The other factor was that you are used to hearing all the success stories in the media. You only get the ‘happy endings’, and even though there are still good endings with people living successful lives in wheelchairs, you never hear their stories. Instead, the typical line is that it’s all about your willpower. If you think you will walk again, you will walk again. There is the well-worn line about how ‘the impossible takes a little longer’. But there is another, implied side to those beliefs: if you have to live in a wheelchair, it’s your fault for not trying hard enough to get out of it. There is a colossal difference between breaking your neck versus breaking your neck and also damaging your spinal cord.
So everybody was expecting me to make a full recovery, and I watched as their facial expressions set into shock-horror. My mindset was, Okay. Now I can get on with this and do the best I can. The blinkers went on. I focussed on what I had to do. I knew the trajectory of my life had changed dramatically. My main drive remained the same: get back and look after my family any way I could. While they were shocked by the prognosis, I was more disappointed that I hadn’t seen Bowie yet. All I wanted to do was see her.
Everyone stayed a little longer, but it was already late. The ward had relaxed the visiting hours because I had just come in and everyone was there with me, but it was time for them to go. Aimee stayed back a bit, and after everyone had left, she asked, ‘So, what do you think?’
‘Well, now we know,’ I replied.
She looked at me with determination and said, ‘We’re going to beat this together. You’ve just got to think positively.’
Aimee’s an optimistic person, and she’s also very defiant. She took on an against-the-odds mentality, and even though I wanted to think that way too, I was more realistic. I thought, Okay, there goes Plan A … But Plan B is to get as healthy as I can and keep going. At that stage, I don’t think Aimee really had a Plan B.
She eventually left, determined to come back in the morning with Bowie, and I began to take in my new surroundings – the gaping holes in the ceilings and the taped-up windows. It was cold and a lot noisier than in Singapore. I was in a ward here, whereas I was in ICU before, closed off from everything in my own little bubble. Now I was hearing all the beeps and noises from other patients’ bays. There was a whole new regime in place that I had to get used to. There were more staff, but they were also looking after more people, so they would come around in groups of three or four.
I’d arrived on the Friday night of the June long weekend. When the first nurse came in after Aimee had left, she explained how things were: ‘Look, we’ve got less staff now. None of the doctors or physios will be in over the weekend, but the registrar will be on the ward if you need anything.’
Then the staff came and turned me for the first time. It must have been about eleven o’clock at night. I was still awake because there were too many noises, and I was reflecting on everything that had happened that day. Four staff members came in and introduced themselves – two blokes and two women.
They carefully tilted me up onto one side and checked my back, my bum and my heels, looking for any pressure marks, and then put me on my side – not fully over but enough to give the other side of my body some relief and to prevent me from developing bedsores. Every three or four hours they would come in; a couple of them had head torches because they were doing it stealthily as everyone else slept.
For the rest of the night I lay awake, thinking, looking around, hearing all the new sounds, people moving around the ward. I didn’t feel that tired because I had slept through the whole flight. I often get those nights where there’s a million things going through my head. I can’t really focus on one thing and I just lay there. In the blur of that night, one thing did emerge: I was really excited to see Bowie the next day.
15
A rude awakening
The next morning brought a radical change from the processes I’d been used to. I had been rolled in my bed a couple of times in the night, so I’d met some of the nurses, but the next morning the new shift came to introduce themselves and inform me that I had to now get up in the mornings and go to the toilet.
I looked back, half-asleep and confused. ‘What?’
I had only sat up in a chair a couple of times in Singapore – how was I going to do this?
I’d just been doing my business in the bed, although I hadn’t really been that aware of it. I’d hardly been eating anything too, so I wasn’t passing much. But now I had to get used to this new regime of the staff getting everyone up, because we were all paralysed. Mornings were a big deal.
The nurses brought in a crane-like device called a hoist, and hanging off the end of the arm was a sling, like the kind you see storks flying around delivering babies in. I was struggling to get my head around what the hell was going on.
It was around nine in the morning, so it wasn’t that early, but it felt super early to me (even though I’m a surfer and had been used to getting up before first light).
‘What are you getting me up for?’
‘Well, you’ve got to go to the toilet,’ the nurse replied.
‘Yeah, but why haven’t I needed to get up to go to the toilet until now?’
‘I don’t know, but this is the way we do it here, and this is the way you’ve got to do it moving forward.’
‘Really? Shit, no-one explained this to me.’
They pulled back my covers and handed me a small folded towel.
‘What’s this for?’ I asked.
‘Modesty … You know, for your privates.’
‘Oh, okay …’
Two staff members slid the sling under me, hooked me up to the hoist and hit a button. I started rising out of the bed like a baby. I thought to my myself, This towel isn’t doing much; my bum’s on show for all to see.
Once I was clear of the bed, they turned the hoist around with me hanging off it and popped me onto this shower chair with a tall tilted back so that I was in a reclined position. I felt really insecure and vulnerable – I was starkers except for a t-shirt and the modesty towel. I was in the middle of the room, and even though the curtains were closed, I could hear people walking past. I had no idea what was coming next, but I kept thinking, This is Australia. It’s supposed to be easier. This is in no way easier!
Once the staff had repositioned the towel over my lap, they wheeled me into a big square box of a room with a toilet in one corner and a shower in the other.
‘Someone will be with you in a minute,’ one nurse said before shutting the door.
‘What do you mean “someone will be with you in a minute”?’ I called out. ‘Who? Why?’
Soon there was a knock on the door and this guy walked in, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. That’s when I first discovered just what would be involved in going to the toilet from then on.
The chair had an opening in the seat, and it was parked over the toilet bowl. A man of few words, he said, ‘I’ve got to put these two enemas up.’
‘What? Enemas? What are they? Up where?’ I was oblivious to that side of things.
He explained a bit further. ‘Right … Well, we’ve got to get you going to the toilet, and we’ve got to get you going straightaway. And this is how we do it.’
‘Really? Is there no other way?’
‘Nope.’
So I had to grin and bear it, although not being able to feel what was going on down there was obviously now a plus.
He popped a nozzle up my bum and fired in a liquid that’s meant to cause the rectum to react and evacuate whatever is in the bowel.
I wasn’t really bothered about the enemas, but I’ve always had a bit of a poo phobia. Aimee would laugh about how nervous I’d get when I went to the toilet. All the doors had to be locked, and I almost had to send her to the other side of the house for me to feel comfortable enough to go. So to be thrown into this situation where a guy is sitting right next to me, rummaging around underneath? I was probably more horrified by this than when I was lyi
ng in the middle of the jungle.
He did what he had to do and then looked at me and nodded. I nodded back, as if to say, Is that it? Is that the last time I’m going to see you?
He went out and shut the door – Ah, it’s over – but then he opened the door again and said, ‘I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.’
Not wanting to ask, I just said, ‘Uh yeah. Okay.’
So there I was, lying reclined in this shower chair, half-naked with God-knows-what underneath, over the toilet, not sure what to think, when a nurse knocked on the door and popped her head in. ‘You all right?’
‘Err. I think so?’ I replied, trying my best to cover myself up.
I didn’t know what to expect. Nobody had told me anything. Maybe they thought it had been explained in Singapore, but all that had happened over there was that the staff would change the sheets as they only spoke Malaysian. As I hadn’t really been eating anything it wasn’t much of an issue.
Suddenly there were a few noises going on underneath – rumbling, gurgling and big fluffs – and I was thinking, What was that? WHAT THE FUCK’S GOING ON? Can everybody hear this? I can’t feel anything!
I sat there feeling like my pride had been stolen, thinking, Oh my God, this is my worst nightmare.
There was another knock on the door and the enema guy walked in, rolled my chair off the toilet and looked behind. He didn’t say much, just rolled me back over and started slapping on another pair of gloves. We have to go through this again?
He explained that the enema hadn’t worked, so now he had to go up and investigate.
NO FUCKING WAY!
I didn’t want to ask too many questions; I just wanted to close my eyes and block it out. He was underneath the chair, and I could feel myself moving, but I didn’t want to know what he was doing. He wasn’t there long before he ripped off the gloves, chucked them in a brown paper bag and said, ‘Yep. You’re done.’
‘Done what?’
‘Nothing today.’
My body hadn’t been able to pass anything. I couldn’t remember eating a lot in Singapore, nor could I remember passing a lot there, so this whole situation was new to me. Being in total shock over the experience didn’t help either.
It was the first of many times when I realised that the staff had assumed that I already knew a bit about spinal cord injuries, having been in treatment for about a month.
Later in the week we would have the sit-down conversations with the rehab doctor, where she would explain what processes I could expect, but for that first weekend there was a skeleton staff and most of the experienced nurses were off. Since North Shore is a training hospital, there were also a lot of student nurses around on weekend shifts.
Having endured my shocking toilet episode, the staff now had to shower me in the same room. The nurses came in and washed me down, because even though I could keep my arms up in the air I was still really weak. There was no way I could actually shower myself effectively.
As they washed me, the nurses were talking. All these strangers were coming in to these private places, but for them it’s just a process, another part of their job, so they were sharing general chitchat – ‘Did you watch the Today Show this morning?’ – while I sat there naked.
And it works. It forces you to start to accept it. The whole business begins to seem normal.
This was the first proper shower I’d had since my accident, and it felt nice having the water over my head. For the past month I’d only had a quick wash in bed. I still felt anxious about someone doing my personal hygiene for me, especially when they got out a toothbrush and cleaned my teeth. It’s a weird feeling because your mouth is so delicate, and they were really getting stuck in.
I was finally done. They dried me off, wheeled me to my bay, got the hoist and chucked me back in bed. The whole process took about an hour, and afterwards the nurse said, ‘That’s what you’ve got to do every morning,’ and the staff moved on to the next person in the room.
I realised that I’d been the first one up. I felt okay – I had survived the whole experience and was a bit fresher. Now I just had to wait for Aimee and Bowie to show up.
I was fully aware of the clock because visiting hours started at eleven, to give the staff enough time to get everyone up and ready. I had an hour to go. I hadn’t paid such close attention to a clock for ages. It wasn’t important to me in Singapore. It had no relevance. They didn’t have visiting hours; the unit was open the entire time.
I sat watching time creep slowly by, getting more and more anxious.
Right when the clock hit eleven, in walked Aimee with Bowie in the pram. When I saw my daughter’s face, I felt a huge surge of happiness: ‘Oh my God! Bowie’s here!’
I didn’t know how she’d react, but I wasn’t in a wheelchair – I was lying in bed – so I didn’t look any different. She got out of the pram and Aimee propped her up on the bed. She crawled up and gave me a big hug, and I just lost it. I had been waiting for this for so long!
It was the first time I had seen her in a month. I’d already been missing her terribly the night before the accident, and then I had another four weeks on top of that – four weeks of fear and pain, of being lost in the jungle, of helicopter and van rides and hospitals. Four weeks of fighting to get back home.
She cuddled in with me, and we sat there for what felt like forever. I was talking to her, and she was saying sounds back to me. Nothing seemed different to her: Dad’s just in bed, and I’m lying with Dad. It was the most wonderful moment, and it instantly clicked: I’m back with my daughter again, and everything’s normal.
Aimee was chatting about this and that. I was back with my family. I’d made it. My driving force was to get home and look after my family. Now that I was finally reunited with Bowie and Aimee, I felt like the first step had been completed. I’ve made it back to my family. We’re all together.
As Aimee and I continued to talk, the nurses would occasionally come in and we’d ask them for more information. They gave us little bits, but they kept explaining, ‘Look, it’s the long weekend. The doctors are all away and the registrar who’s on duty is not the one who’s normally here. Next week, everything will be much clearer.’ And we accepted that. We’d waited this long, we could wait a few more days. In the meantime, at least I was back with Bowie, and the family could come and see me whenever they wanted.
16
The longest weekend
I spent the whole time in bed for that weekend, apart from the toilet and shower routine in the mornings.
Having hardly slept at all on that first night, I was still struggling to fall asleep on the second night, so the doctor gave me a sleeping tablet and I dozed off for a good amount of time. I’ve never been into taking so much as a Panadol. I’ve always believed it best to let the body fight it, let the body get used to it, so when I couldn’t sleep on the third night I decided not to take anything. I didn’t want to risk my body starting to rely on the tablets.
But I just … couldn’t … sleep. I got to about two o’clock in the morning before I finally asked for a sleeping tablet, but it was too late. The protocol on the wards was, ‘No sleep medication after a certain time because we all have to get up in the morning.’
I got a bit upset about this, and I kept repeating, ‘No, I need it. I need it.’
There was a really nice nurse on duty. Her name was Annie, and she was only a few years older than me. She sat with me through a lot of that night. She was experienced on the spinal ward, and we got to speak about heaps of things – like what had happened and what I could expect in the future.
It was more of a friend-to-friend conversation than one between a health professional and a patient. Annie opened up about what was happening. She told me that if I hadn’t come in on the long weekend I would have been straight up on the first day, but all the physiotherapists and occupational therapists were off on holiday. Whenever something started beeping, instead of me trying to guess what it was, she would explain, ‘Oh,
that’s a patient hitting the night bell,’ or whatever. It was a settling night. Even though I didn’t sleep, at least I was speaking with someone who knew all about the process, and I was learning.
The ward was made up of two corridors, with the nurses’ station in the middle, forming a U. There were four big rooms on each side and a couple of single rooms up at the end, which made up a ward of about thirty-five beds. The acute patients (including me) were on one side, and those who were ready and waiting in the wings for a bed in rehab were on the other side. (The main rehabilitation unit was outside the hospital at another site called Moorong.) The whole ward was mirrored on the other side with the brain injury unit.
As the weekend came to an end, I started getting anxious. Even though I was on the acute side of the ward, where no-one was really getting up, I kept seeing other people in wheelchairs.
My family was hanging out in the waiting room along with other visitors and the patients who were in the opposite wing of the ward. They were all getting around in wheelchairs, chatting to their families or watching the tiny telly on the wall. My family got chatting to them and would come in with their stories: ‘Oh, we spoke to this guy … you should see him …’
They were mostly paraplegics, meaning they had full use of their arms and hands, and they were already in their wheelchairs doing frigging wheelies all over the place.
I hadn’t been diagnosed yet as to what level of spinal cord injury (SCI) I had, and we didn’t fully understand that the outcomes from SCI could be really different, so my family and I were looking around and saying, ‘Well, they’re paralysed. Look what they can do in a wheelchair!’
There was this one guy called Max. He was an older fella, I guess in his sixties, and around the same level of function as me. He was such a character. David had been talking to people, trying to collate information to feed back to me, because we weren’t hearing much else. Then he met Max, who might have been the oldest out of everyone in there, but he was also the funniest. He’d just tell it how it is, much like me, and he was a bit of a joker as well.
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 12
