Broken Dreams (4 page)

During that 600 kilometre trip to Brisbane in the ambulance I was feeling really sick. I found it was getting harder to breathe—my breathing was getting shorter and quicker. By the time the ambulance reached Toowoomba I had blacked out. We finally arrived at the hospital in Brisbane about two o'clock in the morning.

When I dived into the river I had knocked myself out and had swallowed a lot of water. The doctor in Brisbane worked on me for over an hour, getting the water out of my lungs and clearing the muck off my chest.

Later that morning my mother received a phone call that told her she could lose her son. I was unconscious and in a bad way. Luckily for me, it was my fitness that helped to pull me through this little crisis. I was unconscious for three days. When I awoke, I was unsure about what had happened to me and where I was. I saw my mother and my sister Robyn standing there beside my bed. I took one look at them and without even saying
“Hello” I asked: “Who won the America's Cup?”—“Australia,” Robyn replied.—“You little beauty,” I said. Even today, I can't understand how I could ask such a stupid question, as I have no interest in boat racing and the America's Cup was no exception. Maybe I had muddled it up with football! It was my eighteenth birthday, but I felt too sick to care. That day I became old enough to drink in a pub, and I didn't even feel I could be bothered to go for a beer. Something had to be wrong.

Meanwhile, Peter and my five sisters back in Mitchell were going through hell, waiting by the phone, answering it with caution, praying for good news, not bad. They were so relieved when I pulled through.

A few days later I was feeling a bit better, and I was moved out of the intensive care ward. As I had picked up an infection called golden staph, I was moved to an isolation ward. Then a few weeks later I was moved again, into the S7 ward. Here I found I was being hand-fed by a nurse. Two days later I found out the reason why.

Two doctors approached me, Dr Hill and Dr Davies. They had the task of informing me that I had a broken neck. Dr Hill also told me that I would never walk again. I would be confined to a wheelchair, not for a few months, not for a year, but for the rest of my life. Those words rang in my ears for a long time. In all my eighteen years I had never known tears to feel as cold as those that ran down my face. At that moment my reaction to what Dr Hill had told me was
“Oh no!
I'm better off dead.” At that time I didn't realise that I would be able to do the things I can do today. Sometimes we tend to think things are really worse than they are.

Deep down inside my heart, I knew that what Dr Hill had told me was correct, but for the moment I could not accept the idea of being in a wheelchair. I had to get used to the idea of trading my beloved horse Four X for that wheelchair.

When I broke my neck I lost all feeling and movement in my arms, chest and legs. These parts of my body were numb. Dr Hill told me that if I was to get any movement back in my arms, it would come during the first six weeks.

Each day I used to lie in bed with my arms spread out on two boards. I lay watching, waiting, praying—even though I did not really know how to pray. As the days passed I used to try and lift my arms off the boards. Each arm felt like it had a tonne weight placed on top of it. I never thought my arms were going to move. A few weeks later, when I thought all was lost, my arms actually made a mistake and
moved.
Now I found I could move them into my sides, but I never had enough movement to throw them back onto the boards.

Today I realise I am bloody lucky to be able to move my arms. I have only a patchy feeling in the top part of the arms, but although my fingers don't work, I still reckon I'm bloody lucky. Quadraplegics are the ones with courage: they cannot move their arms at all, but they never surrender the fight. So I can't whinge and can't complain. It doesn't matter how bad you think you are—if you open your eyes you will always find someone worse off than yourself.

I knew now, by the way my arms had moved, that what Dr Hill had told me was all true. As much as I did not want to believe it, I had to get used to the idea of being in a wheelchair, whether I liked it or not. I wondered how people would react when they saw my horse Four X replaced by that wheelchair. Time would tell.

For the next two months I continued to be fed by the nurses. I found it hard having the nurses do those things that once seemed so easy to do for myself. I really appreciated what they did for me—I reckon nurses are very special people.

I had a set of tongs put in each side of my head. Attached to the ends was a set of weights. The tongs were there to hold my neck straight while it mended. During these months in bed my skin became flaky and started to peel. The flaky skin made my face really itchy. I used to lie there putting up with the itchiness, and with my eyelashes falling into my eyes. While I was in hospital I was quiet and kept to myself; I was too shy to ask anyone for help. Apart from the flaky skin and the falling eyelashes I was feeling pretty good. Thirteen weeks later, Sister Pollock came around to release the tongs. Then I was allowed to have a shower, lying down on a trolley.

Before trying to sit up in a wheelchair, I was placed on my belly to try to lift my head off the pillow. I tried hard for five minutes. My head felt like a dead weight, but I refused to give in; I was really keen to get in that wheelchair. At my first attempt to sit in it, after two and a half months in bed, I saw stars and blacked out. I also found that I had no stomach muscles to hold me up. I had to be tied into the wheelchair with a strap. This made me feel a bit down in spirit; I thought I would be able to sit up without any problems. After the first few days in the wheelchair, the pain in the back of my neck was unbelievable. I was having trouble holding my head up; I never expected to feel so much pain. But each day I fought that pain and I found that the longer I sat up, the less the pain became.

Now it was time for my rehabilitation to begin. All the wheelchair patients had to be up and dressed and down in the gym by nine o'clock each morning. My physiotherapist was Diane Winterton, and my occupational therapist Sharon Steele. The time and effort they both put into rehabilitating me was terrific. They were easy to get on with, and the way they went about their work made things a hell of a lot easier for me.

Sharon Steele looked after my hands. With her help I
had to learn to feed myself, clean my teeth, comb my hair, write and type—all with the use of splints. The splints were necessary, because feeling and movement never returned to my hands and fingers. When it came to feeding myself with a splint, I found there wasn't much food going into my mouth—but food going up my nose was a common occurrence. I'd start off feeling hungry but soon lost my appetite as I spilt more than I ate.

At first, I had to have someone to push me around in my wheelchair. Each day I exercised hard, hoping I would be able to push it along by myself. One day, after a good workout, my physio told me to have a go. I found I couldn't move it at all. I told my physio she had me pushing into the wind—I needed an excuse. Pushing my wheelchair along sounded such an easy thing to do—but here I was, unable to move it at all. After I whinged about pushing into the wind, my physio turned me around so that I was pushing into the opposite direction. She left me on a slope and my wheelchair rolled away by itself and crashed into the wall. I tried so hard to push that wheelchair, but I just couldn't make it go either backwards or forwards. I was in deep shit, bogged on a flat tiled floor.

A fortnight later, after exercising really hard, I found I could push the wheelchair over flat surfaces. Now my only trouble was trying to stop. I used to look down to see how fast I was going, and sometimes I'd look up again and find someone or something right in front of me. I had a few collisions, as I just couldn't move my arms or fingers to stop it quickly enough.

Every Friday, along with some of the other patients, I used to play sport. On the basketball court where we played some parts of the ground were uneven. When my wheelchair hit those spots it would roll away with me into the gutter. The first day I spent most of my time being retrieved from that gutter. But it was fun having a
go. Today, I realise that winning isn't everything: having the courage to try is what counts. All these exercises kept me in good spirits.

By this time I knew all about the meaning of the words “spinal unit”. It's a place where you are sent if you break your back or your neck. In 1983 the average age of patients admitted to the spinal unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital was between seventeen and twenty-five. These people were the victims of falls, car crashes, sporting accidents (including a number of diving accidents), and accidents at work. Statistics showed that men outnumbered women. Young people admitted to the spinal unit often have their goals and dreams shattered when they are told they will never walk again. When they leave, six months later, it may be in a wheelchair. Each member of the spinal unit—doctors, physiotherapists, occupational physios, nurses—has a different job as they set about rehabilitating patients with spinal injuries. They aim to help and prepare them to go out and start living as normal a life as possible.

One day I was approached by Steve, another bloke in a wheelchair. Steve told me my diving accident was God's way of slowing me down. He said that God wanted me to lead a slower lifestyle. I reckoned that if God thought it was a good thing to live as slow a lifestyle as this, then I didn't want to know about it. “Don't worry about anything—God is looking after us, He's Number One,” Steve said. To be honest, I don't agree with this: I reckon I am Number One, not God. I believe in myself. I'm not religious, I never have been, and I never will be. While I was in the PA spinal unit, I realised that if I never got in there and did all that hard work exercising my arms, but just sat waiting for God to come along and push my wheelchair, then I'd still be waiting six years later. I've seen too many things in life go wrong to be able to believe
in God. But I respect religious people and I realise they are entitled to their opinions.

As time passed, I realised my family couldn't afford to come down to Brisbane to spend much time with me while I was in the spinal unit. Mitchell was some six hundred kilometres away, and my sisters had young children at school. In any case, I preferred to be on my own, as sometimes my visitors would start crying when they came to see me. This used to piss me off—they made me feel like getting out of bed and kicking them in the arse. I had one regular visitor I was always pleased to see, a bloke called Graham Buckley, who came in each day after he finished work.

One day I received a pleasant surprise. The nurse came in and told me there was someone to see me, and in walked Mort Faddy, the policeman from Mitchell who had once told me that if I didn't shout him a beer when I turned eighteen, he would lock me up. “You'd have to be one of the tightest blokes I know, Bill Dodd,” he told me now. “See what happened when you didn't shout me that beer? You broke your neck.” He brought me a can of drink, a few packets of lollies and some chocolates. I've never forgotten him—I guess I owe him one.

I had my favourite nurses at the unit, including Crimmie, who was like a mother to me, and Andrea, young and good-looking. The first time we met I thought she was really cranky. I was lying in bed after a bad day and refused to take my tablets. Andrea just said: “Take those tablets, ya little bugger.” In time I learned that she wasn't cranky at all—she had a great personality.

Another nurse in the unit was a bloke called John King. With Kingy you always heard him before you saw him. Another was a little dark fellow, Tony Pitt. When I first went to PA I was too scared to talk to anyone. I knew no one and distrusted practically everybody there. It was after I met Tony Pitt that I came out of my shell and
started giving out a bit of cheek. Mick Weaver and Brian Sticher, two of the orderlies, also reduced the boredom for me a lot with their tricks and jokes. Sometimes they were a real torment to me. If I ever managed to put one over on them, they'd get even five minutes later. They'd maybe give me a cold shower, or put salt instead of sugar in my coffee.

After I'd been in the unit for five and a half months, I had to overcome one last obstacle: going out in public in my wheelchair. Sharon Steele, my occupational therapist, took me out shopping. I had imagined people would stare at me. Half an hour later we were on our way back to the hospital. No one seemed to have taken any notice of me—I was the one who had stared at some of the nice looking girls in the store we visited.

Then Kingy and a couple of other orderlies decided to take some of the wheelchair patients for a night out. What better place to go to than a nearby pub. I looked forward to this—I hoped it would help me to get a bit of confidence in myself. My good mate Graham Buckley came along too. He held a glass of beer to my mouth so that I could have a drink, and after that I was ready to party. “Find me a woman, Buckley!” I said jokingly. Only a bloke like Graham would be silly enough to take me seriously—it just proved what a good mate he was. There were these two sheilas in the pub, and Graham pushed me over to them and parked me right between them. Then he went back to the bar and just left me there.

I started talking to the girl on my left—she looked okay. She moved her chair closer to me and I thought, “Aha, I'm set.” That was when Graham came back from the bar and proceeded to cut me out. All was not lost, however. The girl on my right moved her chair closer and started up a conversation with me. Boy, she was ugly, though. I realised she was the type who had probably been around more blocks than the postman. “Get me
out of here,” I told Graham. But he said, “Just sit there, mate, I'm doing all right.” Then the girl on my right tried to put her arm around me, but I wouldn't let her—she had shoulders like a man, and I couldn't afford to break my neck twice. However, the more I drank the better looking she seemed to become. (That night I was nicknamed “the pot screamer”: drink one, spill one and give one away.) The only thing that saved me from this sheila in the end was ten o'clock closing time. Without thinking, I gave the girls my address at the hospital before leaving them.