by Ann Fogarty
Over the years I developed various other strategies to cope with such days; some of them quite funny. Soon after the fires, I was given a bushfire survival book. A little late for me perhaps, but I accepted the gesture as it had been intended at the time. The woman who wrote it had asked if she could put something about me in it, and she sent me a copy when it was printed. In a fit of enthusiasm, I followed the book to the letter, assembling all the items necessary to be safe at home in the event of a fire.
I bought three metal buckets. Metal, not plastic, so they wouldn’t melt. One each for the girls and myself. I bought protective clothing for the three of us, including thick woollen jumpers, gloves and three woollen balaclavas to protect our faces. These items combined were so warm and heavy that we probably would have collapsed from heat exhaustion within minutes of putting them on, but never mind. I bought three tin whistles, as directed, complete with cords to hang around our necks so that if we became separated in the smoke, we could blow them and alert each other as to our whereabouts. Now, of course, the thought of the three of us running around clad in balaclavas, gloves and jumpers on a forty-degree day, blowing whistles and trying to put out a bushfire with three small metal buckets seems rather ridiculous! But at the time it gave me a little control over future unforeseen disasters. We’ve laughed about it since, and Sarah said once that she’d always known that if she were ever unlucky enough to be caught in a repeat performance of Ash Wednesday, she would have made a dash for the car and ‘got the hell out of there’.
On one level, although I’d faced and dealt with so many fire issues, I still sensed something hidden on those high fire-danger days; something shielded by my defences waiting to erupt. That summer, two decades on from the build-up to Ash Wednesday, proved my undoing.
Until then, I’d always forced myself to keep functioning as normally as possible on hot days even when I was nauseous with fear. I never really let anyone see how difficult a heatwave was for me, so I would just push on until the next cool change. I managed like this for nineteen years. Then, bang: a culmination of reminders of the fires led calamitously to what my GP, Wes, called ‘an overload of bushfire stimuli’.
It was a long, scorching summer and bushfires of the deadliest variety had hit Canberra and northern Victoria. Smoke hung constantly in the air. I only had to walk outside the front door and take one breath and I’d be struck by flashbacks. It was also approaching the twentieth anniversary of Ash Wednesday, so there were more reminders than usual—on the television, on radio and in the newspapers, everywhere. I’d even become part of the anniversary myself, involved in a special fundraising event run by the Alfred. I was interviewed for an upcoming Alfred Hospital publication too, and although I was glad to be asked and happy to contribute, it evoked many disturbing memories for me.
It all came to a head on the Wednesday before the Australia Day weekend in January when I heard that forty-four degrees Celsius was forecast for the next weekend. I was living in Berwick by myself at this stage. Rachel, then aged twenty-four, had left home to take up a position in the country after graduating from the police academy six months earlier. Sarah was twenty-six and living in Mount Waverley. She’d moved out in 2000 to start a business in acupuncture and massage with a colleague, in Chadstone.
Having just sold the car made me feel even more vulnerable as I tried to imagine what I’d do in the event of a fire in the area. The fact that I lived in a house chosen specifically because it wasn’t in a high-risk area did nothing to lessen my dread. Fear doesn’t obey rational parameters. I dreamt about fires at night early that week, waking up feeling as if I were right back in Ash Wednesday; flames everywhere, running to escape, trapped and breathless, caught. I’d wake up struggling for breath, trying furiously to distinguish between dream and reality. Something unbearably bad was about to happen, I knew it, and nothing I did or told myself made me feel safe.
On that Wednesday, I was so agitated that I could focus on nothing else. I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying. I paced the floor of my house; I couldn’t eat or drink or settle down in any way. I couldn’t concentrate on the movements in my Tai Chi class that morning and was on the brink of tears throughout the entire session. A group of us usually had a cup of coffee afterwards and when the others saw that I was struggling, they suggested I go to the health food shop to buy something to calm me down. My friend, Margaret, offered to take me to the doctor.
Fortunately, I still had enough common sense to realise that I couldn’t manage this alone. I rang our local surgery to find out if I could get an appointment with Wes but his receptionist told me he had no spare appointments. When I told her it was an emergency, she managed to squeeze me in that afternoon. By the time Margaret drove me to the surgery my eyes were so bloodshot and swollen that I sat in the waiting room in sunglasses. When I finally went in to see Wes, I just wanted someone to take me away to some safe place and knock me out for a week. I couldn’t imagine how I could live through the coming hot days and stay sane.
Wes is your real old-fashioned general practitioner. He’s interested in your children and grandchildren and you as a person; and he has the knack of making you feel that you’re the only person in the world at that moment. He didn’t talk a lot but because he had a good sense of humour he had a way of lightening matters up, of turning them around. He was gentle and wise, just the person I needed to see.
When I was seated, Wes calmly asked me questions about what I was feeling and why, listening carefully to my replies. Finally, he explained that I was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’d heard of PTSD before but knew little about it beyond it being something war veterans often suffered from. I know now that it’s a serious psychological disorder that can be brought on by events like sexual abuse, natural disaster and violent attack, not just war. The diagnosis accounted for the flashbacks and nightmares I’d experienced over the years, and why seemingly small sights and sounds could trigger such panic and distress. He explained that I’d had too much bushfire stimuli because there were fires everywhere and that it had just all built up. He gave me medication to calm me down, suggestions to help me manage the coming hot days, and the support to convince me that I could get through this bad patch.
I left the surgery wobbly but relieved that this insidious condition had been exposed. I didn’t have to grapple with this alone. It had a name. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was real, something that other people had, not something to hide or be ashamed of, I told myself.
I began to let other people know what was happening to me, and they didn’t hesitate to rally around. Terry arranged for me to be picked up on the Friday morning before the hot weekend in an airconditioned car and be taken to stay with his father. I loved his Dad, with his reliable, honest ways and quiet sense of humour. Unlike the reserved relationship between my father and me, from the first time I had met John on arriving in Australia as a young bride, I had felt an immediate warmth and acceptance from him. The strong friendship that grew between us over the years was maintained despite my divorce from Terry, which says a lot about all of us, I suppose.
I dosed myself up on my medication and found myself sitting calmly with John listening to the ABC radio broadcasting interviews and commentary about bushfires that day. I told him it was the first total fire ban day since the 1983 fires that I hadn’t been utterly terrified. What a breakthrough!
After that, friends would ring on subsequent hot days and offer to be with me—in their houses if they had airconditioning, or mine if they didn’t. It was a big step forward in what was for me a journey of honesty. I’d worried before about being judged or rejected if I admitted to what had been going on in my mind at these times; but now I discovered that no one else seemed to see anything unusual or surprising in my terror.
37
THE BEST LESSON FOR SURVIVAL
By May 2003, I’d regained a measure of health and assumed I was leading a life free of further physical traumas—and drama. I’d had six operat
ions on my face and hands since being released from Hampton Rehab and was glad to finally be free of hospitals and all that went with them. I still had physical limitations and much less energy but I’d mostly come to terms with that and was leading a happy, steady and satisfying life within the boundaries of my current existence. I was going to Tai Chi classes twice a week now, I had friends around more and was enjoying playing music with my old flute teacher every week, and with another friend, Heather, who played duets with me. I’d begun writing a manuscript about my fire experience—reluctantly—after Sarah enthusiastically pushed me to do it.
So I went along for a routine mammogram that month with no expectations that the results would be anything but fine. I was fifty-three at the time, and had had mammograms before, always receiving a pro forma letter afterwards to say that everything was normal.
The phone call from Monash Breast Screen numbed me. The voice on the other end of the phone introduced herself as one of the nurses.
‘Your breast screen hasn’t been satisfactory,’ she said. ‘We need you to come in for further tests.’
I heard myself speaking calmly as we made arrangements for me to go back to the medical centre the following Monday. I put down the phone, trying to hang on to the nurse’s reassurance that nine out of ten women who were called back for further tests turned out to be clear of cancer. The friends I talked to about it later were reassuring; it would all turn out to be a false alarm, they said confidently. You’ll be fine.
The night before my appointment, Rachel drove from her home in Hamilton, in Western Victoria, to stay with me. She was still working in her first job as a constable there. I was very glad of her company—it quelled some of the apprehension about the whole thing. As the years went by it became more and more difficult to endure anything being done to my body; I’d become ‘allergic’ to the slightest hint of discomfort. Several years before, I’d panicked and cried out in pain before an operation to remove an ovarian cyst. Gone was the stoicism of the Alfred days. Now, if I found myself in any sort of pain, horrible fire memories would surface so I wondered how I’d go with the forthcoming procedures—a mammogram and a small biopsy—minor as they were. I hoped I wouldn’t scream.
Rachel and I arrived at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne’s south-east and made our way to the foyer beyond the curved entrance. People milled around. A young woman with a sixties-style paisley headscarf walked past with her family. Carnaby Street, I thought, before registering why she was wearing it. I was shown to a cubicle where I changed into a gown, with ties at the front, then joined a room full of women in the same gowns, sitting close together in chairs around the walls. Most were about my age, some a little bit younger, some a little older but not by much. No one was saying anything. We all looked shyly at each other and occasionally smiled, acknowledging our qualms.
The mammogram probably hurt more than it needed to because I was tense. It took the technician a number of attempts to get the images she wanted, pressing me hard against the machine. As the afternoon progressed, most of the women were seen, cleared and sent home. Four o’clock came around and only Rachel and I remained in the waiting-room. I knew then that I was going to be the one out of ten who wouldn’t be okay. I tried to stay light-hearted; and we joked about making an escape. Rachel was concerned but looked composed.
Eventually I was summoned to see the doctor. He sat, greyhaired and broad-shouldered in his white coat, not saying much, just that they weren’t happy with the mammogram and needed to do further tests. He didn’t give much away but he looked serious. The biopsy team was still available if I wanted to do the biopsy now, he said.
I explained to the team of three a little of my previous history and my anxiety about how I would cope with what lay ahead, starting with the biopsy. For me it was a big procedure. They were understanding. The biopsy was unpleasant rather than painful and, after a restorative cup of tea, Rachel and I travelled home. She had a thumping headache by then and started vomiting within five minutes of getting back, so I realised she’d been stressed out, too.
Rachel left for the four-hour drive home the next morning and I passed a quiet day recovering and psyching myself up for the next day’s biopsy results. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. I’d been thinking before the breast test that maybe my life would open up again after the girls were gone—I had a little bit more energy and the time to do things. Now I felt as if it were closing in again, narrowing my options, confining me once again to problems of health and body.
On the day of the results an old friend, Nella, and I had planned a day out in Melbourne together, as we often did. Nella offered to meet me at the hospital instead and to come in with me while I got the results. The same doctor who told me about the biopsy was waiting for me in his surgery. Nella sat in the waiting area. As soon as I got into his little room he said to me, ‘Have you come with someone? You might want them to come in here with you.’
The results had returned positive for cancer, and the doctor arranged for me to see my GP the next morning to get a referral to a specialist.
Nella and I had brought our lunch, so we drove to a nearby park to eat it. We sat on a picnic blanket on a grassy area, my mind working furiously to take in the news. Cancer. Another operation, at least. Then what? We tried to have what was our normal day out, eating our picnic lunch, looking at the shops afterwards, but it was all an effort. I just wanted to go home. I was too shell-shocked to even really discuss it with my friend.
When Nella dropped me at Clayton railway station, it was about four o’clock, chilly, and the carriage was already crowded. I sat there tucked into myself, stunned. I looked around at the other people in their coats. Everyone seemed sombre, keeping to themselves. No one has any idea of the news I’ve received today, I thought, wondering what could be going on inside each one of them. Any of those passengers might have had life-changing news that day, you just didn’t know.
It was dark when I arrived home—the house silent, empty. No one was there to call out ‘Hi Mum’. There were no noises in the other rooms. No dog to run up and leap around my legs. I’d barely taken my coat off when I was overcome by an urge to talk to someone. I called my dear friend Audrey. One of her daughters, Michelle, had just finished a course of chemotherapy for breast cancer, so I knew that Audrey would understand. I thought of her as I waited for her to pick up the phone; Audrey, salt of the earth, the truest friend anyone could hope for. When I told her about the results, she insisted on coming over. I talked to three friends before she arrived. Just to fill in time after she went home, I spoke to another couple of people until it got too late. I couldn’t bear it. This was all out of character for me. I was normally so independent.
Events moved quickly after my visit to the specialist. Five days after the diagnosis, I was in the Berwick Bush Nursing Hospital having the cancer removed. The surgery was fine, but the part beforehand where a long needle was inserted into my breast to identify the site of the cancer, was terrible. The doctor at the imaging centre where the procedure was carried out introduced himself, then said, ‘And you’re the miracle lady’. Later I had to laugh, because when I stood up to go back to the ward after the needle was firmly inserted, I fainted dead away on the floor—with the needle still in. I’m not sure that he saw me as much of a ‘miracle lady’ after that little display.
After the surgery, a night in hospital and breakfast the next morning I went home, tired but relieved it was over. The doctors said I was fortunate the cancer had been discovered early; that they didn’t think any lymph nodes were involved and that only follow-up radiation treatment would be needed. No chemotherapy. I could keep my hair. Small mercies!
My family and friends made sure I was well cared for after the operation. A friend came to my house to cook an evening meal for me in the first few days, others took me out for afternoon tea or for a bite, or dropped round with flowers or for a cuppa.
It was difficult to tell Mum about the breast cancer, not only because
of the worry it would cause her but because Dad had Alzheimer’s by this stage and had become quite violent. Dad was still living at home then and made it difficult for her to talk on the phone. She had to go into the bedroom to make phone calls, but he’d find her and come in wanting her attention, like a child. Mum sounded shocked and sad that she wouldn’t be able to travel back to Australia to be with me.
Terry had just been told by his company that he no longer had a job—a blow at the same time as mine—so he offered to drive me to any medical appointments; he was with me when I went to arrange my radiation treatment. I’d been warned that these treatments generally made you worn-out—not something I relished given I was already so easily exhausted. The radiologist, Marie, was friendly and easy to communicate with. She took great care and spent a lot of time examining me. After she finished she said that, in her opinion, it would be far too risky to do radiotherapy. It would be like putting a burn on top of a burn and could cause more problems than it would fix. I felt as if I’d been handed a surprise gift. This would be the end of this little episode then. The cancer cells had been successfully removed and there was a good chance they would not come back. An excellent result.
Marie went on to say that she’d like to discuss my case with her colleagues and that she would ring me to confirm her thoughts. I walked out of her rooms elated; I could soon put this latest health scare behind me. The next few days after that I spent relaxing, sharing the good news with everyone and rejoicing with them.
