Forged with Flames (26 page)

Now, I live only a couple of minutes' walk from Les' office and often see him in passing when I do my shopping. He never fails to toot and wave, a reminder of how fortunate I was the day I stood next to him in the Post Office queue.

When the excitement of the big move subsided, I stopped and looked around. At fifty-three, I was as alone as I was ever going to be. I no longer lived in a family home; my youth, dependent children and marriage were all behind me. Solitude was something I'd always craved in my life—a necessary salve and time to retreat into my thoughts—but only into
parts
of my life. It felt as if I'd hauled myself up a jagged peak, reached the top and saw life stretching before me, like a vast plain. When the girls had left Ambleside Crescent I knew I had to come to terms with living alone, so had set about working out a few strategies. After all, many people lived like that and seemed to manage quite well, I told myself. I used the little extra energy I had once the girls were self-sufficient, to be more sociable—to have people over and to get out more—but in spite of these conscious efforts, the emptiness that had haunted my life after the fires continued.

Having breast cancer, while harrowing, was unexpectedly a time of deep connection with people. My friends and family surrounded me in the most heart-warming way and, from this perspective at least, it was almost a happy period. When I moved house I was on an emotional high—renovating and
showing around the first wave of visitors—and any loneliness I might have experienced was submerged in the activity and excitement. But I couldn't sustain that level of physical energy for very long. As life returned to its normal even pace, I found myself reflecting one evening and, without warning, a few curly questions hit me. I was sitting in my new lounge chair looking out the window at dusk, idly watching the evening traffic as cars and their headlights streamed past and people headed for home.

‘Well, what's next then?' I thought. ‘What am I doing here?'

I caught sight of my reflection in the glass.

‘Who am I now?'

Since the fires, I'd become accustomed to being seen as the ‘Fire Lady'. I had allowed Ash Wednesday and all that came after it to rule my life and define my existence. I saw now that I had unknowingly refined suffering to a great art. It had become my identity. But what was at the core of me? Soon after that evening, I took up meditating, joining evening classes taken by a woman who held them in her home. I learned to breathe in a calm, controlled way, gradually learning to still my thoughts and listen to my heart, which led to a feeling of contentment. I didn't need to fill the holes in my life with anything from outside. I started to find joy in small things. The cheerful little faces of pansies I had planted brought on a wave of happiness. A breeze with a hint of warmth lifted my spirits as I closed my eyes to it. I had begun to learn how to be alone and happy. The emptiness receded. I realised that my ongoing peace and contentment depended on me, and that I no longer had to reach outside myself. I realised a vital shift had seamlessly occurred in my being.

39

THE GIRL IN THE CORNER REVEALED

F
or all the long weeks in 1983 when I lay so ill in Intensive Care, I always had the feeling that there was someone sitting in the corner of my room. As I've mentioned, when my friends Liz and Jane used to come in to visit me, I'd ask them if they could please get this woman a cup of tea. I was concerned that she never seemed to eat or drink but just sat there watching over me.

At the time, I accepted her presence without much thought. Later, when I was well, I rarely talked about it in case people would think I'd been hallucinating and had just imagined it all. I knew I hadn't though, and held close the memory of the darkhaired guardian.

In 2003, after moving house and dealing with the strain of breast cancer, she appeared again. A friend of mine living in Canada had sent me a Christmas card with a reproduction on the front of one of the stained-glass windows in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. From the moment I opened the envelope and saw the card, I was completely fascinated by it. Before me was the image of an angel, sitting calmly, looking down at something
or someone; her whole attention completely focused. I didn't put it with the rest of my cards, but stood it on the little table next to the place where I often sat during the day. I found myself picking it up and peering at it, wondering why it was so compelling.

Then one day out of the blue, it clicked: it looked exactly like the woman who had sat so patiently in the corner of my hospital room in 1983. It was my angel. I believed this absolutely, even though it seemed so bizarre. That same day I went out and bought a frame to put the card in so I could remember her. As I cut the card ready to insert into the frame I turned it over and looked at the back, for the first time noticing the caption. A shiver went through me and tears sprang to my eyes. It read: ‘The Angel of Suffering'.

40

BREAKTHROUGH

I
t was the summer of 2003-4, a year after the disastrous summer when my ongoing anxiety over the hot weather had come to a head and I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This summer would be different, I promised myself. My fears were now out in the open and I had learned several positive ways of managing them. I was living in the centre of Narre Warren next to a major highway—well away from the possibility of a bushfire—all good reasons why I'd be okay; I figured I could relax and let down my guard. The first total fire ban day would be the test.

I'd always watched the weather forecasts carefully during the summer months, partly due to my trepidation, but also so that I'd know if, or when, I could go out on any particular day. Since having my breast removed and becoming even more temperature-sensitive, I found that anything above twenty-three degrees Celsius was too hot to manage well and it was better to stay inside.

Eventually, one evening in late 2003, it was announced on the
television news that the following day would be forty degrees. My stomach did its usual somersault and the familiar sense of anxiety started rising. But now I know what to do, I reassured myself. I would take one of the tablets Wes had prescribed before I went to bed to help me get a good night's rest, then I would take another one in the morning to keep me relaxed during the hot day ahead. The drawback was I'd have even less energy than usual with the medication, but it seemed a small price to pay to have the edge taken off the anxiety.

I managed like this for two or three very hot days, an enormous improvement on the way I'd coped in previous summers, but felt there must be some other solution. The medication was helpful but surely there was a better and healthier way to handle the summer days than taking chemicals, I thought. I didn't like the idea—in general—of depending on drugs.

‘There's still a piece of the puzzle missing,' I told Wes, when I next visited him. ‘I have no idea what it could be, but I'll definitely know it when it's in place.'

‘Perhaps you could try some hypnotherapy,' he replied, suggesting a doctor in the same surgery who practised it.

The thought had never occurred to me, but I agreed to give it a go. My hopes rose. About a week later, I was sitting in Colin's room, at ease with him straight away, discussing hypnotherapy which he thought could help in my case. We made an appointment to begin. I had visions of lying back on the couch gazing at a swaying watch, falling into a deep trance and waking up cured. I did lie on a couch but there was no watch. Colin spoke slowly, evenly, as I relaxed into the session. His words became sluggish, almost a drone, as he made suggestions for me to absorb. At one point, early on in the session, I began
to feel physically ill and for about five minutes or so was convinced I was going to be sick. Fortunately, the feeling passed and by the end of our time I had relaxed. We agreed that I'd come the following week for another session and I set off to walk to the station to catch the train home.

The walk only took ten minutes, but in that short time I began to feel more and more tense. By the time I'd reached the station I felt dreadful, not physically, but emotionally; a huge dark cloud seemed to be pressing lower and lower, taking away the light. I had gone from peace to panic in no time at all and needed to get home and shut myself away until it passed. Perhaps some deeply buried emotions had been stirred up during the hypnotherapy session, I thought, relieved to finally arrive home. I paced around. I didn't feel like eating. There were chores to do but I couldn't do them. It was only after several hours that I could relax. I hope this doesn't happen after every session, I thought.

The next week I told Colin what had occurred. I'd planned ahead and arranged to meet a friend after the second session in case I had the same response as last time. I needn't have worried. The therapy went well and I had no trouble relaxing afterwards. This time I felt great. The doctor gave me a photocopy of the calming thoughts he was using which I practised saying to myself every day: ‘Just let it happen. It will pass in a few minutes. I mustn't fight it…' and so on. I would relax and say them slowly and meaningfully out loud to myself. In due course, they would pop up in my mind automatically during stressful times. I went for two more hypnotherapy sessions, each time feeling more and more in control. I wasn't sure why it was working—all I seemed to be doing was lying on the couch while the doctor talked—but it was.

The breakthrough came with the next hot day after Christmas. The old sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I always experienced wasn't there and I remained calm throughout the day. I still followed my management plan and took the pills, but they didn't seem as critical. I decided to put the hypnotherapy to the test; on the next total fire ban day I'd see what happened if I didn't take medication at all. Coincidentally, I had an appointment to see my GP on the day. I didn't take any pills, and not only did I feel calm, but exhilarated. It was hard to believe you could get such positive results in such a short time. Wes listened with interest to my account of the results, then said, practically, ‘Well, let's just take your blood pressure and see if you're as calm as you feel'. I held out my arm confidently.

He smiled as he looked at the monitor, and nodded. I left the surgery that day convinced there was an answer to every problem, big and small; that perseverance could win through every time. True, it had taken me twenty-one years to find this answer, but having found it, the time didn't matter. Knowing I had the tools in place to manage the summer months—not being captive to the whim of the weather and the fears that had loomed so large—came as a huge release. I left with a jaunty step. The breakthrough had been worth the wait.

41

RELEASE

T
he hypnotherapy helped with the dread of the bushfires in everyday life but undergoing some minor surgery the following winter sent me right back into the flames of that fateful day in 1983.

The procedure to remove a polyp from my uterus was a small one but from the moment the nurse at Berwick Hospital fixed the cuff of the blood pressure machine around my arm, I panicked. Without warning, I flashed back to those early months after the fires when having my blood pressure taken was such a traumatic business. My heart pounded furiously. The nurse exclaimed as she looked at the machine.

‘Your blood pressure has just shot way up'.

‘I know exactly why,' I said, shakily. ‘I just went back twenty-one years.'

It was all I could do to endure the surgery mentally, and the night after I was released from hospital was hellish. I fell in and out of sleep seeing fireballs, people being caught in flames, people screaming.

I remained shaken for weeks afterwards. It unnerved me that
I'd been making such good progress with the challenges of my life yet could be thrown back into such turmoil so unexpectedly. I pushed on as routinely as I could, but the anxiety filtered back. It was all so gradual, so insidious. I couldn't pinpoint anything specifically wrong, nothing that I could deal with actively—just a sense that every little thing was hard work. Medical procedures, and even a visit to Wes, filled me with a near-overwhelming dread. I could barely make myself go to appointments for blood tests or mammograms.

Unexpectedly, getting into a car now became a major source of anguish. Wave after wave of panic would sweep through me just sitting in a car, any car, and outings with friends loomed as events to be dreaded. I would suddenly feel myself lying helpless in the back of a police car as the world around me burned. Dark limbs of trees dangled, edged in orange.
We are going to be hit by one. I know it. I can't sit up. I feel helpless. We're going to be trapped in this inferno. Flames flicker and taunt on my eyelids. There is no escape...

The intrusive images dismayed me. I'd struggled for so long and overcome so much. Why was this happening now? At the same time, I was ashamed—I seemed so weak—and just wanted to retreat from the world, again. The old me had returned.

The panic attacks struck without warning. It felt as if I were a marionette; I could feel the strings jerking me but couldn't tell what was pulling them. I could be coasting along, when suddenly an event or an image, however small, would trigger a reaction. I was eating my evening meal alone one night during the spring of 2005, quite contentedly, when a fishbone stuck in my throat, lodging there. I tried to swallow it, then cough it up.
I couldn't get it to move up or down. I was choking. The panic brought on an horrific flashback of being in the Burns Unit in March 1983.

I am alone. It is long into the night. I feel the tube in my oesophagus shift. It is moving up, pushing hard against my throat. I'm choking. I'm gagging. Help me, someone come in and help me! I can't get anyone to come in. No one knows. No one's going to come in quickly enough to save me. I'm going to choke to death. I can't bear it. The minutes tick on as I battle to quell my alarm. Minutes, then hours stand still. I can't bear it. I want to be done with all this.