A hi-vis vest and a thermometer

Vocational choices change rapidly in adolescence and the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the options

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Dear Julia,

Your career aspirations used to reflect your viewing habits.

The zookeeper phase (The Crocodile Hunter) ended in grade five and the forensic psychologist (CSI) ambition persisted into year 11.

Between times you flirted with astronomy (an infatuation with Professor Brian Cox) and briefly wanted to be a jockey after Michelle Payne won the Melbourne cup.

I have no idea what made you think that you could make a living as a taxidermist and never imagined you ending up on the stock exchange floor trading Chicago grain futures. Chuck Berry was right, “You never can tell”.

Just recently, a teenager with spiky green hair and a funny rash told me that she had always wanted to be “a crazy lady living alone with 15 cats”, but has now decided to become a maths teacher. Vocational choices change rapidly in adolescence and the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the options.

The less ambitious child looking for a stress-free life, such as operating the Stop-Go sign at roadworks, now sees herself taping black and red crosses to the floor at 1.5-metre intervals. Sign language courses are heavily booked; inspired by countless media conferences, a generation of 12-year-olds have switched their sights from politics to Auslan. The interpreter shares centre stage with the premier and provides an essential service, unlike the usual backdrop of sycophantic nodding heads.

Those after a job with power, prestige and a uniform are giving the police force a miss and becoming “Fever Screeners”, commonly known as “Temperature Takers”.  Firearms and drab clothing are out, law and order can now be maintained with a hi-vis vest and an infrared thermometer, wielded with authority.

For even greater impact, accessorise with eye protection, a face mask and matching blue disposable gloves and hire yourself out to a pharmacy franchise. A patient with a bit of a sniffle reassured me that recently I did not need to reach for a swab because: “I’ve already been checked for coronavirus before I was allowed into the chemist to buy some Panadol.”

Aged care facilities, designed to keep the residents in, now employ Temperature Takers to keep viruses and other visitors out.

George offered me a weather-beaten hand, but withdrew it, apologising: “Sorry doc, I keep forgetting”.  He carefully stood his stick in the corner and eased himself into a chair.

“Arthritis playing up George?”

“I’m old and knackered, doc. Made two mistakes in life – went farming and played football. A sheep knocked me arse over tit and buggered my back 20 years ago. I’ve just come for a flu needle today, can’t see my Mavis without one.”

He rolled up his sleeve and went on. “We’ve been married 51 years and she’s got the arse end of the deal now. Alzheimer’s is a mongrel of a thing. Never would have guessed she’d end up in a home. I’m the one who’s knocked myself about; drank a lot of grog when I was young and silly, got an elbow in the head in the ‘54 grand final and had a bit of a brain bleed.”

I mumbled a distraction and jabbed.

“Did my best to keep her at home, but it got beyond me. Our oldest daughter came up from Melbourne. Kicked up a stink when she realised how wandery her mother was and insisted on her going in.”

“That must have been hard for you?”

“I always got up early, saw to the dogs and chooks, then made her breakfast. Don’t have to do that anymore and it leaves a hole in my mornings. Mavis has been a heck of a nice wife.”

“Do you visit often?”

“No, not as much as I’d like with this coronavirus going around. Allowed to see her for an hour a day now because she’s going down hill quickly. She won’t last much longer. Have to get the nod from the Temperature Taker and show my flu passport to be allowed in the place.”

George eased out of the chair and retrieved his stick.

“Security is tight inside too. Mavis is in the dementia wing, though, like the other women there, she wouldn’t make a run for it. People are like cattle when you get them penned up. The cows will follow a fence and ignore open gates, put a bull in a yard and he will circle around looking for a way out.

Mavis walks up and down the passage in front of her room all day, never even looks at a door. Old fella two rooms up from her is a different story, forever on the prowl. Leave a door unlocked and he’s off. Staff are always rounding him up.”

Finally, he sighed. “I’m not ungrateful, but if I was in charge of the thermometer, I’d be tempted to let the viruses in. Would be a ticket out of misery for the likes of Mavis.”

My younger self would have found the old farmer’s attitude simplistic and inhumane. As an older doctor, I have seen the misery George describes and sympathise with his point of view.

When a pilot or an anaesthetist makes a mistake, the consequences can be catastrophic but, as a former anaesthetist told me: “The big difference is that the pilot has skin in the game.”

It’s like that for GPs involved in geriatric care, us older docs empathise with the pilot. Since turning 60, every nursing home visit reminds me just how much skin I now have in the aged care game.

Your uncle Leon in Sydney, the sedentary chain smoker with rheumatoid arthritis, has plenty of skin in the pandemic game.

Having turned from epidemiology to political leaders for answers, he is now confused about what to do with his Plaquenil. He’s torn between Oliver Cromwell – who labelled chloroquine “A Papist powder made by Jesuits” and refused to take it for malaria – and Donald Trump’s endorsement of the drug.

On balance, Trump’s track record on public health has at least convinced him to wear a face mask. He favours a bespoke design, with a “smoking hole” in the middle that allows him to enjoy a fag and a snorkel that directs his exhalations back over his right ear. Leon has not forgotten his country cousins; the snorkel is made of barley straw and he’s convinced they will sell like baby formula in China.

The 1960s space race was a time of innovation and opportunity, too. Might be time for a career change.

Love, Dad

Dr Max Higgs is a former country GP, a current rural and remote locum and a collector of stories