What did I think about my situation in those early few days? I was trying to adjust the image I had of myself. A split second after I woke in the morning, I expected to hear the sound of RM Williams boots creaking across the bare worn floorboards of the jackaroos’ quarters, preparing for another day’s work on the station.
Dreams in the night were graphic, almost tangible. I’d inhale the salty sweat of my horse and hear the distant bellow of a calf to its mother in the long Mitchell grass. I imagined I could feel the sun’s rays absorbing the perspiration from my body as I rode through the dust and flies of a forty-degree day.
But every morning I opened my eyes to a very different world. I’d be staring at the austere ceiling of the hospital room glowing in blue fluorescent light. The imagined smell of salt and sweat would be instantly drowned in that vague clinical blend of hospital-grade disinfectant and sickness.
I’d remember over and over again that I had been in a car accident. Every morning, it would dawn on me that I was actually lying on my back in a spinal unit with a lump of a body that didn’t move any more.
I don’t remember anyone actually telling me I was a quadriplegic. Perhaps they did and I chose to forget. Looking back, it was probably just as well as my perception at that stage of a quadriplegic was someone who’d lost the use of both arms and legs. If I’d been told in those first few days, ‘Sam, you’re now a quadriplegic, you’ll never walk again, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair and life as you’ve known it will never exist for you again,’ it would have been mind-blowing. Instead, I gradually put the pieces of the jigsaw together over a period of time. Like a sponge sitting in egg white, I slowly absorbed the truth.
In that initial week, it was enough just coming to terms with my accident. I was still very much focussed on getting better and returning to my mates and life in the Territory. Then as the week neared its end, I began to suspect that my stay in this hospital was going to be much longer than I’d imagined.
Time passed surprisingly quickly. To start with I was in the acute ward — which is intensive care in the spinal unit — and the lights were on all the time. It was hard to tell if it was day or night and as my body tried to heal, I drifted in and out of sleep. Meanwhile, my whole world existed in a dome-shaped mirror above my head, a bit like the mirrors used at corners where you can’t see the traffic. As I lay in traction, I saw everything by reflections in this dome, measuring about sixty centimetres across, or horizontally as I lay on my side.
My parents stayed with me most of the first week, then took a brief visit home to get more clothes and collect my brother and sister, who insisted on coming to see me. Looking back, Kate says, ‘I remember walking in and he was lying in the bed and he looked normal, all brown and fit-looking, but his head was shaved and he had these big tongs attached to his head and all this dried blood. I immediately felt sick. I had to go outside because I thought I was going to throw up. I wasn’t teary or emotional … being a very naïve twelve-year-old like most country kids, I don’t think I fully understood.’
Kate found it shattering to see her childhood hero, her idol, reduced to this. While growing up, she and Bill had constantly fought. He’d often bait her with all sorts of pranks, like bombing her in the swimming pool or teasing her into a race to eat their ice-creams. He’d watch her wolf hers down and then slowly eat his in front of her. I was the one she ran to for help or to deliver retribution to Bill. When she went to boarding school for the first time that year, she’d been desperately homesick. I was the one who spoke to her about her constant, teary phone calls to Mum and Dad, telling her to get her act together, and I often wrote her letters while in the Northern Territory.
Bill and Kate had seen me only a couple of weeks before the accident, when I returned to Armidale for the opening of a building at my old school. Kate has a powerful image of me, as I left her at her school dormitory: ‘He signed me back in and I went upstairs and I remember watching him walk across the carpark. I stood at the window and watched him walk all the way across the carpark … it was the last time I saw him walking,’ she said.
For Bill, seeing me in the bed in traction was surreal because, to him, I’d grown into a young man in the time I’d been in the Territory. He saw me lying there, helpless, yet still tanned and muscled, and looking so much older than he remembered.
During that visit, my family stayed overnight with my aunt, Lee McGregor, who lived in Toowong three or four suburbs away. It was approaching the end of the first week since my accident and my mother was feeling the pressure. My aunt drew her attention to the fact that she had her fists permanently clenched. She couldn’t sleep at night and refused to take sleeping pills. She had an awful feeling that something else was wrong with me and often at midnight or in the early hours of the morning she’d ask someone to drive her back to the hospital, so she could see me and make sure I was all right. She wonders now whether she actually had a premonition.
However, the pressures of activities at home were mounting and my parents decided they needed to go back to get better organised for the pattern they could see emerging. It was obvious they would be spending a lot of time with me in hospital, but they had a property to run and my younger brother and sister to take care of as well.
I didn’t want them to go. I knew they couldn’t hang around forever but there was talk of them getting a unit in Brisbane so one or both of them could have periods with me. When they left that morning, Mum was worried. She thought my eyes were wobbly and floating but the staff assured her I was okay. She left for home, reluctantly, an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The last family member to see me that day was my aunt, Lee. She recalls that it was after the staff had moved the skull tongs for the third time because they were hurting me every time I chewed or spoke or moved. Lee said I was a completely different person when she visited me that afternoon. Until then I’d been talkative and joking and trying to be as normal as possible.
‘When I looked at Sam that day, he wasn’t there. That day he just couldn’t be Sam. He was obviously unaware of what was happening around him,’ said Lee. And it terrified her because she’d seen that look before. She’d lost her husband, forty-four-year-old John McGregor, to a mystery virus only a couple of years earlier. ‘I went home and rang Ian [Mum’s brother] and told him I was worried. There was something really wrong. Sam’s eyes were going back into his eye sockets and he was only semi-conscious. When the nurses came in, I said, ‘What’s happened?’ They said it had been the reaction to the change of tongs …
‘Perhaps my vision of what had happened was coloured because I’d seen John in the same situation only two years earlier but I’m also intuitive in lots of ways, and I knew something was wrong, terribly wrong,’ said Lee.
Sometime that night I was lying half awake, on my side, still in the acute care section of the spinal unit, facing two empty beds and the nurses’ station. Suddenly I felt an overwhelming giddiness, as though I’d had one or two beers too many. My head started spinning and I felt like I was going to pass out. I fought to keep control, fear rising inside me. I thought, ‘What’s happening to me … what on earth is going on?’ But then the feeling subsided and I drifted off.
The nurse in charge of acute that night will never forget what happened. She walked across to my bed, number 37, to wake me and get me ready to be turned onto my back — part of the regular routine of spending four hours on my back, and two on each side in rotation to prevent pressure sores. She couldn’t wake me. She yelled out to the other nurse, ‘Quick, ring medical emergency … now!’
She drew the curtains around my bed and frantically pressed the foot levers on the big electric bed I was lying in, rotating me onto my back. ‘Breathe, you bastard. Breathe!’ she yelled at me. All the while, she was pressing her hands to my chest to make sure air was still flowing in and out of my lungs. I noticed her face above me, and wondered what in the hell she was doing. But someone was looking down on me that day and my lungs kept going.
Within seconds the emergency team arrived and took over. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing there, why they were all looking at me. After some discussion, they decided to take me for an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). I was aware of what was happening the whole time, and I remember wondering why all these people were standing around my bed. By then there was no fear or pain or panic. The dizziness disappeared as quickly as it came.
As they wheeled me out of the spinal unit, I was struggling to understand what they were doing. I wondered if they were taking me to the morgue. Perhaps they think I’m dead.
By then, Mum and Dad had driven the five hours home, unpacked and started the nightly routine. It was a freezing cold July evening and they’d lit a fire in the sitting room. Mum was trying to cook a hot meal in between phone calls. The phone was ringing non-stop as friends and family discovered they were home and wanted to find out how I was faring.
The phone rang yet again. The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar. ‘Mrs Bailey … it’s Sister Griffith here … from Princess Alexandra Hospital. I’m afraid Sam’s condition has deteriorated markedly and I think you’d better come straight back. Don’t waste any time. We’re worried he mightn’t even last the night. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’
This phone call was far worse than the one from the Sister at Camooweal. Mum put the phone down and screamed out, ‘Quickly! We’ve got to get back!’
That was all Dad needed to hear to spur him into action. Immediately he was in the process of putting out the fire, throwing smouldering logs of wood onto the lawn and dousing them in water. Mum threw the vegetable water onto the smoking remains in the fireplace. She hurled the food into the garden bed outside.
Bill and Kate demanded to be allowed to go to Brisbane. Kate said, ‘I didn’t want to be bundled off knowing something serious was happening, so we all went.’
The task of driving through the dark for five hours to Brisbane dawned on them: Mum and Dad were exhausted, emotionally and physically. They’d hardly slept all week and had just driven all the way back to Croppa Creek. So they called my uncle, Ian McGregor, in Warialda. He dropped everything and arrived at Bardin an hour later. The five of them set off about 9pm with Ian at the wheel — and facing the very real prospect that I mightn’t be alive when they arrived.
They walked into the intensive care unit at about 2am to find me barely conscious, attached to tubes and monitors, with a ventilator in my mouth to help me breathe. My mouth was red raw and bleeding. I can’t imagine what a shock seeing me must have been — but at least I was alive.
When I regained consciousness, I realised that I had been moved from the acute ward in the spinal unit to the intensive care unit of the hospital. Mum and Dad were at my side and I tried to talk, and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t. It was a strange experience, like being inside a bubble. I could see and hear everything around me, but I couldn’t get through to them.
Later I found out I’d suffered an ischaemic episode (inadequate supply of blood) to the cerebellum, or pons — the area of the brain which controls co-ordination, including eye control, swallow and motor co-ordination — due to damage of the vertebral artery. In layman’s terms I’d suffered a stroke, and scans showed that while I’d only suffered one episode, it affected two areas of my brain. I lost the ability to move my eyes to the sides and they were no longer parallel. I’d also completely lost the use of my already partly debilitated left arm.
But my parents weren’t giving up on me. They were worried that if they all arrived together in the middle of the night, I might panic and think there was something seriously wrong. So they came one or two at a time, trying to be bright, telling me what was happening at Bardin but not knowing whether I was absorbing the information.
To make way for the constant stream of medical staff monitoring me, it was decided that Mum, Dad and Kate would spend the remaining few hours of the night at the Red Cross emergency accommodation in the hospital grounds, while Ian and Bill went to stay with Lee at Toowong. For Mum, Dad and Kate, the warm welcome and the piping hot cup of tea from the wonderful Red Cross volunteers more than made up for the unusual experience of bedding down on the floor side-by-side with a group of strangers. But everyone there had a common bond and every time the phone rang, each person froze and waited to see who would be summoned. Fortunately it was never Mum and Dad.
Next day I was still in grave danger and my family took turns to be at my bedside. Bill sat there for hours. My sixteen-year-old brother was the practical joker of the family and sporting hero at boarding school and I couldn’t even ask him how his footy was going. Mum, Dad and Kate came and went. When they weren’t sitting with me they paced the hospital grounds or sat in the little open-air cafeteria, playing with mugs of tasteless coffee. No one felt like eating. There was a chapel in the grounds but Mum felt she couldn’t go running in asking God for help when she hadn’t really paid Him much attention during the past few years.
That day the doctors explained to my parents what had happened and recommended using an anticoagulant. They said the best treatment was soluble aspirin. If that didn’t work then I wasn’t expected to last another night. They were also worried that I’d lost the ability to gag and swallow — which meant I’d need to be fed by tubes — and thought I may have suffered some brain damage. If I survived, I was likely to be a vegetable — no legs or trunk, only one arm, brain damage and unable to swallow or feed myself. Not exactly what Mum and Dad wanted to hear, but they weren’t giving up.
That evening Dad came to say goodnight — on his own. Much later, I found out why. My doctor from the spinal unit, Dr Bill Davies, had called my parents into his office. ‘Sam’s not out of the woods yet by any means, he’d said. ‘The next few hours will be crucial. I think you should both go in and say goodnight, just in case …’
For the first time, Mum’s courage failed her. ‘I can’t say goodbye,’ she told Dad. ‘There’s no way I’m kissing him goodbye.’ In fact, she couldn’t even go back into my room. She said later, ‘I couldn’t walk in there thinking this was the last time I was seeing him, which seemed extraordinary when we’d been with him virtually day in, day out until that point.’
It was Dad who found the strength on that occasion. When he walked out of the emergency room after saying goodnight to me, he told Mum, ‘He’s really peaceful … he looks all right. Don’t worry. He’ll still be there in the morning.’
Why had he felt so confident I’d make it through that night, I asked him later. He said he walked into the room and told me, ‘Righto, Sam, it’s time to go. I’ll say goodnight …’ And this little weak hand came out from under the sheet and gave the thumbs-up sign. ‘I knew then you’d be all right.’
I was lucky. In their different ways and at varying times throughout my ordeal, my parents both gave me the courage and strength that I needed to get through. Mum says, ‘Whenever I couldn’t cope with something, Graham always had enormous strength … it’s been like that all the way through our marriage.’
Dad explained to me that he was absolutely devastated when I had my accident but he felt he shouldn’t show it because that wouldn’t have helped me. ‘I suddenly realised that his life was destroyed, in a sense, at that early stage and I thought, “I can’t fall in a heap. I’ve got to wear it as best I can.” I had to put the anger and frustration out of my mind. I couldn’t cope with the problem — help Sam and look after Kate and Bill as well, they had to share the problem too — if I fell in a hole.’
Dad took the attitude, ‘I had to say, “Well it’s happened, I just have to get on with it” — as Sam was. He wasn’t falling in a heap and he was the one with the problem, so he inspired us to cope.’
I guess in a way we all took strength and inspiration from each other and that’s how we got through.
Perhaps a miracle happened that night because I was still there in the morning. Dad had been right. But Mum was worried that she couldn’t communicate with me and was determined to find out if I had in fact suffered brain damage. She noticed that I could blink. It gave her an idea. She told me she would ask me some questions and I was to blink for the right answer.
‘Am I the Queen?’
I did nothing.
‘Am I the Pope?’
I did nothing.
‘Am I your mother?’
I blinked.
‘Am I wearing a green shirt?’
Nothing.
‘Am I wearing a spotty shirt?’
I didn’t respond.
‘Am I wearing a striped shirt?’
Again I blinked.
Mum was elated. She knew, perhaps as only a mother could, that my brain was okay.
After lying in a bed constantly, with my head on a pillow, the back of my head was driving me insane with itchiness. You can imagine how frustrating it was, unable to communicate and unable to scratch my head. Mum sensed something was wrong and asked whether my head was itchy. I blinked and she scratched my head. She then disappeared and returned with a bottle of baby oil, which she rubbed into the back of my head. It was heaven, absolute pure bliss.
The following morning they were all back. It was heartbreaking for them visiting me that day, partly because my mouth around the ventilator looked so red and sore. The ventilator was needed straight after my attack — I’d lost seventy-five per cent of my lung capacity through my spinal injury and the strokes made it even more difficult to breathe. But two days on, I was in absolute bloody agony. Somehow I managed to raise my arm a bit and point towards my mouth. Mum finally got the message but when she asked the nurses and a young doctor to take out the tube, they said they’d have to speak to the senior doctor in charge.
Nothing happened. My mother asked again … and again. Still she was told, yes, they would do something but twenty-four hours later they hadn’t. I was getting to the end of my tether and repeatedly pointing, pleading with my parents to get something done. The young doctor on duty promised, ‘Yes, we’ll take it out soon. We’ll definitely take it out this afternoon.’
Mum and Dad returned later that day. Still I lay there red raw and aching, ventilator firmly in place. It was too much for Mum, who screamed, ‘If someone doesn’t come and take this thing out of his mouth, I’ll pull all her tubes out!’ — indicating to the unfortunate young woman in the next bed, who had received a kidney transplant.
She wouldn’t have done it, I’m sure, but no doubt the poor woman had a few anxious moments — and the gobsmacked nursing staff certainly took Mum seriously. The startled young doctor on duty assured her the ventilator would definitely be out by morning. When Mum arrived next morning, the staff were in the process of removing it from my mouth. She suspects they saw her coming. She might have been right.
By now, Mum and Dad had reached what was for them the lowest point in my entire journey as a quadriplegic.
On one occasion, as they were returning to the spinal unit, they came face to face with George Browning, the Bishop of Brisbane, whose son Richard had been at boarding school with me at The Armidale School (TAS). He was dressed in his ceremonial purple vest, white collar and the chains of his office, along with his suit. He was obviously going in the same direction and Mum panicked.
‘You’re not going to see Sam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, please don’t. If he sees you leaning over him with all those chains, he’ll think he’s doomed. He mustn’t know he’s so sick. He mustn’t know.’
Bishop Browning was stunned. He didn’t quite know what to say. ‘Libby … I must admit, I’ve never thought of it that way.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you coming, but I just don’t want Sam to think there’s something wrong. I’d love you to come again … but later on, when he’s okay,’ said Mum.
Bishop Browning didn’t come and visit me that day. He came back a week or so later, and when he did he told Mum, ‘Libby, that was a great lesson to me. It never occurred to me that my visit might be interpreted that way.’ Down the track, we all laughed about it a lot. It must have been quite a spectacle, my mother telling the bishop not to dare go near her son because I might think he was delivering my last rites.
Bishop Browning’s son, Richard, who became a regular visitor, was with his father that day. He told me they left — having not seen me, of course — deeply concerned for my wellbeing, but with little doubt about where my determination and directness of speech came from!
Occasionally, events in our lives are unexplainable. Unknown to me, the boys at TAS were quite affected by news of my accident. My former house master, Jim (Jungle) Graham, later told me, ‘The effect of your accident was most obvious in Tyrell House [the boarding house in which I had been house captain two years earlier]. The boys talked about it and wanted to send a card and all that sort of thing. After a couple of days in discussion, a couple of them suggested — because we knew things were pretty desperate — they wanted to have a chapel service.’
The service was arranged for Tyrell House boarders and anyone else who wanted to come. It took place one night after the evening meal. Jungle takes up the story: ‘The boys wanted to manage it, and the chaplain was involved. One of the boys who wasn’t a good organist wanted to play the organ, so obviously he did. It was strange. There was a great depression, which was almost tangible, a collective depression that seemed to go through all the boys. The fact the boy who played the organ played badly was almost symbolic of the general feeling, which is a very strange thing to say.
‘The boys were very focussed. It seemed to be an expression of how serious it all was. Now I don’t know if some of the lights in the chapel were not working or if the electricity wasn’t up to its normal power, but the chapel seemed darker than usual. It was most extraordinary. Everything was subdued. The chapel seemed darker, there was this very heavy feeling of worry and concern and they all seemed to mix together.’
After talking to my mother, Jungle discovered the service took place on the same night I suffered my stroke and my life hung in the balance.
I spent twelve days in the intensive care unit, or ICU. During that time a doctor performed a tracheotomy — surgically inserting a tube into my trachea — to prevent everything in my mouth flowing into my lungs. It was necessary because I’d lost the ability to swallow. Gradually my health improved.
The doctors often brought young trainees into the ICU as part of their medical education, and from time to time I was aware of a circle of people around my bed. The doctors would tell them what had happened to me, an impersonal account that made me feel like a specimen under a microscope.
When I popped into the ICU months later, the head of the unit was amazed to see that I could point out where I’d been. He couldn’t believe I had been conscious the whole time. I reminded him he needed to be careful in situations like mine. Some of the comments made around my bed might have had a huge negative effect on how I coped. They assumed I had been totally away with the pixies and oblivious to everything that was happening. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Two weeks after I’d been rushed to the ICU, on the verge of death, I clawed my way back to the spinal unit to start the long road back to the real world. When I left intensive care, I still hadn’t regained control of my eyes or my left arm and everyone, except my mother, was probably wondering if I’d suffered brain damage. But I remember it all; the whole experience is as clear as a bell.