Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up

by H. M. Bouwman

  ‘But the big goal is for you to play with Bowie and help her as much as you can.’

  That was the best incentive anyone could have given me, and Dave understood just how important it was. Instead of focussing on everything I couldn’t do, I found myself enjoying my time with Bowie and learning about all the things I could still do.

  I had gone through this whole thought process when I was stuck in the jungle. Once I’d decided that I wasn’t going to die, I knew I had to get home and look after my family – anything beyond that would be a bonus. And that’s how I felt every minute I spent with Bowie.

  Whenever Bowie was around, Dave got me to sit down with her at the table and play games, which she really enjoyed. She was new to games, since she had only just started walking and talking. This was the highlight of my days by far. We would do simple things, like try to pick up marbles and play Pick-up Sticks or Connect Four.

  They were really mundane games, but they required me to try to handle small objects, hold them and then set them in place.

  It was a bit shocking to start with, the fact that an eighteen-month-old toddler was actually beating me at everything. It took all my concentration. I can’t describe just how hard it is to pick up a marble when you have no movement in your fingers. I just couldn’t do it at first, so one of the first things Dave taught me was how I could manipulate my wrist to grip objects.

  Because of the level of my spinal cord injury, I have basically lost all muscle control from my forearm, as well as the tendons from my joints, which power my fingers and part of my wrist. But I still have full use of the muscle at the top of my forearm, which moves my wrist upward. I can cause my fingers to close to my palm in a type of grip called a tenodesis grasp, so the next step was learning to manipulate my fingers into position to close around an object I wanted to pick up.

  I spent the next week relearning all these basic fine motor skills. This was a big step for me, because up until then I hadn’t been able to hold or do anything with my hands. I really enjoyed OT; it offered me the technical, practical aspects of learning, rather than just the basic physio routines of exercise and muscle healing.

  Dave also told me early on that it was important to keep my fingers flexible. In a lot of cases, people’s joints and knuckles stiffen up after SCI, to the point where they can’t do much with them. If your fingers are supple enough, you can manipulate them a lot more and make them more useful.

  To help with this, Dave made splints for my hands. They kept my fingers straight at night while I was sleeping to stop the natural curl they would lock into over time if not stretched. But that didn’t last long, because I hated lying in bed with two big paddles underneath my palms, my fingers stretched out on them like sausages in a butcher’s shop. Even though I couldn’t move my fingers, those devices made me feel even more handicapped, especially since I was learning to pick up a plastic cup of water. That was impossible with the splints on.

  After a few nights, I asked Dave if there was anything else I could do instead. The alternative was to keep playing with my fingers in order for the joints to remain supple and limber, so I focussed on this exercise and tried to turn it into a habit. It worked, and I still do it to this day, so that I can manipulate them to pick things up.

  Learning to use the computer was high on my list that week, too. Then I could lie in bed with my laptop. But with no finger movement it was almost impossible at that stage; I was fumbling all over the keyboard, hitting several keys at once.

  I mentioned this to Dave and he fashioned a long finger splint for each hand. They were made of moulded plastic and fitted onto my index and middle finger on each hand, forming two big talons. Rubber tips were fitted onto the ends, which allowed me to hit the keys on the keyboard from a distance. When he brought them in to me, I thought they looked really funny, but they slipped on easily and I was away. Suddenly I was able to communicate with the guys at the shop and reply to all the personal emails I was receiving, which was a massive boost. Messages began coming directly to me now, and I didn’t have to rely on Aimee or somebody else having to type.

  From then on, the OT sessions were really eye-opening, giving me a glimpse of possibilities that I hadn’t thought of. Dave was a really good teacher because he thought differently about what I could do. He understood where I was coming from, that I wanted to learn skills I could use straightaway, as well as training for something in the future. He worked out some cool exercises along the way, and I was learning all the time.

  After being on bed rest for so long, I just wanted to move around and explore. Although I lived in a powerchair for the first three weeks, whenever I came to physio they hoisted me out of it and into the manual wheelchair to work on my arms, since you are a lot freer, so that was part of the routine at the start. It was a very difficult, sluggish chair to push; it was like resistance training.

  Most of the patients around me who were a similar level stayed in powerchairs, but I was determined to get into a manual chair – and stay there – as soon as possible. Even though the powerchair was more mobile, it made me feel trapped and more handicapped. I saw the paraplegics in the hospital wheeling around pretty quickly, some even doing wheelies, while I was stuck in a powerchair. All I kept thinking was, Yeah, I’m going to get there.

  During one of the first conversations I had with Dave, I said, ‘I’m glad I’m not quadriplegic. I’m lucky to be a para,’ thinking my arms had saved me.

  He looked at me and said bluntly, ‘No. You’re quadriplegic, mate.’ He explained that quadriplegic meant my four limbs were affected. Even though I could move my arms, they were partially paralysed.

  I felt really deflated, but after thinking about it for a few minutes, I thought, No. I might be a quadriplegic, but I can still do all this stuff. That’s an extra badge I can wear and be proud of.

  There was joke that went around the ward, and I think it partly came from the staff, because they were dealing with this ward every day: ‘Paraplegics want a million things, but quadriplegics want just one – to be a paraplegic.’

  It was really striking in my case because I have use of my arms but not my fingers, so it was a constant battle. My arms were almost redundant. I could use them to move my hands over an object to pick it up but, without working fingers, what’s the bloody point?

  Even though I was quadriplegic, I was still determined to get to the manual chair. Half of my physio sessions were based on me pushing around the gym. To strengthen my shoulders, biceps and triceps, I was hoisted onto a plinth where I would lay on my back and use hand weights. Obviously, I had no grip, so I couldn’t hang on to the weights. To get around this, the physios strapped neoprene mitts onto my wrists. There was a strap that ran over my hand, with velcro to hold my fingers closed, keeping a ‘grip’ on the hand weights, which only weighed about one or two kilos to start with, but I felt like I was lifting a car.

  I knew I had to do it, though. I had to build up my strength, because the ultimate goal was to be as independent as possible. If I could do transfers on my own, I could go anywhere.

  20

  Little brother

  I had an influx of family over that first week in hospital. Dylan was living in Queensland, so once I got to North Shore he came down to see me on his own. He’s a very emotional guy, almost the opposite of me, and he broke down as soon as he saw the state I was in. He stayed for a week and came to all the rehab sessions with me. He would hover like everyone else, trying to help, but there wasn’t much anyone could do but observe.

  We’re not the kind of brothers who cuddle each other or have an overly sentimental connection, but we’re still really close and have fun together, bantering all the time. It was good to see him, and we joked about how we’re both good surfers, but I was always the sensible brother – why weren’t the roles reversed here? It was Dylan’s surfing career that had taken him into crazier, riskier directions. He had evolved from one of the country’s top juniors, into a renowned free-surfer with a reputati
on for being very comfortable in big, juicy waves.

  Around the time I broke my neck, he was getting towed into what I thought were these really stupid waves. The Hawaiian guys were known for surfing ridiculously huge ones, but Dyl focussed on the real chunky, thick, slabby type, which are probably even more dangerous. He was one of the top Australians on the scene.

  Dylan is usually following weather maps, something we were taught by our dad, who showed us how to observe storms, looking for where the next swell would come. But Dyl was super-focussed on Tahiti. He’d been going there for ages. I remember it was the destination for one of his first sponsored trips, before the island became well known and the media jumped on it. When I saw the photos from that trip, I was in total awe of just how different the wave was. Dyl was one of a small group of guys to first give it a really good go. That was in the mid ’90s, when he was only nineteen. Teahupo’o was the wave at the time – the new forefront.

  There was one day in Tahiti where all the elements came together and produced some of the most unprecedented, dangerous waves ever recorded – what would become known in surf lore as ‘Code Red’ day. The base of the wave was sucking below sea level because there was so much water moving with such force and violently smashing the reef, providing big, dark, thick heavy barrels.

  Guys like Dylan were towed behind a jet-ski into the chaos and tried to shoot the tube from deep and come out the other side before it exploded and enveloped them, pushing each other to get deeper than the last wave. There are days that change surfing and set a new benchmark. The Code Red swell in Tahiti on 27 August 2011 was one of those days. I had stopped travelling with Dyl four or five years before my accident, because he gave me heart attacks with some of the waves he’d take off on.

  When I was working at Billabong, they were his major sponsor. We had a running joke that I was selling all these board shorts so that Billabong could pay him good money to go surf. I always used to bring it up, so maybe subconsciously I really was a bit pissed off at the different directions our careers had taken.

  Dyl’s a bit of a gypsy as well. He’d live in Queensland for a bit, then come back down south for a bit. Then he’d be off on a surf trip every few weeks. He’d get the call, ‘Okay, we’re going to Indo,’ or ‘We’re going to Hawaii.’

  But when he was home we’d surf together all the time. He’s my little brother, so I’d keep him in line and get the waves over him (or at least try to). Then he got into surfing these massive waves. I like surfing big waves, too, but I knew my limits and the waves I could or couldn’t make. Dyl just didn’t have that switch in his head. He’d go on anything.

  A wave would come through, and it would be big, but you could clearly see it was going to close out. He would still go and pull into a crazy close-out tube. I would ask him, ‘Why in the hell are you doing this type of stuff?’ I wanted to understand, but he would say, forever the optimist, ‘I always think I’m going to get the best wave of my life, you know?’

  I thought about it and replied, ‘Yeah, I get that, but I know when it’s not going to happen.’ It probably goes back to how I always like to set achievable goals.

  With Dyl thinking that way and taking off on everything, he would make an unbelievable wave less than half the time, but he’d get that incredible joy of sometimes pulling off the seemingly impossible. The price he paid was getting absolutely worked in between those moments. But he never got frustrated. He always popped up with a smile on his face, determined to make the next wave. I’d just be shaking my head in disbelief.

  I understand why he got into the big-wave surfing, because I’d grown up with him. Once he started surfing, he had no fear in the water. It was all natural to him. I’ve tried to think the way he thinks when he’s paddling into a sketchy wave, but my sensible switch is too strong, and self-preservation takes over. I felt a little envious of his fearlessness, until I’d see him go down hard and get smashed.

  For those first few years when he was doing that crazy shit, I understood. But as we got older I found it harder to comprehend, especially when he became a dad. Sometimes it was a struggle watching him. I felt dread in my bones whenever he paddled in, because I could read the waves as well as I could read him.

  I was out in the water with him one time, surfing at a local spot that sometimes gets really big and heavy. There was another surfer out there at the same time, a tour surfer from the area called Mick Lowe, who was around our age and known as a fearless surfer himself. Even he questioned Dylan after watching him take a few poundings. ‘God, Dyl, what are you doing? You’ve got a family to think of, you know?’

  I felt vindicated having someone else say what I’d been saying for twenty-odd fucking years …

  So as Dyl and I talked more and more while I was in hospital rehab, I was thinking, You’re the one doing all this crazy shit, and I’m the one who ends up like this? I’m on a four or five-foot wave; you’re surfing twenty-foot, thick waves … This is what becomes of me, and you’re freewheeling around unscathed?

  I also wondered whether this would change things. Would he baulk now, knowing that his brother’s a quadriplegic because of a surfing accident, doing something he had done a million times before? Would it make him second-guess what he was doing? Would he think how easily something could go wrong?

  I thought about these questions over and over again. Being his older brother, I still wanted to protect him. It’s exhilarating and fills me with pride seeing him all over the media, making these heavy waves and winning awards, but they don’t play the wipe-outs. I know the wipe-outs; I hear about the bad ones.

  I probably wanted to be more protective now: ‘Why are you doing this? Just don’t go after the obvious crazy ones. Be a bit smarter …’

  He would always reply with, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ And it became clear quite quickly that me being in wheelchair talking to him wouldn’t change things. He would keep doing what he’d been doing since childhood – pushing the limits. But I also have a sense of pride in knowing he would be pushing those limits with or without the cameras. It’s just him. I think everyone in surfing who has come into contact with Dyl would describe him as incredibly humble and grounded.

  His profile could have been a lot higher if he had that self-promotion instinct, but there is no ego in what he does. He’s in love with surfing, like me. But he gets extra excited when things get serious in the water.

  He usually tells me every time he gets that call to go surf big, stupid waves, and I just shake my head. I wonder if this will be the time …

  And something did happen a bit further down the line that wasn’t too different to my accident.

  Dylan was flying on one of these big barrels in Tahiti. When there’s lots of water movement and you’re going so fast, hitting the water is like hitting concrete. Then you have to think about the reef that’s not too far beneath the surface. Dyl was thrown off a wave and landed headfirst. His arms instantly went dead and tingly, meaning he had probably suffered some sort of compression in his neck and pinched a nerve. It might have just been whiplash, but guys had to come and get him on the jet-ski, and he couldn’t feel his arm. It was paralysed for a little while after that.

  When he told me after the session, I tried to explain how close he might have come to a permanent injury, but that didn’t stop him. He kept going, still with the sensible switch in the off mode.

  Growing up, he was the one who’d always get injured, needing stitches in his leg or blowing out his knee. He cut himself a hell of a lot – and I mean bad cuts. Taking the crazy waves or trying radical airs or big moves eventually leads to some dangerous situations. He’d also break boards along with his injuries. I didn’t mind, because when he needed a new board I’d get one as well!

  Once, when we were in Dapto, he was measuring up a pool for a pool mat with Dad. He was walking backwards and fell off a big step, landing on a tile that punctured his back. The corner went in right next to his spine. I was on the squash court at the time, and Dad c
ame in, freaking out. Luckily, there was a doctor nearby who came running over, and Dad said, ‘Please. Get an ambulance. There’s this massive hole in his back. I can stick my finger in there!’

  Dylan got stitched up and was okay, but the doctor said how lucky he was, given how close to his spine the tile had come. Who knows what could have happened?

  It got to the point where the stress was impacting on my experience. It was partly because I am the big brother. If I were travelling with a mate, I probably would have laughed, because everyone else was laughing. I guess you’ve got to have that combination of confidence and recklessness to do what he does.

  When you’re paddling in for a wave, you build up this anticipation and fear, and all these emotions come at you in the click of a finger and decisions need to be made. It’s at that point when your instinct kicks in, just through experience. It’s not that you’ve planned out a wave – you’re reading the wave the whole time. You don’t know what you’re going to do next.

  Once Dyl starts paddling, he’s committed. He never thinks, Oh, I don’t know if I can make that.

  Whereas I’d be thinking, I’m going to get the biggest flogging of my life. So, I would pull back – most people would – but there’s that tiny percentage of surfers who just go. Those are the people who surf the monsters.

  Most big-wave surfers are older guys, because surfing is a progressive journey and they have all the experience. Most of them have come through some kind of competitive surfing background. Then you have the nutters who catch anything without any fear whatsoever. These guys are out there doing it well into their forties, even older.

  As a surfer, you’re always trying to push yourself with new things. Even though I wasn’t competing I still surfed every day, and every single surf, whether it was one-foot or ten-foot high, I’d try to push myself. So, for guys like Dylan, monster waves are just the next level.