From Strength to Strength Read online

They managed to get Ben out of his car alright. He had no broken bones or serious injuries, although his face was badly cut up, leaving many scars.

  I realised many years later that the nice man directing the scene of the accident saved my life. He would not let me be moved for fear of spinal injury and kept me calm during the long wait for the ambulance, talking to me about anything from dancing and tennis to flying.

  Even though we were very close to Wollongong, we were just inside the St George district, so by the time this was sorted out and an ambulance dispatched, many anxious hours had passed. It was fortunate I was not bleeding from an artery or something. There was no pain—that came later. However there was a feeling of apprehension, and now and then the fear would increase but that wonderful man would see it on my face and start talking until he could see interest replace the fear. He told me about flying his plane in New Guinea, and that he was a first aid officer with St John’s Ambulance. I wish I could thank him today, if only words would be adequate.

  I remember the emergency ward, doctors, x-ray machines, hushed talking, blackness, my parents arriving, more blackness. Then, finally, waking up many, many days later.

  When my parents arrived at the hospital, Mum could see me through the partly open door. She said I was a mass of blood from head to foot. When I was thrown from the car onto the road the gravel cut me to pieces as I rolled and skidded. I still have scars today from that tumble. She could not see my face, and said she sat there and prayed that my face was not damaged. Later she thought what a stupid thing to pray for, but by this time she was also suffering from shock.

  The doctors told my parents I had five fractures in the pelvis, a crushed left hip, and an extensively damaged left knee—actually half of it was missing. There was a possibility of internal bleeding, and if this occurred things would be grim. The next two days would tell if they had to operate. The message was, prepare for the worst. All this time I was under sedation to counteract shock. After two days the doctors were pleased to announce no signs of internal injury. However, shock was now the prime worry, so more sedation. Finally I opened my eyes and they announced to my parents that I would live.

  I was flat on my back on a board, with no pillow and with flannel supports around my hips like a diaper. I had no feeling in my body from the waist down. I could not lift my head as my pelvis was cracked at the base of the spine. My hair was shaved where stitching had been done and the rest had fallen out because of the massive doses of drugs given to me to counteract shock. I was gravel rash from neck to toes, and the only thing I could move without pain was my arms. But I was alive.

  The next panic was the left leg. The doctors were concerned as the leg had no movement at all and no knee or bottom of foot reflexes. After the first month, and still no improvement, they voiced their concern to my parents. There was the possibility of losing the leg. Mum and Dad said no in very positive terms. The doctors said that if gangrene developed, they would then have to remove the leg and possibly the hip—I could even die.

  My parents said they would take the chance and wait. To this day I am eternally grateful to them for taking this stand, as a doctor’s opinion was almost law in those days. They said they would rather lose me than make me face life at nineteen without a leg. As a mother, I now realise how very brave they were. It is a decision I would never want to have to make.

  Several months passed before the leg showed any signs of life. As it had no feeling, the trainee nurses would use it to practise on whenever I needed an injection. Then, one day, as a trainee jabbed at it with the needle, I let out a tremendous yell. The leg improved from then on. It was three years before it worked normally, but eventually after lots of training and exercise it came good and is still performing quite well today, considering its background.

  I can’t say anything in favour of the hospital except that I was very, very pleased to leave. However, my time there did teach me how to stand up for myself.

  Because I was paralysed from the waist down, toilet procedure was via enema and catheter. The enema procedure we will leave to the imagination. The catheter, which was permanent, emptied into a small kidney dish, balanced on the side of the bed. This was so that regular checks could be made for blood in the urine. Only the checks were not regular and the kidney dish would overflow onto the bed. The matron would then order the sheets to be changed and that’s when the problem occurred. If the nurses did not lift together, and they didn’t, the pain of the bones shifting was like being torn apart. It would completely take my breath away and I would start choking, so they would lower me back onto the bed until I regained my breath, then back up in the air, and more pain. This would take ten to fifteen minutes, depending on how many times I choked and had to be put down. Constant pain, just because a nurse did not check the kidney dish.

  After going through this painful exercise a few times, I had had enough so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I could not see the dish, as I could not lift my head, so I very slowly felt down my side, picked up the dish and emptied its contents onto the floor. The matron would severely reprimand the nurse responsible and instruct her to mop the floor. The nurse would always manage to bump the bed more than necessary, but compared to being hoisted in the air by eight nurses all lifting at different times, this pain was negligible. Soon after that the checks became regular.

  There was another problem I had to deal with there which was not painful, but very, very embarrassing. Apparently I was something of a medical freak. The doctors told Mum that my bones were extraordinarily strong and that most young girls with my injuries would have died—the pelvis would have shattered into the internal organs causing massive internal bleeding, whereas my bones just cracked and stayed in place. Because I was such a phenomenon, every day some doctor with a group of medical students in tow would assemble at the foot of my bed to study my bone structure. Because of the difficulty in lifting, I had just my flannel diaper and a hospital gown draped over my chest. There was a large hoop over the broken pelvic area and all was covered by a bed sheet.

  The doctor delivering the address of the day would remove the sheet, gown and diaper and discuss my bone structure before them, without the least concern for the nineteen-year-old girl dying of embarrassment behind closed eyes.

  When I realised this was going to be a regular event and not just a ‘one off’, I told my mother. She was horrified and immediately wanted to go to war with the matron for allowing it to happen.

  Still flushed with my success over the kidney dish, I asked her if I could handle it, pointing out that I had to reside there for a fair while. She agreed, but told me if it was not settled by her next visit, she would take matters into her hands.

  One of the few happy moments I had in that hospital occurred that afternoon.

  ‘Now gentlemen, I want you to observe this particular bone . . .’ Not a word to me, the doctor just assembled his students around the foot of the bed and started his lecture.

  ‘No, they won’t!’ I said with a great deal more conviction than I thought I possessed.

  He stopped, turned, glared at me, and then continued.

  ‘No they will not observe my bone structure,’ I said in a much louder voice. ‘You are not my doctors and you have no right examining me!’

  ‘Young lady, this is a medical examination, do be quiet!’ He was obviously not accustomed to being challenged by someone so young.

  ‘If you are not all out of here on the count of three I will start screaming!’

  He hesitated, but the students took flight. The rush for the door saw a jumble of arms, legs, stethoscopes and displaced dignity. They managed to untangle themselves and be gone by the count of three. My hand edged down the bed, found the kidney dish and slowly emptied the contents on to the floor. I folded my hands across my chest and felt the happiest I had since the accident.

  Up to this point in my life, I had always been protected by my family. This was the first time in my life I had been away from home and alone
, and the first time I had had to fight for my rights. After the kidney dish and this last incident, the nurses decided I wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, most of them started treating me like a human being. The matron . . . well, even the nurses couldn’t get along with her.

  During that painful and boring stay, I learned how very powerful the mind really is. I had been given so many drugs to pull me through the shock period that for weeks afterwards I could have little or no drugs for pain. I was only allowed painkillers twice in twenty-four hours, so the hours of pain were long and continuous. I suppose you could say I perfected self-hypnosis. I would practise at night, as the days had too many interruptions. It would take me hours, but finally I would not feel the pain and would drift off to sleep. After much practice, I could reach this desired state in about forty minutes.

  Once I left that hospital my improvement was dramatic. My brother Tod made me a contraption he called a bookholder. Because I was flat on my back, my arms would ache after only a few minutes of holding a book in the air and I would have to continually rest them. Tod’s invention held the book so all I had to do was turn the pages. I read many, many books that year, which helped to pass the time. My hair slowly grew back in uneven tufts, making me look like a topsy doll.

  Finally, the x-rays gave the all clear, and I was told to go ahead and walk. I had dreamed every day since the accident of getting out of bed and walking. Now the time had arrived and I was terrified! I broke out in a cold teeth-chattering sweat. No one but no one could convince me I would not fall down and break my pelvis again.

  Dad took over. The first step was to sit me up. I had been flat on my back for over eight months and the effect of sitting straight up was devastating. The room started spinning, I lost all sense of balance, and started vomiting and blacking out at the same time. It was back to flat on my back. The doctor said my head could only be raised a few inches at a time, so gradually I got to sitting without vomiting. Walking was another matter altogether. My muscles had not been used for so long that they would not hold my weight. With two people supporting and dragging me, I was totally exhausted after shuffling just fifteen feet.

  My father was determined to prove the doctors’ many grim predictions wrong. According to them I could do no strenuous exercise or sport, except maybe golf in a few years. I probably wouldn’t ever be able to have children and I would almost certainly suffer from arthritis and require a constant supply of painkillers and other drugs. All in all I would lead a very sedentary life. Dad said rubbish.

  I would stand between two chairs looking at him a few feet away. ‘Don’t give up, Sara, beat it.’ Very firm, no dramatics, just quiet resolute encouragement. With muscles cramping and twitching and pain consuming me, I would struggle to force the muscles to move my legs.

  Each day saw improvement until I could stand without the chairs. Then I knew the terror of a baby’s first step. I had known how to walk, run and jump for nineteen years, but the terror I experienced taking that first step is indescribable. I take my hat off to babies.

  More cold sweats, shakes, chickening out, Dad quietly encouraging, and then finally the first steps alone. Holding my breath, and gritting my teeth, I dragged one leg after the other until I reached the other side of the room where, shaking and laughing, I collapsed in a heap with perspiration dripping from my fingertips.

  When I realised nothing was broken, I was up again and walking till I finally fell asleep in a chair. Once out of that bed I was in no hurry to go back for a while.

  Within weeks I could walk without pain or exhaustion, not without a limp and other minor problems, but a reasonable imitation of the real thing. Against all doctors’ predictions, I was on the road back.

  My next major objective was to get back onto the tennis court. With a racquet in one hand and a walking stick in the other, I raced around the court like a three-legged rabbit. Serving was not on the agenda but I was dynamite at the net. Over the next few years tennis was of great benefit in helping my leg to mend. If I did not exercise daily my leg would stiffen up so badly that I could not walk. If I had to walk up stairs, I would turn sideways, step up one at a time with my good leg and drag my left leg after me.

  I played tournaments as soon as I thought I was fit enough, but it quickly became evident that my leg would not stand up to the pressures of competitive play. It would usually give out in the second set and if the match went to a third set, I spent most of the time on the ground. The leg would just collapse under me. There was absolutely no chance of singles. I tried, but the embarrassment of continually falling down soon convinced me to give it up. I had to accept that I would never be able to achieve my life ambition to win centre-court Wimbledon.

  Suddenly there was no direction in my life, nothing to aim for, no star to reach. Ben and I had long drifted apart and depression set in. I slumped lower and lower. Mum took me to our doctor, who told her what Dad had said all along, ‘She must do something to interest her until she can learn to accept the fact that championship tennis will no longer be her whole life.’ Easy to say, but I was still clinging to the hope that somehow my leg would eventually be fit again.

  Nevertheless, it was out into the work a day world—a job to occupy the mind. I found myself sitting in front of an electronic accounting machine taking an aptitude test. I was given a few basic instructions on how the machine operated and what it could achieve, then it was up to me. I got the job. With nine other girls I was to form a field team for Remington Rand. Training took place in the workshop, with the mechanics, from the ground up. Remington Rand offered a training and relief service to companies which bought its machines. When a firm’s operator went on holidays, or was away sick, we would step in. We were very busy at the end of the financial year when companies needed the yearly profit and loss delivered by a certain date. We trained new operators, transferred written accounts to the electronic system, balanced the books, and handed the working system over.

  As I became more experienced, I was sent further afield. With a senior operator, also female, I helped install, or partly install, the wage system at the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme. This was quite an experience as there were no women in the whole place. It was a very big sale and when the request to install the machines and system was accepted this problem was not even thought of.

  When we arrived the accountant groaned, ‘Oh no, women!’ We looked at him, puzzled, but when he explained about the hundreds of men on the job site who had not seen women for months, we wanted to leave there and then. There were many frantic calls back to the Sydney office but the problem was time. We had to train ten operators and have a complete wage system up and running by a certain date in order to fulfil the contract. As for our safety, it was just bad luck. So life settled down to day after day of training operators. Every evening we were whisked back to our rooms before we were seen, and had to remain there until the next day. We didn’t even dare venture out for a walk. At the pace the operators were progressing, it looked as if we would be there for months. Some days it was easier just to do the work ourselves but that was not getting us anywhere.

  The problem was that all the operators were men. I wore out many wooden rulers slapping the knuckles of wandering hands, and learning concentration was zero. The men we were trying to teach didn’t want to learn. First, they were not interested in accounting machines, but more importantly when they were trained we would leave and then they would not be able to ogle us all day.

  The accountant had given us large oversized grey workcoats to wear and we were told never to remove them outside of our rooms. To say we were slightly nervous is an understatement.

  Of course, like all secrets, it finally leaked out that there were two women in the office block. I looked out the window one day to see hundreds of men just staring up at the window. More frantic calls to Sydney but there was no response. So we threatened to just leave. They then sent two mechanics to guard us and the mechanics stood outside our room each night.

  Finally, one
night some men smuggled alcohol into the camp and there was an ugly fight outside our door. We piled all the furniture against the door and window and spent a miserable night sitting in the middle of the floor. The next morning we departed with the injured mechanics who had defended our honour. One was quite badly hurt. The system was then installed by mechanics.

  After that experience I decided field work was not for me. Besides, I was playing district tennis at nights and on weekends, so I did not want to be away from Sydney. Luckily, one of the teachers in the classroom was leaving and my boss asked me if I would like to take over her job. It was very interesting work as it involved teaching many different systems to different students, and I was always doing something new. I settled in quickly.

  CHAPTER 3

  1959-1960

  At twenty-three years old life was good. I was coming to terms with the new direction my life was taking, I had an interesting job and I was playing district tennis, not the tennis I had dreamed of, but nevertheless good tennis. There were some nice men in my life and one relationship was developing into something special. I had met Neville on my second job for Remington when I was installing an electronic accounting system for the Leeton Rice Co-op. He worked for a company which sold farm equipment and we were staying in the same hotel. Then suddenly life took a turn.

  I was sunbaking on the deck of a sailing boat at Mosman Marina, when this very Virginian accent said, ‘Permission to come aboard . . . ma’am?’

  I sat up and standing before me was a tall American, judging by the accent, with the best blue eyes since Paul Newman. He was dressed in a very English suit topped off with a Homburg, carrying an umbrella, and holding his shoes in his hand.

  Without waiting for permission he stepped aboard. His eyes travelled up and down my body repeatedly, so much so that I reached for my wrap. He realised my intention and went to help. Then, despite having just bragged about his prowess in sailing, he tripped on the cleat and landed on top of me, flat on the deck.