I had to miss another WNBA season. Brian had left and the new Seattle coach Jenny Boucek had flown over to China to see me play. Jenny had been assistant coach under both Anne and Brian, she’d been there throughout my Storm career. She’s lovely, she’s very religious and has a heart of gold, she’s another great friend. Jenny was sitting there with Mum when my knee went and saw it all unfold, she was shattered for me, she knew exactly what had happened, and Seattle also understood. I wanted to get a couple more championships for Seattle and end my career like an athlete should—a professional athlete who’s had a career like mine should end on top of the world, on their own terms. But there’s nothing you can do about injuries like that. Seattle realised there was no point in pushing it anymore, I couldn’t play, that was obvious.
As soon as I got home I went to see a specialist and he organised surgery the following day. He went in, repaired the meniscus insertion—where the meniscus, a thin fibrous cartilage, attaches to the bone—and cleaned out the bone chip. It looked like my knee was good and wasn’t going to deteriorate further. As well as my knee, my left Achilles, which had been bad for a couple of years, had to be fixed. Interestingly enough, my entire right leg, everything on my right side, from my back down to my foot, was injured. With my left Achilles being so bad for so long, I sometimes wonder whether I was putting pressure on it by favouring my right side.
After the repair my knee seemed fine. My Achilles had been fixed, and I was training to get back on court, both for the Capitals and for the Opals in the Rio Olympics, which would be my fifth Games. But I had the upcoming FIBA World Championship to play first.
When it was time for me to start training again I was cleared to do some light shooting, which was a relief. But then, while practising at home with a friend, I took a jump shot, a regular three-pointer, and felt the same knee crack again, and it all came apart. Straight back to the doctors for more tests and more surgery. When they went in to look at it, it wasn’t doing as well as they’d hoped or expected, and I had torn the meniscus at the insertion again.
I rehabbed my knee but it kept swelling, and it seemed that whenever I tried to get back on court for either the Australian team or for Canberra, I would be sidelined. I always felt under the pump to come back, I hated the thought of letting everyone down. I would push myself, push myself, and then something would happen again and I’d have to start all over. My knee just wasn’t right, and I finally called it a day on making the 2014 world championships, and put my energy into getting ready for Canberra again.
I ended up playing just six games in all during that 2014/2015 season for the Capitals. In mid-December, I played only 15 minutes of a game against Adelaide before coming off, and had to take the following game against West Coast off to rest my knee, but I did manage to come back and play the next five games. The last game I played for the Caps that year was against the Melbourne Boomers, we won and had to win one more game after that to get into the playoffs. But after that game, my knee swelled so much that the doctors told me that I couldn’t play any more games that season, they needed to go in and fix it again. Going to practices, watching the girls train and play in the finals, was just miserable, I wanted to be there for the team, for the players. Basketball was such a large part of my life, I just wanted to get back out and play.
I ended up going to see a couple of different surgeons to get their opinion, because I just wasn’t getting back to playing. I had another scan, and after yet another operation the surgeon said it was fine, I just needed to strengthen it—but the pain I was in, the way it would blow up, was different from a normal flare-up. Canberra were paying so much money to try and get me back on court, I felt such a huge obligation.
In June 2015, to my surprise, I was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). I have no idea who nominated me, no clue. I got the letter telling me I’d been nominated and asking if I accepted the nomination just after returning from China, and I was thinking, ‘What does this mean? What exactly is this, and why me?’. It was a huge honour, but who, why, how?
There was a big awards ceremony at the governor-general’s residence in Canberra right before the Capitals’ 2015/2016 season was about to start, and Mum and Dad were there. My name was announced and I had to walk up and stand before Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove. I’d first met him and his wife Lynne years before, when Peter was Chief of Army and had given an inspirational speech to the Capitals before a championship run. Lynne Cosgrove is amazing, I love her, the warmest, kindest woman, and I affectionately call her Auntie Lynne. It was extra special having Peter as governor-general present the AO, topped off by my parents getting to meet the Cosgroves. It was really lovely, having that familiarity with them, that personal connection.
I was back training with Ross in Canberra at the AIS—I’d do two to three hours a day of weight training, shooting and cardio, then I’d go to the physio. Ross knew my body really well by this stage, but the national team trainer was there too. She had to be a part of it, because of the national Olympic program and with Rio coming up. The rehab was so painful, and the muscle in my knee wasn’t getting any stronger, and we collectively thought it was due to my old hip injury, because my hip was aching all the time as well. All through this period I was on really heavy painkillers, I was taking a lot of stuff just to get through the day, every day.
I was training for Canberra in November 2015, and at the end of one of those sessions I was on the sideline in tears. I didn’t know what was wrong with my knee, it had blown up straight away, I’d been on court maybe 45 minutes and I couldn’t keep going, it felt red hot, it was burning inside my knee, and it was sort of my last attempt at getting on the court for Canberra that season. I then tried to come back after Christmas and play. I pushed myself, but my knee was just so painful, it really didn’t even feel like part of my body anymore, it kept swelling up. For nearly three months I was having to get my knee drained once a week to remove the fluid from it. My medical team would put a needle in and drain it, but every time I went on court it would blow up again, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was so much fluid in the joint and around my knee. I would still play, but the pain was unbelievable, it was so inhibiting, and it would actually take me a week just to recover from being on court.
I went back to Dr Young independently and he said my knee was really loose, and that he thought the anterolateral ligament had torn a little over the course of all the flareups. So another scope was booked to tighten it. When he went in, he found that I’d ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), it was three-quarters torn. When I woke up after surgery Dr Young came to see me and told me it was my ACL, and I remember texting the Capitals folk and letting them know, and from then on, for whatever reason, our relationship deteriorated.
Graffy came to me at one stage and suggested that perhaps I should retire, and I took immediate offence, I didn’t want to hear it, it should be my decision to make when I was ready. I didn’t want to be retired that way, nor did I think it was her place to suggest it. I was back to my stubborn old self and I still held out hope that I would make it back for the Rio Olympics a few months away. Then Graffy said to me, ‘We’ll pay you out, and you can go, you’re not happy’. She was right, I wasn’t happy, I was miserable—it felt like my life, my identity, was disintegrating with my knee. I didn’t want to be around the court and watch the team train anymore, I’d been doing that for nearly two years.
Both the Canberra Capitals and I decided to end my contract. It was seven months out from Rio, and the Australian coach Brendan Joyce still wanted me to play in the Olympics, he was so supportive, doing everything he could to help me, he threw me a lifeline to cling to when I was feeling so down about it all. I hadn’t been playing regularly, I’d had so many surgical procedures, so many on that right knee alone, and all under general anaesthetic, and I still needed painkillers just to move. But Rio became my goal, I was going to play in my fifth Olympics.
I went to the coast to stay with Mum and Dad while I was recovering from the ACL surgery and decided one day to get my legs waxed. It was a Saturday morning, and a short time after I returned to my parents’ place my knee joint blew up, and I thought I’d reinjured it again, but couldn’t work out how. My knee was hot and achy, and it was getting more and more sore as the day progressed. By that night the pain was terrible, and my knee looked fat. All of the swelling made my joint tight, and then the pain got real. By Sunday, I thought I must have re-ruptured it or something, but didn’t know how because I hadn’t been doing anything strenuous. I managed to get on to Dr Young, who suggested that it sounded like I was getting an infection and that I should get back and see him. I didn’t believe that was the case, I couldn’t see how it was remotely possible, I’d never had an infection in my life, he must be wrong.
It was Sunday, Mum and Dad had friends over, I couldn’t drive, so I just left it. I didn’t want to put my parents out because they’d already done so much for me and they were enjoying time with their friends, it could wait. By Monday, I started getting sick, I couldn’t eat, I was getting the sweats and I thought I was coming down with some sort of bug, and again I left it. By Wednesday, I needed to speak with the surgeon again, who was fairly cranky with me at this stage and told me to get to the AIS as soon as possible so they could look at my knee and take some blood tests. Mum and Dad drove me to the AIS, the doctor did the blood tests, and then they drove me to the house I was renting from Paulie at the time. I was there on my own when the doctor from the AIS came to the house and told me to fly to Melbourne to see the surgeon straight away, I had a staphylococcal infection. They think that possibly the leg wax around the healing surgical wound had brought on the infection, but I was the one who had left it so long, it was my fault that it hadn’t been seen to before. If I’d gone on the Sunday like the surgeon had originally suggested, I probably wouldn’t have needed surgery, I would have just gone on antibiotics, but I was in hospital for a week and ended up having another two operations. They had to clean it all up, my knee joint had literally turned to jelly, it was already really sore from the previous surgeries and it was taking longer to heal than normal.
I knew, there was a part of me that knew, that my career was probably over.