I woke up but I couldn’t look around because they had stabilised my neck. I felt like I was tied down to the hospital bed. There were beeps coming from the machines around me. I could only see two concrete walls and what looked like a big sliding door.
I drifted off again.
Meanwhile, Sparkesy had rung Aimee and plans were being devised. Aimee’s sister, Kirsty, and her husband, David, were the ones making the arrangements. The first thing was to ring the travel insurance company to organise for Aimee and my parents to get over to Singapore as soon as possible. But when Aimee went to grab her passport, she discovered that it had expired, so she couldn’t fly – only Mum could go on the first flight.
Calls went back and forth with the travel insurance company. They liaised with the Australian authorities, explaining the emergency, and a new passport was processed for Aimee within a few hours. She just had to pick it up in the city. Then Aimee and my dad got on the next available flight the following day. Bowie stayed in Australia, where she was looked after between the whole family.
My mum was the only one who got to Singapore before I went in for the operation on my spine. I was relieved to have her there – if the doctors couldn’t fix me then Mum would.
The seriousness of my condition, which had been bubbling inside my mind this whole time, came to the surface and the first thing I said to her was, ‘I’ve fucked my life, Mum. It’s all over.’
I get a lot of my strength from Mum. She looked back at me and said, ‘No, it’s not over. Let’s just get through this. Let’s get you better, and we’ll worry about all of that later.’
Soon I was whisked off to surgery in what seemed like a hurry. I saw a flurry of flashing lights and thought, Holy shit, what’s happening? New rooms, new noises – things seemed to be moving really fast. I’d never needed surgery before, and I was getting very anxious. No-one had told me anything about what was going to happen. Everyone talked in a foreign language.
Then I saw a nurse with enormous beautiful eyes between her surgical face mask and head covering. Whether her scrubs highlighted her eyes or she had spent a bit of time on them that morning – or it might have been the meds – they just seemed not of this earth.
‘Oh my God, look at your eyes!’ I whispered. That seemed to calm me, or it might have been the gas mask she was putting on me to knock me out, but it was the last thing I remembered. I was out.
When Mum had arrived at the hospital, the staff had handed her the only thing that was in my possession – my passport – and said to her as they explained the procedure, ‘You need to prepare yourself for the worst. It’s been too long. We don’t know if we can save him.’
I was haemorrhaging. Another few hours and I would have been dead.
Sparkes: John had motored up to HT’s the morning after the accident, because it was the closest spot to Padang. None of us had said, ‘Let’s go to HT’s tomorrow,’
None of us were thinking about surfing.
I sat on the deck with Goody, looking at the surf. The waves were perfect. They were only small but they looked really fun. There was no-one out there. If it had been any other day we would have all jumped; instead, we just sat on the boat.
Suddenly John’s wife, Belinda, came running past with a huge grin on her face.
‘Great news! Great news!’ Everyone ran straight up top. ‘We’ve just spoken to the hospital in Singapore and Daz is moving his legs! Everything’s fine!’ There was a massive cheer on the boat, everyone was so happy.
Goody and I pulled our boardies on and started putting on suncream. I remember the relief of thinking, There’s no need to go to Singapore. Let’s go for a surf! I also knew that Aimee and Rossco were heading there. Less than ten minutes later we were right at the edge of the boat, ready to jump off, when we saw Belinda walking back with tears in her eyes.
She went straight to the front of the boat, so me and Goody followed. ‘We got told the wrong news,’ she said. ‘Daz is in a bad way. He’s going in for more surgery. He still doesn’t have feeling.’
A couple of minutes of joy, and then it was all down again. I went to John and said, ‘You’ve got to get me back there.’
As well as the jet-ski, we had a fast boat and a Zodiac. John said, ‘Okay, we’ll take the fast boat.’ That’s when my journey to Singapore started.
Getting across the strait to the mainland was going to take about four hours. Even through it was still pretty early, I packed a backpack and went through Dazza’s stuff a bit more, to get his wallet and other things I thought he might need.
When I announced that I was getting off the boat, Goody ran up to me with his wallet and started handing me Malaysian notes, saying, ‘Here’s all my money.’ It was his way of trying to help. Much later, Goody and the others told me that they didn’t surf much the rest of the trip. Everyone just wanted to get back home to their families.
Once I had packed, we got on the boat – me, John and one of the deckhands, with three Kit Kats and a couple bottles of water. There was no navigation gear on board; it was just a boat with an engine. I asked John, ‘How do you know where you’re going?’
He looked up and pointed, ‘See the land behind us? That’s going to disappear, and then land will appear in front of us. After that, I’ll figure out where I am on the coast and I’ll work my way back to Padang.’
The strait is a dangerous stretch of water, with lots of currents moving in different directions. I remembered an episode of that TV show I Shouldn’t Be Alive, about a guy who fell off a boat on that strait. I could easily have done the same. We had to hang off the back to go to the toilet, and it’s open ocean. We were flying along, and after a short time I looked behind and there was no land visible. I turned to look in front but there was still no land.
I called out, ‘John. There’s nothing here!’
He replied, ‘Well, it must be a hazy day or something. I dunno.’
Then, all of a sudden, the boat just stopped.
John and the deckhand tried the motor, checked the fuel tank and went through the whole set-up one part at a time. We bobbed about like a cork for about an hour. I kept thinking, We’ve got no radio contact – we’ve got nothing. We’re just sitting in the middle of this huge mass of water.
Eventually, they ended up having to rip up the boards at the bottom of the boat to find the problem: one of the fuel lines had broken. It was good to have John there, so calm and in control, because if it had only been me and the deckhand I would’ve been completely freaking out. But he got the engine started and we began moving again, and soon land appeared. John looked at the coastline for a minute before declaring, ‘I know where to go,’ and we made our way back to Padang.
When we got to John’s base, one of the ladies who does his admin was waiting for us. She had a ticket for me, but the flight wasn’t until about six o’clock that night.
I said, ‘No, no. I’ve got to go NOW.’
I just wanted to get out of Padang, whether it was to Jakarta or any of the main cities, in the hope that I could pick up a connection to Singapore quicker. I couldn’t bear the idea of having to sit in the airport for six hours while Dazza was having surgery. When we got to the airport I went to every desk, but everything was fully booked. Sitting there all that time with my mind racing was really painful. I couldn’t do anything, so I went to the Garuda office and said, ‘Look, can I book a flight from Jakarta to Singapore?’
There was one flight that night. It happened to coincide with my flight landing, which gave me a couple of hours to make the transfer. ‘Okay,’ I said, and gave the guy at the desk my credit card.
‘We don’t have credit card facilities here.’ Instead, he gave me a slip and said, ‘Take this to the office at Jakarta Airport. You’re booked on the flight; you just have to fix it up there.’
Then the board showed that my flight was delayed by an hour, so I thought, I’m just going to have to withdraw cash and pay for it. I ran back outside and went to an ATM next to the airport
. I put my card in and the machine swallowed it. I was so frustrated by that stage I just started yelling, ‘That’s fucking great!’
These guys came over and, I don’t know if they were working some kind of a scam with the ATM, but they could see how stressed I was. I told one of them what had happened and why I needed the money. He began pressing all these buttons and my card popped out.
I thought, Shit, I’m not putting it back in, even though it was the only ATM there. I would have an hour to get off the flight, buy an international ticket and then board the other flight – I might not make it. The guy who helped me get the card back was pretty cool. He lent me his phone and I rang my mum. Back in Australia, only Daz’s family knew about the accident, even though a day had passed.
Mum has known Dazza for a long time, and she broke down. There was all this emotion over the phone, but I had to cut her short so that I didn’t miss the flight.
Once I was on the plane I went through Daz’s wallet, thinking, How much has he got? I’m going to have to take his money to pay for this ticket, because there’s no way I’m going to stick my card into another ATM. But he had nothing.
When I eventually got to Jakarta Airport, Garuda Airlines were great. There was only forty minutes left before the flight, and I told them what had happened. They organised for me to pay by credit card, then put me on the plane and I got to Singapore.
It was about two in the morning when I arrived, and I caught a taxi straight to the hospital. It was about thirty-six hours after the accident, and Daz had already had surgery. When I got there no-one else was around.
They said that I could go see Daz, and I remember standing at the door. The day before, we knew he was in trouble, but he was lying there, talking away, cracking jokes. Now he’s lying there unconscious with tubes hanging out of his mouth … I broke down.
The staff told me that he wouldn’t be awake for hours. I had nowhere to go. I didn’t even know if any of Daz’s family were in Singapore, because no-one would have been able to contact me. I sat there for about two and a half hours. The staff were cool with me sitting in the room, but eventually they had to do a few things with Daz, and they asked me to go to the waiting room – that was a bit of a shock too.
The waiting room was full, not even a place on the carpet to lie on. This one lady said, ‘Come over here,’ and she made some space for me on the floor. It was a pretty sad scene, and the more you spoke to those people (over the next few weeks I’d see them every day) they would share their stories; how their kids were in this hospital because it was one of the best hospitals in Asia. There were people from Indonesia and across the region who couldn’t afford the hotels in Singapore, so instead they just slept in the waiting room.
They kept the hospital super cold, to minimise the risk of infections spreading, I guess. But all I had with me were shorts, a shirt and thongs, and it was like being in the snow. It wasn’t long before someone came and told me I could go back to the room.
Then one of the nurses said, ‘Oh, there’s a phone call for you,’
That’s pretty random, I thought.
It was Aimee. She was ringing to ask how Daz was; they must have told her I was here.
I didn’t know if anyone from back home was in Singapore yet. I had rung them from the boat but wasn’t sure if they were coming over right away, and that was the last time I’d spoken to them.
And now I was talking to Aimee, and she was just down the road.
Within minutes of that phone call, Aimee and Daz’s mum and dad were there. When they saw Daz, the general feeling was, Well, he’s alive. He’s okay. They’ve stabilised him. But we were all worried: he was bloated from the operation and looked in a really bad way.
10
Every breath you take
After surgery, the first thing I remembered was hearing Aimee say, ‘I love you, I’m here.’
I could hear her voice but I couldn’t see anything; it was as if I was unable to wake up.
I played a lot of touch footy when I was young. Once I was kneed in the back of the head and I got knocked out instantly. But I could still hear everyone as they gathered around me while I was motionless on the ground. I knew what was going on but I couldn’t wake up, couldn’t open my eyes. Back in that hotel room in Singapore, I had that same feeling.
When I finally woke, groggy from all the medication, I saw Aimee for the first time, along with Dad and Mum, in the room.
I still had IVs in me, and a trach tube down my throat. There were plenty of beeps going on from the various machines around me. Aimee hugged me for the first time in ten days, and it felt great within an otherwise shitty situation. Then the doctors entered the room to take the trach tube out of my throat and let me breathe on my own.
Pulling the tube out was pretty horrendous. I gagged and coughed, amazed by how long this thing was. It left me with a scratchy throat that felt like a thousand razor blades had had a picnic in there. Swallowing was more painful than any part of my neck – trying to talk was even harder.
As I stared out at the room, taking in my surroundings and feeling reassured by the company of my family, another familiar face walked around the corner and into the room.
Sparkesy! I yelled, but only in my head. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you still on the boat? Why aren’t you surfing? All these questions filled my head at once. I was in disbelief that one of my best mates had given up his holiday, given up his time, to come see me in hospital. I felt very fortunate to have my wife, my parents – and now one of my best mates – with me.
Surprisingly, I felt almost normal after surgery – I could even move my neck. I thought that my head would be in traction, or at least fully immobilised.
I moved my neck, and my family and Sparkesy said, ‘Don’t! Stop! Stop!’
And I croaked, ‘No, I’m fixed up now. It’s all good, it doesn’t hurt,’ blissfully unaware of how a broken neck and, in my case, severe damage to the spinal cord, had affected the rest of my body. In that first week after surgery I was still on morphine, so the ‘normal’ feeling never lasted long as I drifted in and out.
On one occasion when I had ‘come to’ and could communicate that I was aware of my surroundings, the details of the surgery were explained to me.
I had two doctors, and they were like the medical version of ‘good cop, bad cop’. One was the soft, gentle type, who could speak to you with empathy, but the other was very clinical and hard. I really liked the clinical guy, because he just told it how it was – straight talk, no bullshit. His facial expressions were rigid, whereas the other guy was fluffy around the edges. I liked Good Doc, but I’ve always preferred people like Bad Doc.
Good Doc explained how the surgeon had gone in from the front of my neck – the usual practice – but I’ve got a long neck and my neck muscles are really thick, a result of all the years paddling in the surf with my head up. In the end, they had to flip me over in the theatre and cut through the back of my neck to perform the operation, then flip me back over and tidy everything up from the front. What they thought would be a six-hour operation ended up taking ten hours. I went into surgery before Dad and Aimee had left Australia, and I was only just coming out when they arrived.
One major problem was my lungs. I had taken on a lot of fluid during the accident and, having been on my back ever since, my lungs were collapsing. There wasn’t enough time to drain the fluid and then move on to building their capacity back up, so both steps had to be done at the same time. As all of this was being discussed, the post-op medication would sometimes get hold of me and I’d drift away. The people in the room must have thought that I had fallen asleep, but that wasn’t always the case.
Aimee was sitting on the bed and I could hear the whole conversation, Good Doc telling her and my parents how my lungs were still full of water and mucus, and my breathing was rapidly getting shallower and shallower. He explained that I’d have to wear a mask for up to twenty hours a day, even while I was sleeping, to help push ai
r in and suck air out, otherwise I’d eventually need help breathing – or stop breathing altogether.
Good Doc brought in this ventilation device called a BiPAP mask. I woke up while he was still in the room and said, ‘Yep. Just do it.’ My family and the doctor looked surprised, unaware that I had been in on the conversation the whole time. The mask ran all the way around your face, along your hairline and under your chin. I thought, I’ve got to wear that? But I had no option, I had to do it. The initial plan was to have it on for four hours, with a one-hour break in between.
When they first put the mask on, it was like entering a new world. I felt super claustrophobic. I could hardly hear anyone – all I could hear was my own breathing, sounding like Darth Vader. Because it covered my ears as well, everything was amplified, so my voice was really loud to me, but no-one else could hear me well when I tried to speak. And that was just testing the mask. How would I do this twenty hours a day? How would I ever go to sleep?
I’ll never forget that mask – or should I say helmet – but I knew the longer I had it on the sooner I’d be home with Bowie. I just went for it and kept it on as much as I could. I didn’t sleep at all the first night. My nose was touching the perspex, so I was in a constant battle to suppress the claustrophobia.
Trying to control the panic was taking its toll but, when I felt like giving up, the thing that kept me going was wanting to speak to Bowie. Even though she was just over a year old, we put the call through to Australia and I managed to hear her on the phone. She probably couldn’t hear me because I could only whisper and it was a real strain to talk. Even though she wasn’t really talking, just hearing her voice and the sounds she’d make was a massive boost. I had to get home to look after her and Aimee, any way I could.
‘We need to drain the fluid out of your lungs,’ Good Doc said.
‘How are you going to do that?’ I asked.
‘Well, the first thing we have to do is “assisted coughing” …’
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 8