NT Mount Doreen Station Manager, Lil Bryant, is the first to admit she's most at home when she’s in the middle of nowhere! Outback station life was an integral part of her childhood in Queensland, spending most of her childhood on Roxborough Downs cattle Station, Southwest of Mt Isa. Lil’s childhood was spent riding push bikes down outback tracks, swimming in river water holes, roasting yabbies on a campfire and generally enjoying an idyllic ‘free range’ country childhood with her three other siblings. While her parents spent most days outside, running a busy cattle station, Lil was educated by School of the Air, before heading off to Boarding School in Townsville as a teenager. So after training and gaining employment as an Occupational Therapist at Mt Isa hospital, where she met her future husband Sam, Lil already knew she wanted to share the same outback life with her new husband and their future children. Which is how this hardworking couple soon found themselves managing thousands of head of cattle and thousands of hectares together – first in WA’s Kimberley region and, more recently, on the busy and remote Mount Doreen organic cattle station, some 400km southwest of Alice Springs.
By mid 2024, it felt like all of Lil and Sam’s dreams were coming true. With an amazing crew of employees to help them, Lil was looking forward to gradually returning to her ‘Jill of all Trades’ role at Mount Doreen, while nursing her brand-new baby Poppy and caring for her energetic toddler Lachlan. But as Lil describes in this dramatic episode #140 of the Flying Doctor Podcast, just nine days after Poppy's birth, she awoke in the middle of the night and immediately knew that 'something wasn't right'. Still half asleep, she turned on the bathroom nights and was greeted with a confronting sight. Lil was experiencing a rare but significant Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) - and everyone at the station that night would have to work together to keep the terrified young Mum alive. With Sam asleep beside her, Lil had woken up as her young baby stirred in the basinet beside her – but after realising she was ‘wet’, she headed to the bathroom to investigate. After turning on the lights, Lil was confronted with the sight of blood gushing down her legs and onto the bathroom tiles. Shortly afterwards, she describes passing a massive clot, the size of a small football, while the stream of blood continued.
Lil's first thought was to call her midwife - who thankfully answered the phone immediately and told the young Mum to hang up and call an ambulance. But after Lil explained she was back at the station and over four hours drive from town, the midwife asked the question - 'So, who do you ring in a medical emergency?' Lil quickly hung up and called the RFDS and was immediately connected to the Doctor on call. The RAC Doctor's first question was 'who is with you.' And Lil suddenly realised she still hadn't called out to Sam, mistakenly thinking she could deal with the emergency herself. But after the Doctor told Lil to 'get him now', she called out to Sam and her young husband rushed into the bathroom, to see his wife lying in a growing pool of blood. The tele-health Doctor instructed Sam to press down firmly on Lil's uterus, while the other staff members on the station were alerted to come and help. For Lil, the next few hours would be a frightening and uncertain time, as an RFDS flight was launched to retrieve her and her station 'work family' fought to keep her alive and to stem her severe blood loss. Sam and his station staff quickly lined the station's nighttime airstrip with toilet rolls and paper towel soaked in diesel, to light up the runway for the incoming mercy flight - while Lil tried to stay conscious and deal with the early stages of shock. Lil would later have to undergo a series of tests - and she would even experience a few more alarming bleeds - before her rare 'delayed' Postpartum hemorrhage was effectively treated with surgery.
