When word got back to us that he wanted to host a benefit night and was asking for our permission, we all had a chuckle. I love Steve to death, but he’s the most unorganised person in the world. He’s in sales and has the gift of the gab, but he runs a controlled chaos.
Conti’s always been like that. Whenever we’d go pick him up for a surf we’d tell him beforehand, ‘Righto. We’ll be there at seven o’clock.’ Then we’d get there at seven and he’d still be in bed. He’d wake up, come running out to the car and then stop suddenly. ‘Oh shit, I forgot my board.’
‘Are you serious?’
He’d run back inside and get his board, and then it’d be, ‘Oh shit, I forgot my wetsuit!’
By the time we got to the surf it would be eight o’clock and the wind had got up and the waves were crap.
‘Yeah, you can do it!’ we said to Conti, wondering what the benefit was going to be like, but he rustled up the troops and all my old friends chipped in. In no time he had a team of about twenty working on it.
Conti’s also a brilliant photographer, especially back in the day when it was more of an art and you had to shoot with film. He’s got these magnificent photos, but they’re hidden among stacks of contact sheets in his garage. After a good session in the water, you’d say, ‘Hey, did you get that shot of me?’ and he’d reply, ‘Yeah, I got it.’ But nobody knows where it is because it’s in that haystack in the garage.
I was constantly getting updates from Conti, and soon I was sending emails to everyone I knew, telling them that I was in Singapore. But then everyone started ringing our phone, and because of international roaming fees, we were getting charged for it. We ended up getting a bill from Telstra for more than five thousand dollars. We tried to appeal, explaining what had happened and that we hadn’t known we were going to get charged, but they still made us pay in the end. I never used them again.
Once we realised what was happening, I got a second phone in Singapore. Everyone could call that, but it was back when receiving a call from another country meant you were using minutes too, and I went through so much credit, but I always kept it there to talk to Dyl and anyone else.
Back home, there was a lot of talk about my accident. Dad got involved when the Illawarra Mercury wanted to write an article, and Mum kept an eye on what was in the news.
Dad used to get the Straits Times, an English-language newspaper based in Singapore, every day as well. The Premier League season had just finished and the Euros were about to start. Arsenal had just signed Tomáš Rosický, a highly rated Czech player, and Dad was giving me daily news updates. I’d pretend I wasn’t interested, and then one day he didn’t bring the paper in. Eventually I had to ask, ‘Well, what’s the news today?’ Following football was a way of connecting to something familiar.
During the next week, John, Belinda and Finn from the Barrenjoey were between charters and came to visit us for a while; it was good to see them. They even gave us our money back – an envelope full of Singapore dollars. Sparkes and I both said straightaway, ‘Nuh. We don’t want it.’
But John was adamant: ‘Look, when we do these charters, we want you to have the trip of your life. And this wasn’t the trip of your life, so we insist you take your money back.’
I replied, ‘We were having the trip of our lives before the accident.’ There were good waves, a good bunch of guys – everything had been perfect. It was my fault that this had happened – no-one else’s – and I felt guilty that I had ruined everyone’s trip. Accepting the money was very hard.
That was when John told us the rest of the story about Michael. The authorities had picked him up quickly after I had been loaded into the medevac. His helicopter was unregistered, so he was flying illegally. The chopper had been impounded and Michael was probably going to be arrested. John knows things. He’s been out in that part of the world for a long time, and he’s had a lot of dealings with the authorities.
‘That’s just not right,’ I said.
Much later, a mate of mine tried to sort things out for Michael. He asked me to get involved to help get the helicopter released, but even Michael said no. ‘The last thing I need is media exposure,’ he said. ‘That’s how things happen over here. If you keep the media away from it, you’ve got a good chance to sort things out locally. Once they get onto it, you’re done.’ So it all had to be very hush-hush.
John paid the bail to have Michael released, but the authorities kept Michael’s chopper. They still had it twelve months later, because they refused to believe that it had been an emergency rescue.
Within that first week, after I was more with it, the physiotherapists and doctors were constantly assessing what I could and couldn’t move. They were forever playing with my fingers, hands and arms. When they were doing the assessment, I could feel some movement in my arms, especially my biceps, but they zoned in on my triceps, and I couldn’t understand why. They detected that I had a flicker of movement in my triceps, but it was probably as little as you could have at that time. Still, they were encouraged that those muscles could be triggered.
There was a funny point where I was lying in bed and they held my arm straight up, and then let it go. I needed to engage my tricep to hold it up. No matter how hard I tried, I didn’t have enough strength. Every time, my arm would come down and slap me on the forehead, so that was my party trick for the next week. It was a way of throwing in some humour to mask the real fight happening beneath the surface.
I’d been lying on my back for so long, facing the ceiling and only being able to see a bit of the room at a time as I was rotated from side to side every few hours, that eventually they decided it was time to start gradually tilting the bed up. They were worried about my blood pressure and my lungs after I’d been prostrate for so long.
I was still doing my exercises, and then one day they brought in a wheelchair. Things were moving really fast. How would they get me in that chair? I was able to sit up in bed at a forty-five-degree angle so they could all lift me onto a sheet and carry me to the wheelchair, which was tilted back in a reclined position. I didn’t really know what was going on, but they held me and I felt super secure. Once I got in the wheelchair, they slowly raised the backrest until I was up to the same forty-five degree angle as the bed. It was a big light-bulb moment – I suddenly had a totally different perspective on the world, or at least the room I was in. I could see things that had been hidden behind my head for so long. There was even a window with a view out onto lush tropical jungle.
‘That’s been there the whole time?’ I asked.
Everyone laughed, but up until then all I could see were the white walls. It was an interesting change, and it took me half an hour just to take in my surroundings. Suddenly I started to feel woozy, and I collapsed onto my chest. My blood pressure had got the better of me, being the first time I had sat up fully. The next thing I knew I was on my back again, lying in the chair, wondering how I ended up there. They explained the blood pressure situation, how the muscles weren’t pushing the blood around my body. I’d been lying down for so long that once I sat up all the blood drained from my head. Then they slowly sat me up again, but this time I had to drink lots of water and get myself moving.
Yoda the physio was in again, and she kept saying, ‘Run you must. Run you must.’ So there I was: I hadn’t moved for three weeks and now they wanted me to sit up and do the ‘running’ exercise, which involved pumping my arms back and forth. I could feel myself going through a couple of movements, and I used up my energy quickly. Soon I had nothing left. They were monitoring my blood pressure, and when it went down they would lay me back again.
I’d been lying there for a while when Dad touched my leg. He was the one who found it the hardest to process my injury, especially the way a half-centimetre gap in my spinal cord could affect my whole body. He was touching my legs and talking about them when I got my first spasm; my whole leg reacted. My knee came up, and it was the first movement I’d felt. ‘Holy shit!’ I said. ‘Wh
at was that?’
‘Your leg moved!’ Dad said. ‘Oh my God, you’re starting to move!’
He called the doctors in but even they and the physios couldn’t explain what was happening. Everyone had this mindset that if my leg moved I must have been getting better. It wasn’t until much later that they would understand it was just an involuntary movement, an uncontrolled reflex.
For the next week I was in and out of the chair every day until I could get my body to recalibrate and sit up properly while keeping my blood pressure at a manageable rate. It made a big difference to talking.
I probably stayed in the chair for two hours at a time, but if I didn’t drink enough I had to go lie back down into bed. I tried to get my body more used to being upright, and as my lungs were improving each day I was able to tolerate it a bit more.
I had to do daily exercises too, and it was hard work. I’d lost all of my muscle strength, so even trying to move my arms in a cycle fashion would only last about ten to fifteen seconds before I was pooped and they had to lay me back down.
13
I feel like going home
For the first fortnight after the surgery I had been on fluids and then purees. Eating was also very tough as my esophagus was slightly damaged after the surgery, which made swallowing solids painful. I still remember when they said I could start solids. I’ve always been a big meat eater. Dad went out to find me something that wasn’t hospital food – this was about seven to ten days after the accident – but they wouldn’t let me sit up beyond a certain angle, and it’s hard to eat when you’re lying down. Dad was cutting up a chicken sandwich and feeding it to me when a bit of meat lodged in my windpipe and I began to choke.
Mum and Dad started freaking out because the normal reaction is to hit a choking person on the back, but they were worried about my neck. I worked myself into a real panic, and they didn’t know whether to put my bed up or not. They were pressing buttons and the bed was moving, and the whole time I was turning blue, no air getting in or out. This was my first post-op experience with solids, and I thought, I’m gonna die! All the nurses raced in and began jumping on my chest, making me cough until I managed to spit the chicken out.
Mostly things weren’t that exciting in the hospital. There was a lot of downtime, and I learned about patience. We’d watch movies, or just talk, trying to keep the emotional turmoil at bay.
In addition to missing Bowie, another big reason to want to return home was the business. We had bills to pay and the shop was our livelihood. Aimee and I were owner–operators, so we had a couple of casual staff and a new manager, Garth, who was learning the ropes, even though he had been in the industry for a while. With Aimee and me out of the equation because of the accident, he was in the deep end.
A team was rustled up to help keep the business going, and the staff played a big part, putting in a lot more time and effort. My brother-in-law, David, was back home organising everything. He’s super logical and practical, and he gets things done, so I had full trust in him. He enlisted the help of a couple of other good surf retailers. In my past role as a sales rep with Billabong, I’d developed a great relationship with other retailers up and down the coast, including a couple I count as mentors, like my close mate Macca from Port Macquarie and Kent from Ulladulla. Macca and I had formed an Australian industry group along with Greenie just the year before. Aimee had rung him as soon as she’d found out about the accident.
Other experienced retailers and industry folk had also heard about my accident almost straightaway, so the call went out and everyone wanted to chip in to ease the workload that my staff was under. They set a plan for the day-to-day duties, along with addressing the big-picture issues. Garth put in a lot of hours and did an unreal job finding his feet. Their dedication was something I’ll never forget.
All that organisation was going on in the background, so Aimee and I didn’t have to worry. It was like that with Bowie as well – she was getting passed around the family. There was a roster set up with who was looking after her and when, because we ended up being away for four weeks.
I could still only whisper one sentence at a time before I had to take a few deep breaths and recover, so Aimee was dealing with the communication back home. I was still aware of everything that was going on with the business, though. I was constantly getting updates and information on the daily events and how the shop performed. We’d only had the shop for about three years, and I’d been there from seven o’clock in the morning to seven at night, doing everything. It’s not that I’m a control freak, it’s just that I would rather trust myself. If something goes wrong, it will be all on me. I was trying to do everything to the point where I found myself not being able to go away – I was scared the whole business would fall on its face. So, going on the trip to Indonesia was a big deal, not only leaving my family but leaving the business as well.
Aimee and I could always keep in contact by email while I was away, and she could phone the guys in the shop to see how things were running. Everything seemed to be going well enough, so in a sense it was quite funny: I was forced to leave the business completely in order to realise, Oh man, it can still run – maybe not as well, because nobody’s putting in the hours that I am – but at least it hasn’t fallen flat on its face.
Once I had improved my lung capacity, I was in pretty good spirits most of the time – I still thought that everything was going to be okay. I knew I was paralysed, but my mindset was, It’ll all come good once I’m back in Australia. But doubts were beginning to creep into my head.
About a week into being awake, I said jokingly, ‘At least more people break their necks these days, so the doctors know what they’re doing and they’re getting better outcomes.’
Bad Doc was in the room at the time, and he swivelled sharply, looking at me with his cold eye, as if to say, Mate, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Something triggered in my head, and I thought, That didn’t look too encouraging.
I felt fine apart from not being able to move or feel anything. I was expecting my neck to be in traction, but it felt all right. I could move it around. I didn’t feel ill; I wasn’t in pain. My glass was half full: This is working out. I’ll get over this easily. I started getting excited about going back to Australia.
My family was more aware of the nature of my injury than I was at the time because they had spoken to the doctors. I think they just didn’t want to tell me the full story. I’ve always been a strong character in the eyes of my friends and family: I could deal with things. I don’t get too emotional. I just like to get stuff done. My dad said later that if the accident had happened to my brother or sister it would have been ‘shut the gate’.
But it’s hard to say how much they understood. It was all so new that everyone was just going along for the ride, processing stuff at their own pace.
I was still oblivious to the fact that I had a catheter in me, and even though the staff were rolling me to prevent bedsores, I was also opening up my bowels in bed – not much, since I wasn’t really eating – and they were cleaning me up. I was obviously in a very bad way, but it didn’t sink into my head for a couple of weeks.
Sparkes: It was really sad at times. Dazza had his own room, which was all glass doors in the front with Daz’s bed at the back. Sometimes the staff would come in and close the blinds. That meant someone had died and they needed to wheel the body past the room. That was the worst part, and it happened a lot because we were in intensive care.
There were other times when the staff would say to me, ‘You’ve got to leave,’ and I’d go into the waiting room.
There were people who’d been sitting there day in, day out, for weeks. The worst part was that Singapore’s not a cheap place, and these people couldn’t afford to eat. I met this older lady in the waiting room, and we spent a lot of time together, talking about why we were there. We became pretty good friends. Her son had some kind of infection, and he’d been brought to Singapore from Indonesia. One day I saw her
in the corridor, and she came up and gave me a cuddle. ‘I’m going home now,’ she said. ‘I hope Dazza’s all right. I hope he recovers.’
I said, ‘Oh, you’re going home – that’s good. Is your son better, then?’
‘Ah, no,’ she said. ‘He died an hour ago. We’re packing our stuff up now and then we’re heading home.’
It was heartbreaking. Obviously, she was in shock, but she was still saying that she hoped Daz was all right.
Then one day the call came in that they were proposing a date, in four or five days’ time, for me to travel back to Australia. I felt a huge burst of excitement.
It’s happening.
It’s happening.
But there was one catch: my lungs had to be better before I would be allowed to fly. The spirometer wasn’t going that great, and I was sort of fudging it, saying I was fine. The mask had gone, so I was working hard, constantly exercising my lungs.
The flights were booked; everything was organised by the travel insurance company, but then after about a day or so my family had their meeting with the doctors.
‘No. We can’t release him,’ the doctors said.
They came back and told me, and I felt more disappointed and depressed than I ever had in my whole life. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t letting me go – I felt good.
At that point I gave up. ‘Fuck this,’ I said, throwing my hands up. ‘What am I working for? I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do, and now you’re just shutting me down?’ I felt like I’d fallen into a massive hole. It broke my heart, and Aimee was upset as well.
I don’t know how long I was depressed like that – a day or two – but I kept looking at Mick’s photo, the bolt of lightning touching his finger, and at all the messages of love and support that covered the walls. I pictured my little girl and something sparked in my head: Fuck you guys. I’ll show you. And I got stuck in and worked harder and harder. I changed my mindset and pushed on for another six days or so. Gradually, I managed to move that bubble in the spirometer up until it finally hit the mark that I needed to be allowed to fly. Then the call came in: ‘Right, we’re planning on this date. We’re going.’
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 10