HOPE
ENDURES
Extras
Life After Mother Teresa
After I left Mother Teresa I began my awkward re-entry into Australian society.
I worked as a nurse’s aide and a year later a computer error gained me entry to the University of Queensland to study medicine, thirteen years after my peer group. My knowledge of calculus and inorganic chemistry was rusty but I did well once I reached the clinical years.
I graduated in 1990 and after completing further training, I moved to the Northern Territory, to work with the Aerial Medical Service.
I flew to remote Aboriginal communities for clinics and then returned to Katherine, to be on call for the district. We responded to many situations, such as accidents, obstetric emergencies and crocodile bites. In 1998, Katherine was flooded. We scrambled to evacuate the hospital and nursing homes, to the Tindal Air Base. As the Katherine community cleared away the mud and debris, Australia prepared for the Olympics and disenfranchised Aboriginal youth suicided in despair.
In late 1999, F-111s screeched over Katherine. It felt as if Australia was at war. News came of massacres in East Timor. I responded to an email requesting volunteer doctors. A short trip on a Hercules transport plane caused a seismic shift, in life’s realities. The country’s infrastructure was destroyed, and life was tenuous.
In 2003, after working with the TB and general clinic in Aileu for two and a half years I returned home for family reasons. I had lost my belief in God and searched for new maps to guide me through life.
In October that year, I attended the beatification Mother Teresa in Rome. I felt then that I had to tell my story.