:25
were but now literally somebody might just be walking down the street and somebody completely out of the blue will
01:19:31
hit them or something and they coming with serious injuries it's not a joke anymore it's actually what happens if
01:19:39
you go out in town um I think the most advice most people just keep an awareness of the situation and what's
01:19:46
going on don't completely let your guard down when you go out on night of the
01:19:49
town and that's a horrible thing to say cuz that's what you want to do isn't it
01:19:53
when you go out but um no so we see so much violence does it does it put you off
01:19:59
alcohol yeah yeah I won't go out drinking in town really like we'll go out um you know really like for a
01:20:05
restaurant or maybe have a drink or something but I hardly ever go out into town for a drink or something or if you
01:20:11
do you're going with your mates you're not getting you know like drunk like you
01:20:15
used to in the old days I just don't think it's worth it personally no absolutely not yeah it's crazy that a so
01:20:23
my uh my ex partner JJ her her brother got shot a couple of years ago just um uh in central Oakland at getting a kebab
01:20:30
at 3:00 in the morning and that ended up getting a little bit of press um because
01:20:33
of JJ's profile um but the the girl that Paul was with she ended up like um she's
01:20:39
blind in one eye and it you wouldn't even read about in the paper like it doesn't even get reported on yeah so we
01:20:44
like all the ones that you see in the paper for every one you see in the paper there's probably another couple that
01:20:48
just don't even make it you know there's people getting shot with homemade
01:20:52
firearms and things like that as well just random drive-bys people are literally standing outside in a group
01:20:58
and somebody would drive by and I don't know I don't like the color of their
01:21:01
shoes or their jacket or something stupid like that we we'll shoot them yeah is it is it usually gang stuff um
01:21:09
or is that just a sweeping generalization I think there's undertones of it but some of them just
01:21:14
to be completely random or it's I don't know whether it's drug related or you
01:21:17
just don't know it's not clearly gting someone but wow I in you volunteer for a while
01:21:25
on rescue helicopter uh I found an old article online of um some some massive car crash you involved with how do you
01:21:31
have time to volunteer for [ __ ] uh well that was back in the day where it was like you know when you were young and
01:21:36
you always Keen to jump out of helicopters and do stupid stuff you know fly around the Wy [ __ ] during a nice red
01:21:41
you know Santa suit but it used to be West rescues used to be volunteer doctors so they would pay the pilots and
01:21:48
the crewmen and the Medics and stuff but the doctors were sort of volunteer and we used to donate you know our clinical
01:21:55
shifts and go work for them so there used to be this massive pool of us that were doing it so I got asked if I wanted
01:22:01
to do it when I was younger I was like yeah I'll do it so did about four shifts
01:22:05
a month and we just went and hang out down the helicopter station and sometimes you'd
01:22:10
have no work and sometimes you'd be non-stop from start to finish and then when it sort of all got grouped and uh
01:22:18
they're trying to centralize it all they decided to move to fulltime and probably
01:22:22
quite rightly they um sort of cut their crew numbers down and they came up with their own training program and things
01:22:28
like that so that's good so no longer required I guess it had all changed when
01:22:33
I was off at military service so I came back had been volunteering for westpack and then wasn't really needed anymore so
01:22:39
just moved on to something else what sort of jobs were involved with the helicopter stuff is it mainly car
01:22:43
accidents or yes so you get some really like you know simple jobs you just fly over the way island or Buri or something
01:22:50
after hours and you pick up somebody they worried about chest pain or something or pretty simple stuff or
01:22:55
you'd fly off and it was one we landed in the middle of like State high one north of the PO tunnel I think it is and
01:23:03
the pilot did a really good job like cut through the wires and sort of landed right on the state highway there you
01:23:08
know and we had to like um get the fir pull a guy out of the car and like we intubated him there in the middle of the
01:23:14
State Highway and flew him off to O hospital so it's a very wide range of what you're doing [ __ ] it's been a hell
01:23:21
of a life hasn't it and you're only at the halfway mark yeah hopefully what's the life
01:23:26
expectancy of a married male at the moment yeah hopefully what is it your dead was 81 was was that a is it a good
01:23:33
Innings yeah so he was um one of 18 kids in the family and he was the last one last one left but he was the youngest so
01:23:43
but you're you're you're fat and healthy and you're aware of what you should be
01:23:45
doing so yeah is yeah your life expectancy should be right should be better yeah unless the job Burns me out
01:23:52
but I am pretty proactive like I've you know seen cardiac doctors I've seen
01:23:56
respiratory doctors and stuff with my family history and I've seen a gastroenterologist but I've driven that
01:24:02
and had to drive that and most of it through private because the public system wouldn't do it but I've got risk
01:24:07
factors and I've got and had them all checked and I'm doing pretty well at the
01:24:10
moment are you s of saying like the the squeaky wheel gets the oil you got to yeah the squeaky wheel or the wheel
01:24:17
that's got some money unfortunately new healthcare like if you can afford Private health insurance then you can
01:24:22
get whatever healthare you need to a certain um and that's the way the systems is at the moment unfortunately
01:24:30
if you're if you're financially well enough off then you're going to get all
01:24:34
the investigations and stuff you need um if you're not then you can have to wait
01:24:39
for the public system you could be waiting a hell of a long time what what do you want to do through
01:24:44
your 50s and 60s um keep running you know of haven't given up on maybe doing some more
01:24:52
crazier stuff or longer stuff um stay fit you know working on a little side interest of just making some running
01:24:59
clothing and stuff for myself and um that's great you're wearing it now huntaway
01:25:05
runco yeah yeah for the I got to pair of the shorts the shorts are great so many
01:25:10
pockets and it's always just a um it's just a side interest things to keep your
01:25:14
brain going um and then obviously um I'd like to have more time to work on the
01:25:19
scholarship and things like that and get other young people doing things and then
01:25:24
I supp you it's probably about time to start a family good that the plan yeah actually
01:25:30
I've got a where's the photo here I got a nice photo here of you and Vicki it
01:25:34
was very hard to find very hard to find a nice photo of you guys was it oh yeah yeah one where you're not pulling a face
01:25:40
yeah yeah well I I tried to ruin them tell us about that that young lady that one that photo must have been back in
01:25:45
our younger days when we were fresh and sparkly and stuff and that yeah yeah how
01:25:50
long you guys been together there oh I'm G to get this Phong get in trouble no
01:25:54
it's been about two and a half years two and a half years yeah yeah she's great
01:25:58
as I mentioned before she's Kanye's vet she's she's bloody great you found a
01:26:00
good one there yeah yeah and the family were really stoked as well they were like we always need a vet I think it was
01:26:06
the first thing out of my mom's mouth wasn't like oh you know you're finally
01:26:09
settling down and stuff it was like oh we need a vet yeah yeah yeah cuz we're
01:26:12
all animal lovers in the family yeah and that's exactly what you want to do after
01:26:15
hours yeah more vetting yeah oh that's bloody great sh this has been inspiring what a life yeah
01:26:23
well you already hear the good stuff at times yeah yeah no no just in terms of like like you know what you're doing
01:26:29
with your job and stuff as well like I know it's not easy and it must be incredibly frustrating at times um but
01:26:34
no we we appreciate what you do thank you and and Al so the runs uh so we're
01:26:40
recording this in um Late July what runs have we got to go between now and the end of the year um so in about oh a week
01:26:45
and a half I fly off to Romania so doing Ultra race Romania it's a um a sort of a
01:26:50
family Run Race which sounds quite nice over there um um then about a month later I've got Grand to Grand in the
01:26:57
states um which I've managed to get a cheap entry um through cin one of the New Zealand supplement companies um and
01:27:04
then after that there's a small race in Australia which is only 3 days which is
01:27:09
around 12ks and then after that we're sort of straight off to Antarctica so it's all done in November finished up by
01:27:15
November yeah how good and and what's so what surface are you running on in antactica is it like snow and ice or
01:27:21
what yeah yeah snow and ice in that yeah so you run basically in your shoes and you have these little stretchy sort of
01:27:27
crampons that you put over the top you just run around in those and and in terms of climate like what are you what
01:27:32
will you be wearing um probably more than last time hopefully but um generally it's it's
01:27:39
quite dry it's a dry cold you know it's wind chill that will um which will catch
01:27:43
you so just yeah just warm out of layers and and is that um like a point too race
01:27:49
or is it like just I know there's a marathon there and it's just like kind
01:27:52
of Loops yeah so it's the same sort of thing because you can never get um clearance I guess environmental
01:27:56
clearance that do like a point too race and it's just too risky down there yeah
01:28:00
so typically uh you're on a boat and they will you know sail to a area in the
01:28:05
morning they'll set up um a loop or a course that could be anywhere from 400 m
01:28:11
to you know 3 or 4ks depending on the area and um while the weather's fine because everything's weather dictated
01:28:18
you'll run as many loops and try to clock up as much distance as you can then they'll put you back on the boat
01:28:23
the end of the day and they'll go somewhere else house so it's quite good
01:28:25
from that side you get to see a few different areas of you know the South shetlands and the the main Antarctic
01:28:30
shelf and you get to stay on the boat or and you get to stay on the boat which is
01:28:34
a luxury you you'd hate that luxury it is I'd rather stay on the I shelf and
01:28:39
that and but apparently it's really hard to get um consent yeah yeah because of
01:28:43
all the environmental concerns so [ __ ] I I wish more of us were like this like
01:28:48
into doing really hard stuff can it be luned yeah it can be loed can be led if you got the desire to do it you can
01:28:55
always go out and do stuff yourself or with some mates that's quite hard and
01:28:58
you know and a little bit crazy and sometimes Reckless but but there's a saying I like it's um if if you know the
01:29:06
why it's easy to find the how so what is it for you what's the why um I think part of it is I want to
01:29:13
every year besides from doing things for Charities and other stuff like that I want to test myself every year to see
01:29:19
where I'm at you know like and that's a driving force for me like I'd
01:29:24
yeah you want to push your limits I want I would love to have found my breaking limit when I was younger and I just
01:29:30
never did um and I think it's probably going to be easier to find it now as I'm
01:29:34
getting older so that's the hope that's the driver just age catching up with you
01:29:40
yeah age catching up with me will probably be the one that brings you in yeah your your mind was saying like nah
01:29:45
n just do it yeah don't be soft just do it and then the body will crap out probably at some stage yeah so uh this
01:29:51
podcast is sponsored by the generate kiwi saver scheme and challenged me to give 20,000 to charity by spreading the
01:29:57
word about the importance of kiwi sa advice and planning for your future so if you answer these five questions
01:30:03
generate will donate 500 bucks to a charity of your CH actually should we and your scholarship 500 bucks
01:30:10
scholarship yep yeah a great idea okay are you a spender or a saver spender no [ __ ] no [ __ ] Trel um what's
01:30:18
been your biggest money mistake oh not starting to save in earlier when I first started earning
01:30:25
money yeah from day one I wish I'd put some money away oh same here same here
01:30:31
even like in my 20s you you read about things like compounding interests but you don't really understand it till you
01:30:35
get older and it's like a yeah um yeah what's that saying like youth is wasted
01:30:41
on the young or something like that um who do you talk to when you have questions about money um Vicki yeah your
01:30:47
fiance yep she's smarter with money than I am um what's something fun you can see
01:30:52
yourself doing in retirement or pulling a sled in Alaska probably for about a thks no I said want something fun you
01:31:01
can see um if you could pick anywhere to retire in New Zealand where would it be
01:31:06
NY oo that's a really good one actually um down south somewhere somewhere down
01:31:16
south where I've got access to hunting and The Great Outdoors and that I want
01:31:20
to spend most of my retirement age driving a four-wheel drive around shooting deer
01:31:26
um what do you love the most about being a kiwi um we're so far away from everybody
01:31:33
else jeez okay with with all the [ __ ] that's going on in the world when you look at you
01:31:39
other countries oh yeah that's what you me and conflicts and other stuff like
01:31:43
that that's the only advantage of being all the way down here okay oh so you're
01:31:46
okay being surrended by other kiwis not too many hey well this has been great it's
01:31:53
been really enjoyable um it's been in the calendar for months and months and
01:31:56
months because you're such a busy man with your work and your travel um but I'm so pleased we finally made it happen
01:32:02
cool thank you yeah Dr inia ratti thank you so much all right thanks a lot [Music]