When the Dust Settles

by Cook, R

  ‘When the dye hits your brain,’ explained the specialist. ‘You’re going to get a really quick, hot flush through your face.’

  ‘OK, it’s the only part of my body I can feel,’ I replied. ‘So no doubt I’ll feel it.’

  The blue dye was then put into my arm as an intravenous drip. As I lay in the CT chamber, watching the lights spin around me, the specialist counted down for me.

  ‘Three, two, one,’ he said, encouraging me to keep my head still.

  The machine continued to spin and I waited for my face to get hot, but nothing happened. Soon he returned to the room to help me back to the bed.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ said the specialist looking at my arm.

  I was shocked to see my entire left forearm swelling to twice its usual size.

  ‘OK, Rob, that will do us,’ he stuttered. ‘I’ll get you back to your room.’

  No one explained what had happened until I was transferred back to my hospital bed and a nurse tied my arm up above me, before massaging it. Finally, she explained the calibre of the IV needle used by the specialist was too small, creating pressure, which blew out the vein in my arm.

  ‘Is this thing going to affect me?’ I asked, concerned.

  ‘Ah no, it is safe,’ the nurse replied. ‘The dye isn’t where it should be, but it won’t kill you.’

  ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ I responded.

  ‘Your arm might glow in the dark, but we’ll massage it out.’

  My arm was massive and had puffed up, just like Popeye’s muscles after a hit of spinach. It was a few days later before the procedure could be done again without any problems. The doctor concluded that I had had a transient ischemic attack, also known as a mini-stroke. Although I had recovered well, I needed to take it a bit easier in the future and watch out for stress and, of course, the heat of the Alice Springs sun.

  While I was in hospital preparing to leave, I could hear someone walk up behind me and give me a sloppy ‘wet willy’, an old household prank of licking a finger and shoving it in someone’s ear. I’d copped a few in my time but this one had a distinctive smell about it. While not a bad smell, it was an odour that I could recognise immediately.

  ‘Talbot, you dirty bastard,’ I said, surprised that he would be there.

  ‘What are you doing, deadshit?’ Talby laughed, as he walked around in front of me.

  Funnily enough, I remembered his scent from when he licked my face back in Adelaide, and we had a good laugh about that. I may have lost the sense of touch but my sense of smell and hearing had improved greatly since the accident. When news got around that I’d had a stroke, a lot of people were worried that I might have been on the way out. Talby and his father Bruce had driven across from Queensland, bashing his pride and joy, a brand-new Toyota ute, along the Plenty Highway. Everyone knew they were coming except me, so it was a welcome surprise to see them.

  Christmas 2009 was fast approaching and, ideally, I wanted to be at Suplejack for the festive season. It would be my first time there in fifteen months. We began preparing ourselves for the long trip ahead of us, being sure to lock in all the essential equipment I would need for a couple of weeks at the station. In some ways the most important piece of gear was a portable generator and air conditioning unit, should we break down along the way. My body wouldn’t last long out in the desert during December without being kept cool, so we needed to take precautions. We had also had some success in gaining two full-time carers to help me through day-to-day life, however the couple who were with us weren’t able to accompany us on this trip, so it was up to Cam, Mum and of course Sarah to look after me for a couple of weeks. On 20 December, we left Alice Springs at midday to begin the trip home, driving in convoy with my parents along the Tanami Track. The old road hadn’t changed much over the years, with the corrugations still bone rattling. We had to stop every couple of hours to readjust my sitting position in the front seat to ensure I didn’t develop pressure sores. It was a long day in the car, but as we pulled up at the house at Suplejack, having driven for nine hours, I felt relieved and satisfied for having made the effort. The sweet smell of wet grass and cedar trees in the garden was an odour I had cherished as a boy, and now craved as an adult. It was not a journey we had taken lightly. The last year had been hell for everyone in my family and I had been the centre pivot of that pain, trying to deal with it the best way I knew how. Those brief seconds sitting in the car, before my family jerked the door open to say hello, gave me just enough time to reflect on the important things in life. Sarah and I were finally returning to our home, the place we loved, the place where we started our family, and to the comfort we had longed for during all those trying months in Adelaide. Being back represented so much more than simply proving we could travel unfazed deep into the Outback; life had thrown the kitchen sink at me and I had survived. So I had a big smile on my face as Brad and Cam lifted me from the truck in darkness and took me inside, with rain falling heavily around us.

  Despite the rain, the outside temperatures at Suplejack over Christmas were very high. It meant I had to get up a lot earlier just to spend a few hours outside before the mercury started rising. Dad ran the station generator around the clock for my benefit so we could run the air conditioner throughout the house, but the room I was staying in didn’t have air conditioning. So the following day, Dad, Brad and Cam cut a hole in the wall and mounted a unit so I could use the bigger room with enough space to operate my chair. It was a joy to watch my brothers work so efficiently together; Dad had skilled-up all of us boys as talented handymen. Actually the boys became handy indeed, whenever I needed to cool down fast. They would throw me into the shower chair, wheel me out to the lawn and hit me with the hose. One afternoon they even used the forklift to load me and the chair onto the back of the ute and drove off to the dam for a swim. It was good to be home.

  Both Braxton and Lawson thrived on the wide open spaces at Suplejack and got up to all sorts of adventures and mischief. However, Braxton did struggle to get his head around the new living arrangements. While he was only two and a half when the accident happened, he still had memories of being at the station. We had lived in our own house not far from the homestead, but Brad and Bec had now moved in there. Braxton remembered our house and was concerned that we weren’t staying there on our short visit over Christmas.

  ‘We can’t go there,’ Sarah explained. ‘That’s not our house any more.’

  ‘But Dad, remember we planted a boab tree over there,’ he replied. ‘Why can’t we live there?’

  Braxton also picked up on many of the stories I had told him during the time in Adelaide about riding horses and checking bores in the ute. However, the life I had painted for him wasn’t the life we went back to. He wasn’t sure whether the memories he had a year or so earlier were actually real, given how so much had changed. The main change, of course, was my injury and inability to do those activities any more, but whether or not Braxton could fully comprehend that as a four-year-old, I wasn’t sure. He was certainly confused.

  My attitude also changed after Christmas. An uncomfortable feeling of being out of place began to wash over me – something I really wasn’t expecting. The wet season storms had Dad and the boys out for most of the days fixing flood-gates. I had been so desperate to return home that I guess I never really took a moment to think what it would be like when the men would have to leave the house to go out to work. It was really difficult for me to smile in the morning when they would say, ‘We’ll catch you after lunch’, and head out for the day. But when they did arrive home, I was still depressed and could hardly muster a smile when I saw them. In many ways I was struggling like Braxton, trying to let go of who I was before the accident and attempting to grab hold of who I had become. So within the space of a few days, my emotions went on a wild ride, beginning with such triumph at arriving back on the property to almost worthlessness being stuck at the house.

  Despite the emotional turmoil, the trip had been a great release for me
and I had tears in my eyes as we drove out the gate a couple of weeks later. On New Year’s Day 2010, Sarah wrote in her diary:

  Here’s to another year of life as we’ve never known it. Things looked more positive at the start of the year. Let’s farewell 2009 and bid those tears goodbye and welcome the New Year with positive thoughts and new goals. Another new beginning, another set of challenges.

  As usual Sarah was the light that lit up my every day, but I couldn’t help think about the life we had waiting for us back at Alice Springs, in the three-bedroom apartment. Fortunately, not long after we returned, we were able to begin renting a house on a 2.5-hectare block in the rural area. It would be a massive improvement on the stuffy unit, a place where we could have our horses, run our dogs and even grow some vegetables. Immediately my outlook improved again, as renovations began on the house to make it wheelchair friendly. Over Christmas I managed to track down a gooseneck horse trailer in Queensland, suitable for the Chevrolet to tow so we could take it on the road with us to live in whenever we wanted to travel. Instead of having it brought all the way over to the Territory, we had it delivered to Sarah’s parents’ place at Dulacca for us to pick up at a later date.

  Unfortunately, our two initial carers left us to get married and wouldn’t be returning, so we were looking for two more when Brad offered his services. He and Bec said they could help us over the wet season until the first round of mustering started again. It seemed like a good idea to me – being able to spend more time with my brother and sister-in-law sounded great – so together they took on the job for the next few months. As had begun in Adelaide, a tradition continued in my family of great generosity and spirit to care for me at different periods and for different lengths of time, whether it was just a few minutes helping me move between a vehicle and the house, or for months at a time. But as I found later, it wasn’t just close family. There were members of my extended family and friends who would also be willing to lend a hand. While it probably took some people longer than others to get used to the type of care I required on a daily basis, generally speaking, I had no worries with family and friends caring for me. Sarah would take extra care in keeping me properly covered during these times, especially when I was getting ready for a shower. It was some time later, though, that I realised that those caring for me could see a whole lot more of me than I thought. It became obvious one day when I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror – I had all sorts of things hanging out. I was shocked. It is fair to say I wasn’t quite as confident around female carers as I once was and I sure as hell became pedantic about always being covered properly.

  18

  SUNRISE

  I had become fed up with hospitals. The sadness, emptiness and boredom I had experienced in them over the eighteen months prior were enough to last me a lifetime. Generally, all the medical staff I had encountered were good at their jobs, while a few, I sensed, wished they were elsewhere. I guess they too felt fatigued by the pain and suffering that engulfs hospital buildings. It couldn’t be easy for anyone to be constantly giving bad news to patients when the outlook isn’t good. So it was with much frustration in early 2010 that I was again admitted to the Alice Springs hospital, this time with pneumonia. Not only did I not want to spend my days lying in bed, but I was also worried that our first trip to Queensland would be delayed by my illness. However, I had to submit when I caught the flu and began coughing up blood. My lungs were so weak due to the injury that I needed help with coughing. Brad had found a solution by wrapping his arms around my upper torso and squeezing my ribs together while pushing upwards. This created the force I needed to bring up the phlegm and mucus, clearing my airway. Although we had begun using a special cough-assist machine to do the job, manual pressure applied to my chest was more effective. Each day, Sarah and Brad would arrive at the hospital to take me through the usual process of toileting and showering, before returning me to the bed. I had been admitted on a Monday and as each day passed I could feel my health improving.

  By the time Friday arrived I was itching to hit the road on our next adventure to pick up the gooseneck trailer at Miles and visit friends and family we hadn’t seen for some time. Sarah had the Chevrolet and box trailer packed for the trip, as well as a second support vehicle for Brad and Bec to drive. We decided we wouldn’t stay in motels because of the added expense and instead would camp along the roadside. We would need my hospital-issue bed, shower chair and pop-up shower tent all loaded in the trailer. Late Friday afternoon I sat fully dressed in my wheelchair with Sarah close at hand while we waited for the doctor to come by with my discharge. Soon a young doctor appeared at the doorway with a clipboard.

  ‘Mr Cook, you’re progressing nicely,’ she said. ‘We’ll keep you in over the weekend as a precaution and you should be right to go home on Monday.’

  This was not the news I wanted to hear and I was so disappointed I felt like crying and swearing at the same time. I was sick of being told what I could and couldn’t do as a result of my injury and I couldn’t stand the thought of staying one more minute in hospital, let alone three more days.

  ‘No. No, that’s not right,’ I said in protest.

  ‘How can it not be right?’ she asked quizzically. ‘I have the paperwork right here.’

  ‘The other doctor just came through and told me I was right to go home,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh really,’ she said looking somewhat confused. ‘Which doctor was that?’

  ‘Um, he was a bloke,’ I said trying to think quickly. ‘And I think he was Asian.’

  Somehow I had managed to give a vague enough description for the doctor to leave the room and query my claims.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Sarah once the doctor had left.

  ‘I’m not staying here,’ I said. ‘I need to get outside before I go crazy.’

  A few minutes later the same doctor returned with a pile of folders, apparently containing all the information they had on me.

  ‘You are right to go,’ she said to my sweet surprise. ‘Here are your discharge documents.’

  ‘It’s OK, you keep those,’ I said casually. ‘I’ll probably be back one day and you might need them.’

  With that, we were free to leave. I gave Sarah a wink and we got out of there as quick as we could. Returning home overnight, with Brad helping me cough whenever I whistled to get his attention, we were on the Stuart Highway heading north the next morning. I felt exhilarated to be on the road again, doing something on my terms, even though I was a bit tuckered out from the restless sleep and frequent coughing. The kids were in our car, while Brad, Bec and their baby, Lane, followed us in another. As we drove, my chest continuously filled up with bloody phlegm, causing a coughing fit. Sarah would have to lean across and push on the side of my chest with her left hand as she drove. If it became too much, we stopped on the side of the road and Brad would run up to the car to help me. It was slow going, having to pull over every hour or so along the way. On the first day of driving we only got as far as the Devils Marbles, about a hundred kilometres south of Tennant Creek.

  ‘You know, Sarah,’ I said reflectively that night as I lay on my air mattress in the box trailer, ‘I’d love to watch the sunrise tomorrow morning while we do the toileting thing.’

  It had been a long time since I had witnessed the morning spectacle, and seeing as though the toileting session took me around fifteen minutes, what better opportunity than while we’re camped smack bang in the middle of the Territory? It was a relatively isolated camping spot, very peaceful. A gentle sprinkle of rain fell on the tent all night, which was music to my ears. Just as we’d planned the night before, Brad woke me early, lifted me onto the shower chair and I watched in awe as the sun peeked over the horizon. The Devils Marbles are a significant tourist attraction in the Territory – massive boulders lie scattered in clusters, some poised in precarious positions. The rocks were formed from granite many millions of years ago, pushed up through the sandstone. As the sunlight sprayed over
the granite boulders, they turned a bright golden colour. It was magnificent as my first sunrise since leaving hospital in Adelaide, from a great spot, even if I was perched on the dunny.

  And so the interstate camping trip continued, through to Dulacca in Queensland. It wasn’t a typical camping experience, though, with us having to carry so much equipment. Sarah, Brad and Bec would spend considerable parts of each day packing and unpacking the trailer and truck at overnight stopovers. They did well to keep their humour, as it rained all the way to Queensland. When there was a break in the weather, I supervised the kids, keeping Braxton, Lawson and Lane under careful watch. Braxton, a talkative four-year-old now, two-year-old Lawson and eight-month-old Lane could be a handful for a bloke in a wheelchair, but I managed. In fact, I loved every morning to be able to take the kids aside and just be a normal father and uncle. Lane was just starting to stand up by grabbing onto things until he had the balance to straighten his little legs. I began parking my chair in front of him and he would grab hold of the back bumper bar. Slowly I drove forward as he shuffled along with me and that was how he learnt to walk, hanging onto the wheelchair in those few months on the road. It was days like this I thanked God for keeping me alive. My relationship with my children had waned during my stint in the hospital and rehab centre in Adelaide. Although they became very comfortable within the four walls of the wards for hours on end, I was probably not really part of their life. To them I was just a bloke who lay in bed or sat in a chair all day, occasionally telling them stories about station life. If someone sat the kids on the bed with me, they would cause a commotion and want to climb down. I suppose I was a pretty scary-looking (and sounding) character. Of course I felt lucky and comforted to have them with me, but not being able to reach out to them and bond physically was an incredibly difficult thing to handle. However, once I became mobile in my chair and away from the hospital and rehab environs, my relationship with Braxton returned and my connection with Lawson began.