Forged with Flames

by Ann Fogarty

  I discovered that if I pretended to be deeply asleep, the nurses would decide that rest was even more important than clean dressings, and I’d get a reprieve—and so would they! But most of the time it was just a case of gritting my teeth and letting them get on with it.

  One day, when everything seemed to be going along normally, the nurse doing my dressings let out a scream. I looked up at her in surprise. Surely if there was any screaming to be done, I should be the one doing it. She looked back at me wide-eyed.

  ‘Your ear has just fallen off!’

  I was completely taken aback and for a long time we were silent as we contemplated this awful occurrence. Then suddenly, I began to laugh. The unexpectedness of the ear falling off and my reaction to it was infectious and we both laughed until our stomachs hurt. We couldn’t help ourselves, we just laughed and laughed. Here I was, burned inside and out, worrying about how I could make it through the next hour, never mind the next day, laughing fit to burst. Perhaps, as a final insult, all my body parts would now begin to fall off, one after the other! Had I not laughed then, I might have gone insane. My days and nights had been so full of raw emotions it was wonderful to have a bit of light relief. After all, compared to the seriousness of everything else, what was the loss of an ear?

  As it turned out, when we’d both calmed down, we found that—thankfully—my whole ear wasn’t gone, only the top half of it. Pretty annoying when wearing glasses, but really not that bad at all. In fact, this whole episode became a funny place I could go to when times became too heavy and pressures seemed almost unbearable. Just the thought of it was enough to lighten me up. I soon lost count of the many instances where I would smile and say to whoever I was with, ‘Remember the day my ear fell off?’

  19

  THE FLYING NUN

  I realised the worst was over in early May shortly after the ear incident, when I asked Cathy, the ICU Charge Sister, if I might still die. She looked at me intently from above her mask and said, ‘No’. I had reached a turning point, I thought; I was on the road to normal life again! I settled back into bed after Cathy left and rolled the idea around. I was so delighted with my survival that I barely thought of what else might lie ahead. Blessed ignorance—there were still so many challenges to overcome.

  For now though, I thought only of the milestones and the positives. I could breathe unaided. I was off intravenous nutrition and able to eat consommés and ice-cream, albeit with help. The catheter had been removed from my side and I could use a bedpan, such an absurdly enjoyable experience that the nurses allowed me extra water to drink until I got over the novelty of using it. The movement in my arms was improving. I could sit up, with assistance. I still had one-and-a-half ears.

  I was even able to go to a party again, in a fashion. The previous week, at the end of April, friends, family and the Intensive Care staff threw a party for my thirty-third birthday—a first for the ICU. I was still fragile and my heart wasn’t really in it but it was also a celebration for Sarah’s seventh birthday so I tried to look lively. The room next door—the one in which the lone doctor had stood watching me when I first came in, an eternity ago—was festooned with balloons and garlands of paper flowers. There were bowls of sweets, Cheesels, Twisties and doughnuts and a cake for Sarah. Mum, Terry, Liz and Jane were there but not Rachel—she had a cold and had to stay behind because of the risk of infecting me.

  At one stage Sarah spontaneously walked into my room and presented me with a Twistie—she knew I loved them—but I was sure I’d be sick if I ate it so thanked her and said I’d save it for later. I cheered a little when the staff presented me with a gift, a pretty pink and cream nightdress, which one of the nurses hung up where I could see it. I looked at it often and felt encouraged—it was a promise of things to come, and a reminder of the thoughtfulness and kindness that surrounded me in the Alfred. No one was expected to bring presents at this stage but I do remember a single red rose arriving from friends, Geoff and Tilly. Bunches of flowers weren’t allowed in the isolation rooms due to the risk of infection but this rose arrived securely packaged in a plastic tube. The nurse placed it on a little corner shelf where I could see it.

  Two weeks later, in mid-May, I finally left the ICU and its staff to return to the Burns Unit. The nursing manager of the unit came to say goodbye and told me a few things that surprised me and that really made me think. He said that in the time I had spent with them—almost three months altogether—they’d learned something valuable that would help in their assessments of future cases. It had seemed, at the beginning, that the best thing they could do was make me as comfortable as possible before I died. But my survival—the outcome of their care—had proved them wrong.

  ‘When we realised how hard you were fighting to stay alive we decided to go that extra step,’ he said.

  I appreciated his honesty. I was so impressed that this man in charge would come and say, ‘Look, we almost got it wrong’. It was brave of him to say that. I never knew then what the ‘extra step’ was although years later I was to find out that they resuscitated me dozens of times.

  Although I was out of ICU and my situation was no longer life-threatening, the doctors told me on several occasions that long months, even years, of surgery and rehabilitation lay ahead. The road to recovery is never straight with burns patients. I was getting stronger physically, yet each day relentlessly brought more pain. Returning to the Burns Unit, I was able to have a bath for the first time since my admission to hospital. To be lowered into the beautifully clean, warm water was heaven; to feel that warmth surround me was a gentle caress, a balm to my assaulted skin. But bath time was also my daily debriding time. I was so sick of enduring such procedures and pretending to be brave. I longed with a passion for it to all be over and to get on with my life; to be able to turn over or sit up in bed without help or to be able to cut up my own food. I dreamed of being able to move freely and independently, of the days I’d be able to look after my family again, care for the girls, even iron clothes.

  When I became well enough to leave my bed towards the end of my stay at the Alfred, I was assigned my own wheelchair. Sitting in a wheelchair was an interesting experience—for some reason many people treated me like a child when I was in it. It seemed as if being the height of a child somehow transferred me back to the status of one, which was sometimes funny, but often not. Some people would shout at me instead of talking normally—did they think I was deaf, slightly incapable of comprehending things or just a long way down? I found it hard not to laugh sometimes when they talked both loudly and slowly, putting extra emphasis into trying to make sure I understood what they were saying. ‘I’m not thick, you know,’ I thought, ‘I can understand you.’

  By the end of May, Carol the physio decided I was well enough to try to stand up. Terry was visiting that day during his lunchtime and helped lift me out of bed and onto my feet. If you’ve been bedridden for a long period of time the muscles in your calves shorten so you can only stand on your toes, like a ballerina. If I’d once dreamed of being a ballerina what was to follow certainly cured me of it. Because my toes had been badly burned, the doctors had put steel pins in them to set the bones back into place, so being on tippy toes was agony.

  It was under Carol’s guidance that I later took my first tentative steps. I was still frail and very underweight. My legs were so pathetically thin—as thin as birds’ legs—that a friend said she couldn’t imagine how they’d ever hold me up. The surgeons had removed tissue from them because it was damaged, and it doesn’t grow back. I’d been one vein away from having my left leg amputated—had Professor Masterton not discovered that the vein was there providing circulation to the leg, it would have been taken off. So at least I had two legs to stand on, even if they would need a lot of help to be useful!

  Before I attempted to walk in earnest I had to be reacquainted with standing upright for more than a few seconds. Carol, helped by another physiotherapist, laid me on a special board, strapped me in and slowly ti
lted me upright. Mum often came to watch me in physio and was there that day. She looked on anxiously as I was tilted, the colour draining from my face as I battled nausea. She didn’t say much at the time but this first step towards getting back on my feet must have been exciting for her because she often talked about it afterwards.

  Taking a step on the parallel bars two weeks later was even more momentous. After willing my leg to budge a few inches, I knew then that however hard that single step was, I’d walk independently again. Later, I tried to take three or four steps. Even lifting one leg in front of the other was unbelievably hard. I’d stand gripping the bar feeling that I couldn’t possibly take another step. Carol would stand next to me, encouraging me every inch of the way.

  ‘You can do it darling, just one more. I’ve got you. I’m here.’

  And when I’d finished she’d say, ‘That’s fantastic, that’s enough for today’.

  Gradually, painfully, a little more each day, I made it to the end of the parallel bars. There were some days, particularly when I’d just had surgery and wasn’t strong enough, when Carol would just move my legs and arms up and down while I was lying in bed. Eventually I was given a walking frame and learned to take a few steps on the tips of my toes. The walking waxed and waned. I could do it one day but not the next.

  By late June I would be walking a few steps on the frame, building up to moving right around the physio room on it, then eventually walking down the corridor, giddy with achievement like a toddler on their first legs. I did quite a bit of bike riding too, increasing my times and speed. A friend, Steve, came in once to see me pedalling away, a blue scarf, made by a friend to cover my bald head, streaming in the air behind me.

  ‘Just like the Flying Nun,’ he exclaimed delightedly.

  Carol, while enthusiastic, always approached our physio sessions in a calm, measured way and I was relieved that she could do it without causing unbearable levels of pain. Her approach might have taken longer, but for me it was perfect. We’d made considerable progress by the time I was ready to leave the Alfred Hospital and move onto the more serious work at Hampton Rehabilitation Hospital, where I would stay for several more months.

  20

  THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR

  Back in my ‘normal’ life—before February 1983—I had, like so many other people, found joy and solace in music. Certain pieces of music touched my soul and made my mood soar. In 1980, Terry gave me a flute for my thirtieth birthday and I’d been playing it with much enjoyment, if not complete polish, ever since. My hero was the Irish flautist, James Galway. I had many of his recordings and before the fires, had been looking forward to going to one of his concerts in Melbourne when he came out in May of that year. When he did arrive from Ireland at the end of that month, I naturally assumed there was no way I was going to be able to see him play.

  I didn’t know then how it all came about, but what occurred at that time was just extraordinary. One of the nurses brought a telephone into my room, telling me that I was about to receive a call from James Galway.

  ‘James Galway?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding.

  ‘James Galway?’ I repeated mechanically, trying to marshal a few runaway thoughts.

  A call from James Galway? Really? How? Why? I was trying to think of a few intelligent things to say about his music—without sounding like a groupie—as I waited for the phone to ring, before my thoughts were interrupted by an unusual amount of noise outside my room. Before I could work out what it was, the door burst open and clad in gown, hat and gloves was the world-famous flautist! Apparently, his rehearsal for the evening’s performance down the road at the Melbourne Concert Hall had gone smoothly and he had found he had the time to visit rather than make a phone call, as had been planned.

  James was refreshingly down-to-earth, completely without airs or graces. My heart raced. I had trouble stringing two sensible words together, such was my elation, but it didn’t matter. Terry, Prof, the doctors and nurses, Cathy from ICU, Trish, the Charge Sister in the Burns Unit, and an Australian flautist friend of James’, Andrew Richardson, had come in for the occasion. For more than an hour, Jimmy—‘Just call me Jimmy’—entertained us with some highly amusing stories and a few mischievous asides. He told us his own hospital tale about the time he’d been hospitalised somewhere in Europe recovering from a serious road accident. He and the other patients used to break out of the ward, he said, in their wheelchairs and go down to the pub. They’d be so drunk that on the way back they’d fall out of their wheelchairs and couldn’t get back into them again.

  Jimmy showed himself to be sensitive and full of compassion as he asked me all about the fires. He played tunes on his two tin whistles and swooningly beautiful melodies on his golden flute. It was enchanting. The door was left open for the nurses to listen as he played. There I was, with my head resting on two pillows, in a white hospital gown, having the experience of a lifetime, a close-up and personal chat and concert from the most famous flute player in the world. For those ephemeral moments I was able to forget where I was and what had happened to me. I could feel wonderfully normal, too, as James laughed and joked with everyone in the room.

  When it was time for him to go, he asked if there was anything special I’d like him to play. Without hesitating, I told him it had to be Annie’s Song—an obvious one, really! It was wonderful to have it played for me but even better when later that evening, as I was listening to the ABC’s broadcast of his concert on the radio, I heard Annie’s Song again. James talked of his visit to see me in hospital that afternoon and dedicated the song to me, and to others recovering from illness.

  The next day, as I was still basking in it all, Andrew Richardson, the Australian flautist who had accompanied James the previous day, arrived back in my room bearing a flute—a gift from him to replace the one I’d lost in the fires. It was a beautiful instrument which I cherish and still play to this day.

  I later learned that a friend of Terry’s had arranged for James’ and Andrew’s visit through a neighbour who worked in the concert department of the ABC, with help from other friends and the Prof. This experience, and the generosity of spirit of James and of so many others, filled me with a profound sense of joy at a crucial time in my recovery after such a time of loss. But most of all they reminded me to never think of giving up—that one’s life can change with the opening of a door.

  21

  THAT’S NOT MY MUM

  In early March, when Sarah first saw me after I was burned, her first words were, ‘That doesn’t look like my mum’. Rachel’s response was, ‘That isn’t my mum’. So similar, and yet so different. In Rachel’s four-year-old eyes, her truth was ‘the truth’—she was convinced I wasn’t her mother. Although Sarah would come into my room in the ICU, for long weeks Rachel wouldn’t and no amount of persuading helped. I missed her dreadfully. Rachel had coped with the fires basically by shutting it all out—and me with it. Sarah, who’d watched the house burn down and protected her sister in the car, must have been deeply traumatised but she always came in, not because she wanted to, she told me a long time afterwards, but because she thought I’d want her to. She recalled the first time she came to my bedside, inching along the linoleum floor, feeling as though it took forever to get there. One cautious step at a time. At first I wasn’t even recognisable, but as she neared the bed she saw my eyes—the only part of me that looked the same.

  Finally, three months after the fires, when I had returned to the Burns Unit, I could bear it no longer: I had to see Rachel, too. I asked Terry to go and get her and bring her into my room even if she fought him all the way. And that’s exactly what she did. She kicked and screamed in his arms; and Rachel’s scream was always a force to be reckoned with. Terry persevered, holding onto her as she struggled to escape, bringing her wriggling to my bedside. In spite of the protests, it was a joy to see her properly at long last.

  After a while she calmed down, helped by the store of sweets in my bedside drawe
r, the lure that kept her coming back in—bribery was absolutely essential in this case. She remained careful to keep her distance, though, even as she reached out for a sweet. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to touch me or for not letting me touch her. My exposed skin, still healing, was red and flaky with unsightly scabs. My voice had changed, too—it was deep and husky for a while—and most importantly for the girls, my hair was gone. The fact that I’d had my head shaved really threw them. About that time when Terry mentioned that he was going to get his hair cut, they pleaded with him not to.

  ‘You won’t look like Daddy, anymore,’ they cried.

  I longed for just the briefest acknowledgement from Rachel that I still mattered in her life. We had always shared an easy, close relationship and it hurt deeply that I had become such a stranger to her, however much I tried to understand it. I looked at my little dark-eyed darling and worried that it would never be the same again. Rationally, I knew things would settle down eventually, but I still wondered what would happen when I was discharged, and if she’d even want to be in the same house as me. At this stage, not knowing how I would look or what I would be physically capable of, played on my fears that my family might reject me.

  Rachel’s fifth birthday came around at the end of June. Terry bought me a silver cross on a chain to give to her, which he’d carefully gift-wrapped. I’d given her one before that she loved, which had been lost in the fire along with all her other belongings. I imagined optimistically that we would have a breakthrough, that she’d be delighted when I gave her the new one, and be happy at last to approach me with a big smile and hug. So I felt a wave of happiness rise up in me as she came close enough for me to hand it to her, and saw that she was so obviously delighted when she opened the box. As she picked up the chain I said hopefully, ‘I could fasten it around your neck if you’d like, Rachel?’ Immediately, she jerked back as if she’d been stung and said, ‘No, I want Daddy to do it’.