Our meeting May 23rd

President Phil opened the meeting with grace and a salute to King Charlie

Phil also reported that Peter Crozier, having had successful heart surgery, will be out of Hospital tomorrow and home in a few days, probably at the meeting next week. We had three guests at our meeting. One was guest speaker Jenny McKenzie, former member Kevin Watts and "Past District Everything in Rotary" from Merimbula Club, Noel Trevaskis. 

 

Phil confirmed that the District budget was passed at a Zoom meeting on the weekend.

 

Geoff Breust welcomed Jenny McKenzie, a palliative care nurse who works for Greater Murray healt District. Jenny trained as a nurse and after many years, specialised in Palliative care nurse. The previous week the Wagga City Council organised a successful forum at the Civic Theatre focusing on Palliative Care.

Jenny is an eloquent speaker who, hailing from Corowa, having trained in Melbourne and, through circumstances dealing with a patient with terminal cancer, decided that the area of palliatice care was the way forward for her. Having experienced seeing patients in oncology, not only suffer from cancer, but have very unpleasant experiences at the “end of life”, Jenny saw a need for better care at that stage. Jenny worked in the UK and completed her palliative care training in that country before returning to Oz to pursue that career. The problem was there were no specialist nurses in Wagga so Jenny registered a “Nurse practitioner” giving her the option to prescribe drugs to suit the particular circumstances, working closely with the medical professionals.

She is passionate about her career choice and also works closely with two FIFO VMO specialists working in the Wagga Health District. The funding has improved so that palliative nurses are now located in the remoter areas of District. The dedicated attention to patients needs is very evident so that patients can better plan so that stress is reduced with, not just medical, but a variety of other factors that can play out at this very difficult time. Jenny gave some examples of people who loved Christmas so that you can celebrate Christmas at any time of the year that suits.

The overriding part of treatment was to work with families and establish a plan that best suits the patient and family, to be host with both. 

A big thanks to Jenny for addressing a confronting subject, explaining the process and so professionally delivered.

 

Romano’s have advised the Club that a room hire fee will apply in the future at a rate of $200 per month. That will include all subcommittee meetings.

 

 

We did not have a Sargeant today so Noel Trevaskis (a bloody good Rotarian) helped us out delivering a story about our own Mac Armitage. If we thought Mac might have been a bit of a rogue, Noel confirmed it. Mac and Noel grew up in Finley and Mac (only about 10) and his brother decided that they would pilfer a couple of water and rock melons from the Italian neighbour farm. Little did they know that on their retreat to home armed with the melons, the farmer was also armed with a shotgun. The resulting shot scared the living daylights out of the boys. They dropped the stolen goods and scuppered home, only to be invited the next day to share in the excess melons from the neighbour harvest. Frank Fuller was not consulted on the best outcome for the Armitage boys, but probably would have congratulated them and told them to learn to run a bit faster.

 

 

 

It has come to notice that Wal Paton is in Hospital and has been flown to Sydney for a pace maker to be inserted. We wish Wal good health.