Inner Compass

On a warm sunny day in April 1991, I was out horse riding with Miss Virgo and a small group of riders at the Fox Ground Riding School, a few kilometres south of Kiama. Wanting to keep the sun off my face, I chose not to wear a helmet that day and put on my Akubra hat instead. Miss Virgo and I were getting more than a little bored with the other riders' slow, beginner pace. We both wanted to stretch out and enjoy a good canter or gallop, so the riding school instructor offered to let us leave the beginner group and have a run across an unfamiliar paddock on our way back to the stables. I was unsure of the terrain myself. However, I soon realised the horses knew the way home as they had picked up speed considerably. Competitive Miss Virgo thought I was trying to race her; no, I was trying to slow my horse down in the unfamiliar paddock. A fence appeared in the distance, and we were travelling way too fast to stop before we hit the fence. My only instinct was to turn left before we collided with the barbed-wire fence. Miss Virgo and I flew over and down an embankment with a 2-metre drop. We both fell off our horses, landing hard, with the horses continuing their bolt home to the stables. Miss Virgo sprained a wrist and was ok. For me, well, my story begins here. I landed on my head, hitting a rock, and then I had an epileptic seizure. Lying where I landed, I was conscious to sound, hearing people’s voices, but could not see anything. I don’t remember how long it took for the ambulance paramedics to arrive, but I do remember them asking me a few basic questions. I then passed out cold into a coma. I was transported to Nowra Hospital by ambulance, where a helicopter and a Neurosurgeon were awaiting my transportation to a Sydney Hospital. Miss Virgo and Mr Aquarius had the uncomfortable task of visiting my parents to tell them of the horse-riding accident. 18 hours later, I opened my eyes in the Intensive Care Unit, with the most reassuring and beamingly happy faces looking down at me. It was my brother, John, on one side of me and his wife, Evelyne, on the other side of me. For those 18 hours, I was in complete darkness, having no recollection of anything since the paramedic’s voice at the accident site the day before. On a holiday a year later, during a helicopter tour of Manhattan Island, New York, I burst into tears, as my body started to shake. Both the helicopter’s vibration and the sound of the spinning blades were enough to transport my mind and body back to the helicopter flight after the horse-riding accident. With my head all bandaged up, I was moved into a ward for recovery. This was when I was informed by the neurosurgeon of the severity of my head injury: a big gaping hole on the back left side of my skull, where I had collided with a rock. I was on plenty of drugs for pain and highly dosed up on anti-seizure drugs. I noticed all the other patients in my ward had bandaged heads too. I thought I had arrived in an asylum hospital for the mentally insane, similar to that of the movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. Thankfully, I’d met a lovely guy in the same ward, also with a bandaged head, and we were both able to laugh at our predicament, seeing the funny side of it all. He was good company, and we talked every day. Once settled into my ward bed, the neurosurgeon came to check on me and provide more details of my recovery plan. After he discussed my head injury, he explained to me further that he had discovered a benign brain tumour, roughly the size of a golf ball, located at the front of my brain (third eye area) when they were scanning my head injury. He reassured me that my head wound would heal in six to eight weeks. After that, I could then book my surgery for the removal of the brain tumour. I was taken aback by his news and started to feel quite nervous about my future. The brain injury had damaged my ability to smell. It took about a month to regain my sense of smell. Having no sense of smell also meant I could not taste anything either. After about five days in the hospital, I took control and discharged myself a little earlier than the doctor had recommended. I had a life to live and couldn’t sit still any longer because I was in the middle of my training for my first bodybuilding competition. My parents picked me up and drove me home, to where I was sharing a house with three flatmates. My kind general practitioner unexpectedly called in to see me at home. She was very worried about me being home alone during the day, while my flatmates were at work. She convinced me to move in with my brother, John and his family while I had my head wound dressed daily by a visiting nurse. Both my doctor and her doctor-husband looked after me extremely well, for which I’m still totally grateful to this day. Since I was not with a health fund and preferred not to have a registrar (a new, inexperienced doctor) perform open-head surgery on my brain, I decided to rely on the only neurosurgeon I had encountered so far, whom I now needed to trust. My only option was to organise a bank loan to pay for the surgery so I could pay him directly as a private patient. My lovely hairdresser knew about my head injury and brain tumour diagnosis. She was more than happy to tenderly wash my hair weekly and give my head a gentle massage. It eased the tension in my head during the following weeks. I organised with her to be the one who was going to shave my head before surgery; I wasn’t going to let any old nurse shave my hair in preparation for surgery. That is how far I had thought things through when planning my operation.