When the Dust Settles

by Cook, R

  ‘What’s wrong with that drink?’ asked Mum curiously. ‘It made this little fella crook.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Dad, immediately covering his face with his hands.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked suspiciously.

  Dad was still chuckling at the funny side of what had happened, but I was yet to be included in the joke. Once Sarah and I were told of the mix-up, I felt terrible. My poor little boy was still spitting and the only thing I could do was give him a lesson on why he should never pick up random bottles and drink from them.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Dad, hoping I would see the humour of it.

  ‘Just throw the bloody thing away,’ I said, concerned.

  The day was over with most of the grandstand empty, so he just kicked the bottle down to the bottom with the rest of the rubbish. It took a while before I could look back and laugh about that day, but it will be a good story to tell for his twenty-first birthday.

  After months of treatment with the physio, exercise after exercise, I didn’t gain more movement in my arm as such, however I did significantly strengthen the one bicep muscle I had control over. I was able to lift it slightly, move it back and forth and from side to side, but in order for me to move that muscle, I had to be looking at my arm to give it direction. If I was looking away or there was a rug covering my arm, then I couldn’t control it and I didn’t know what to do to make it work. To me, it was a strange phenomenon. Often the success I had in moving the muscle would depend heavily on the environment, such as the temperature or what I’d been eating, or if I was tired from a late night. I also discovered if I wasn’t sitting in the perfect position then I wouldn’t be able to get the response I needed. After months of hard work I finally had enough strength and movement to operate a modified joystick, so I was able to buy a Magic Mobility chair, just like the one Angus had. It was another step up that would change my life as a quadriplegic for the better. The chair had four big wheels, with a custom-made back rest and seat base to suit my body. Even small tasks of climbing a street gutter were no challenge as it easily clawed its way up without tipping over. I could go wherever I needed to, through mud or across rocky ground. It was a massive improvement to my mobility and kept me motivated to give it a go back at the station, although I continued to use the town chair mostly around Adelaide.

  As was a Cook family tradition, Sunday mornings were spent at church. Mum and Dad had been attending the St Pius X Catholic Church while they were in Adelaide with the diocesan priest, Father Leo Misfud. He was a lovely man who kept our family in his prayers and would always be keen to have a chat after the service. The very first time I attended mass since the accident, in his sermon Father Misfud told the Bible story of the crippled man who was lowered through the roof of a house by four friends so Jesus could heal him. The crowds that had gathered around the house were so large that going through the roof was the only option that remained to the men who were desperate to have their friend healed. Once inside Jesus forgave the cripple’s sins and he was able to walk again. Belief in Jesus Christ has always played some part in my life, but perhaps those months lying helpless on the bed, struggling to stay alive and completely paralysed from the neck down, brought me closer to God. I certainly pray in thanks more often for the good things in my life, and hearing Father Misfud’s story brought a tear to my eye. While I was not able to walk again like the cripple was, strength had grown within me to keep moving forward and, just like the cripple, I was lucky to have family around to help me do it.

  There was one particular Sunday, a week after Easter 2009, that I was looking forward to more than others. One of my favourite rugby league teams, the Queensland Cowboys, were playing a feature match in Adelaide against the Cronulla Sharks. I had never seen a first-grade match live before and was keen to share the experience with my boys. Instead of relying on taxis to get to church, we would often walk the 1.5 kilometres from the house. When the novelty wore off, it was quicker for me to go on my own and the rest of the family to drive the car. Sometimes Braxton would even ride with me, standing in front on the foot plates, with my phone in his hands and Sarah’s number on speed-dial should something go wrong. Thankfully, nothing ever did go wrong – until the day of the rugby league game. Braxton and I had scooted along to church without drama, and I knew we’d have to leave straight after if we were to make it to the game in time for kick-off.

  ‘I’m going to head home,’ I told Dad, who was chatting to some friends outside the church afterwards. ‘Sarah has booked a taxi to pick us up at home to get to the game so I’ll be ready to go once you get there.’

  ‘OK,’ he replied. ‘We’ll be along behind you in a few minutes.’

  So I began motoring home, leaving Braxton with Dad. Sometimes I’d use the footpath and other times I’d use the road, depending on the amount of traffic. This time I chose to use the bicycle lane on the two-lane road, as it seemed to be the smoothest run. As I got about halfway back to the house, a Commodore began swerving over towards me, with two wheels in the bike lane. I quickly began trying to move my head from side to side so the driver could see me but still the car crept further and further over into the bike lane. Taking evasive action, I moved closer to the gutter, but just as I did one of the small castor wheels on the town chair bogged into the uneven surface. The chair came to a screaming halt, and I shot headlong onto the gravel nature strip separating the footpath and the main road. I wasn’t wearing my chest strap, so my body easily went forward out of the chair on impact. My face took much of the impact, skidding along the gravel until I was left in a crumpled heap, with my head bent forward under my chest. I could only see back behind me to the road through a small gap between my legs. Immediately I began to worry that my wheelchair may well have rolled in front of traffic until I watched vehicle after vehicle pass by without stopping. My next concern was a pebble of gravel in my left eyeball that was irritating me. I kept trying to blink and widen my eyelids to make the eyes water, until eventually, after it looked like I was crying, the small rock dislodged and fell out. A few minutes had passed by as I lay buckled on the ground before I heard the voice of an Italian lady.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied casually.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked concerned. ‘Have you broken anything?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a broken neck,’ I said with a sigh.

  To my surprise the woman started screaming in horror, which in hindsight, may have been an appropriate response.

  ‘I’m calling the ambulance,’ she said, as I heard her move away to her house, which was adjacent.

  ‘Hang on, don’t ring any bastard,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Well, what do you want me to do,’ she asked.

  ‘Could you please get me a pillow?’ I replied.

  I heard the lady disappear inside the house for a minute before returning with a pillow and placing it next to my head.

  ‘There you go,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I can’t move any part of my body,’ I said. ‘Could you lift my head up and put the pillow under it?’

  While she was doing that, I could hear the distinct noise of Dad’s old diesel Toyota coming over the hill. He must have seen me, as the vehicle screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, in my line of sight. Mum and Dad ran over to me thinking I’d been hit by a car. Together they lifted me back to a sitting position on the pillow with my feet in the gutter, where my trusty wheelchair sat, bogged. I didn’t want an ambulance to come because I’d have to be taken to hospital, probably kept in overnight and it would have wrecked my weekend. I thought if something was broken we’d be bound to find out eventually. Looking up to see a cyclist on the road Mum whistled at him.

  ‘Hey, come and help us lift this bloke,’ she yelled out, and the man made his way over.

  ‘You probably need one more person,’ I said.

  Dad walked in front of traffic to wave down a driver to help also. The four of them
were then able to lift me back into the wheelchair. Poor Sarah received another scary phone call and brought the taxi around the corner, which had been waiting for me, and they took me back to the house for a closer inspection. It turned out I had a couple of nasty grazes on my face, knee and shoulder, but the rest of my body was unscathed.

  ‘What do you want to do now, Rob?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Well, I want to go watch the Cowboys’ game,’ I said defiantly.

  We all got changed, loaded back into the taxi and arrived at the Hindmarsh Stadium twenty minutes after the kick-off. It didn’t worry me as I was just happy to catch the final sixty minutes. The Cowboys flogged the Sharks, and the day turned out to be a great success with us all enjoying a couple of beers and hotdogs.

  17

  ROAD HOME

  Ten months, one week and six days after the helicopter crash, I was loaded back into an RFDS plane for the flight to Alice Springs. It hadn’t quite been a year in Adelaide but it felt like a lifetime. The small wins in recovery were rare, so convincing my doctors and insurance company to allow us to return to Alice Springs was very difficult. They would have been much happier had we chosen to stay in the house at Dernancourt, believing it was too dangerous for us to venture away from the city. But I had lived my whole life in the bush and always worked outside, so there was no way I was going to surrender to an injury and resign myself to starting a new life in the suburbs. It just wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t the environment I had envisaged my kids would grow up in. We had been happy at the station prior to the accident and it felt like we had the world at our feet. So ‘Plan A’ was always to return home, although there were still many unknowns about my condition and how I would be able to adapt to life back in the desert. There would need to be significant refurbishments at Suplejack to allow for a wheelchair, as well as twenty-four-hour power to keep me cool because my body couldn’t regulate its own temperature. An eight-hour drive to the nearest hospital didn’t bode well for us either. So for the short term we had to settle for ‘Plan B’, which was to move into a three-bedroom unit in Alice Springs provided by the insurance company.

  It was a good feeling to be arriving back in Alice Springs on a cool night in July compared to the freezing cold of Adelaide. In the couple of months before leaving, I had only been spending about one night a week at the Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre and the rest of the time at the rental house, so I was gradually weaned off the stale smell of a hospital. Throughout the time, though, my physio and occupational therapy appointments continued, to allow the strengthening of the muscles that were still working. In fact, a small flicker of movement began to appear in my left arm, very similar to my right arm; however, it wasn’t as quick to develop. Mum and Dad left Adelaide a week ahead of us to help unpack the removal truck and to set up my powered bed for when I arrived. They met Sarah and me at the airport with my wheelchair and a van that my brother-in-law Clint Wasley had driven up a couple of days earlier. Our children hitched a ride to Alice Springs with grandparents Graeme and Lois, who had tidied up the rental house in Adelaide. I’d always had reservations about moving into a unit in town and my fears were realised when we arrived. It was small and claustrophobic, with not enough room for kids to play, and the family dog wasn’t even allowed to stay there. Instead of being uplifted about the prospect of being away from hospital, we felt depressed and trapped. Although Sarah was a registered nurse, caring for me full time as well as looking after the children was just too much. We needed help and in the beginning we were provided with one carer who came to the unit for three hours in the morning and three hours at night. While I was grateful for the daily assistance, I didn’t respond well to the split shifts, as I was on my own for most of the day. The shifts would have worked for someone who was happy to sit in a room and watch television, but it wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to travel to Suplejack in the first instance, and then on to Queensland to meet up with friends and family.

  It was difficult for Sarah and me to make plans for the future without being able to test the limits of my disability. So over the next few months we began to find a routine that worked for us as a family, while also looking for ways to achieve what we wanted. We bought a Chevrolet truck because of the large interior space it provided me to get inside and also its ability to carry the equipment I required. While we still used the bus around town, I intended to use the truck when we began travelling long distances. Each day would start with the carer taking me through some stretches, getting me showered and up in my wheelchair. Usually the process could take some hours from when I woke up to when I could get some fresh air outside. Once a week I saw a physiotherapist to continue to work on my movement, and I used the Thera-Vital at night-time as a form of cardio. Gradually, we spent more time outside the unit and Cam brought Braxton’s pony into town so he could ride it, sometimes daily. We kept the horse at Tiani’s house where she lived on a block of land in the rural area, so it was easily accessible for us. The boys loved the chance to ride and this provided a sense of normality for us, outdoors and away from town. Despite this, Sarah and I were both under an enormous amount of stress. Neither of us was happy with our living arrangements, we were negotiating with the insurance company and the financial strain was telling.

  Perhaps I was asking too much of my body and mind too early, because I struck trouble in October. It was a hot day at the Alice Springs showgrounds as the boys took turns riding the horse with Sarah while I watched. Once they finished and were packing away the saddles, I suddenly felt a funny sensation ripple through my body. I became aware of numbness, particularly under my elbows, even though I had had no feeling there for over a year. It was different to what I was familiar with, as if my arms weren’t lying on the rests provided by the chair. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, it was actually my shoulders that had lost feeling, giving me the strange sensation.

  ‘Something’s happening here, Sar,’ I said, thinking it may have been a good sign.

  ‘Quick, get in the bus out of the heat,’ she said.

  Wheeling my chair onto the ramp and into the back, I lay back in the reclined position in the air conditioning. I took a call on the hands-free headset from my cousin Billy Leard while Sarah took my blood pressure. We were chatting away about my life in a chair, just as I became woozy and light-headed.

  ‘What Rob? What did you say?’ asked Bill as my speech slurred.

  He eventually dropped off the phone because he couldn’t understand me. Sarah was watching me intently. Once she realised something serious was happening, she quickly placed an angina skin patch on my chest in an attempt to lower my blood pressure, which was very high at 250 over 185. The situation was progressively getting worse as my left eye began to blur, my tongue rolled up in my mouth, slurring my speech, and the skin on the left side of my face started to droop. We immediately drove to the emergency department at the hospital fearing I was having a stroke. As we pulled up outside, the skin patch appeared to have worked as the lag in my face improved slightly, but I still couldn’t speak properly. I could understand what was happening as I had clear thoughts, but my speech was inaudible. At the front counter, I was asked who the prime minister was (to evaluate my state of mind) and I knew it was Kevin Rudd, but I just couldn’t say the words.

  I was quickly placed in a bed with an electrocardiograph (ECG) attached to my chest. After waiting a few minutes, a man who I took to be a doctor approached me with a large folder in his arms.

  ‘Mr Rob Cook?’ he inquired gruffly.

  ‘Yes that’s me,’ I replied with my speech returning.

  ‘You think you might have had a stroke?’ he asked, speaking slowly.

  ‘I wouldn’t know what it is,’ I said. ‘I feel pretty good now.’

  It had been about fifteen minutes from when the first sensation happened to when I was lying on the bed in front of the doctor. Giving me a concerned look he reached over, gently touching my left knee.

  ‘Can you feel that?’ h
e asked.

  ‘No, I can’t feel anything,’ I replied, not having the heart to tell him I was a quadriplegic.

  ‘Huh, OK,’ he said. ‘Can you please lift your left arm up above your head for me?’

  ‘That folder you have there,’ I said calmly. ‘Does it say “Rob Cook”?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cook,’ said the doctor impatiently. ‘Can you lift your left arm above your head?’

  ‘Are you sure that’s my folder?’ I asked again.

  ‘Mr Robert T. Cook,’ he replied.

  ‘Yeah, that’s mine,’ I told him. ‘There should be a big, long word written there.’

  ‘Mr Cook, I really need you to lift your arm up above your head,’ he said, becoming frustrated.

  ‘It’s a big word,’ I said again.

  I saw him mouth the word ‘tetraplegic’ (another word for quadriplegic), as embarrassment swept across his face. He closed the folder and walked away.

  ‘We put our lives in the hands of these people,’ I said to Sarah in disbelief. ‘He hadn’t even read my file.’

  Soon another doctor came over to my bed, who was very apologetic, and I was admitted to the hospital.

  Doctors conducted all the usual scans and tests over the next day as they tried to find the problem, but they discovered nothing out of the ordinary. One doctor thought they saw a cloud on my lungs, while another said there wasn’t one. So on paper I was doing well, but it remained a mystery why my blood pressure got so high, where it should usually have been around ninety over sixty. It was decided that I was to have a CT angiogram taken of my brain and blood vessels to determine whether I had indeed suffered a stroke. As part of the procedure, dye is injected into the bloodstream as a contrast agent for when the CT scan is taken. Once the dye reached my brain, the blood vessels would appear in much greater detail. It made sense to me and on the second day in hospital I was taken in for the scan.