ON THE TOSS OF A COIN
PART ONE
The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is, are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson.
It is often the little things we do that make the biggest difference.
I stopped once at a roundabout in Byron Bay to pick up a hitchhiker and that simple act would change my life forever, change it in a way I could never have imagined.
If a ‘junction’ is how the dictionary describes a roundabout, then the one I tangled with on that sunny North Coast afternoon in September 1997 was just that; a junction. Metaphorically speaking.
Earlier in the day, something else happened that would also have life-changing consequences. I purchased a property in Suffolk Park, a beachside suburb five kilometres south of the village of Byron Bay. It was a capricious act. I hadn’t woken up that morning planning to buy a piece of real estate. Not in Byron Bay or anywhere else.
My spur-of-the-moment decision was done in the manic phase of the bi-polar illness that had plagued my life since childhood, but had only, a couple of years before, been diagnosed, due to a near-fatal psychotic episode.
Life felt large this day. Manic highs leave you no time for quiet contemplation. You feel indomitable. Unstoppable. In the manic phase, you are financially and sexually promiscuous. There is something wildly intoxicating about skimming the high peaks of mania. It’s as if the universe is with you all the way. As if you’re up there on Mount Olympus partying with the gods. Marian Faithful sang about it. The urge to fly through Paris with the warm wind in her hair––and then in one suicidal leap from a tall building, her wish is fulfilled.
It’s no wonder the rise to Olympian heights is exhilarating. And precarious. The fall to earth can be profound.
The painful collapse of my thirty-two-year marriage was the trigger for the psychotic meltdown. What followed was a nightmare, including a serious suicide attempt––the paramedics defibrillating me three times on the way to Emergency; being scheduled twice under the NSW and then the Queensland Mental Health Acts; being locked up in psychiatric wards in both States; experiencing manic episodes that threatened mine and other people’s lives; extended periods in and out of clinics; an inability to get even a continuous hour’s sleep for nights on end; and the soul-wearying, debilitating effects of living with a malignant depression.
All this, out of the blue, happening to a person used to being on top of her game, in charge of her life, useful to her children and grandchildren, able to run her busy PR consultancy, support her political spouse, and generally cope with life’s ups and downs with equanimity.
Then came April 11th, 1995, and boom!
My family was suddenly presented with a wife and parent in free-fall, and with no net to catch her. It was a time before the plethora of memoirs recounting the serious nature of depression had hit the bookshelves, before bi-polar entered the common lexicon, before Beyond Blue, before the Black Dog Institute, before anyone was disseminating professional information and well before politicians were campaigning on funding for mental health issues. In other words, it was a time before the stigma surrounding mental illness had lifted and light was allowed to shine in to illuminate the darkness. And it was a frightening time for all of us.
Had I been hit by a car instead of a psychotic tsunami my children would have called an ambulance. But when suddenly confronted with a mother so ‘gone in the head’, acting so irrationally, my bewildered and panicking offspring were caught floundering. Unfortunately, what they did next, with all the best intentions, proved disastrous.
Good friends recommended a particular psychiatrist, and my children were able to secure an immediate consultation with him in his Macquarie Street rooms. It soon became evident, however, that the doctor was the problem, not the solution. Without asking if I were taking medication for any existing ailments––and after an interview that seemed uncomfortably fixated on my spouse, the Honourable John Brown, who had been the high-profile Minister for Arts, Sport, Environment and Tourism in the Hawke Government––the Macquarie Street man took out his pad and blithely proceeded to write out a prescription for Prozac.
And so, it began, the nightmare. The medical profession––but obviously not this doctor––had become aware by now that the combination of steroids and SSRIs, in particular, Prozac, was a highly clinically significant one, and such a combination was to be avoided at all cost. The contra-indications were too dangerous, the risks considered not worth the benefits.
On this day of my sudden collapse, the prescription ordered for me, and diligently administered by my adult children, would be a disastrous combo, initiating the phenomenon tagged ‘roid rage. Had the man taken the trouble to enquire, he would have learned I’d been taking steroids for the past week, prescribed by a GP for a highly aggravating allergy rash covering my entire body. For days, I had been laying on my bed under a ceiling fan covered in cold wet towels to ease the pain and itch.
The rash was apparent when I presented, and yet the specialist never enquired, but ordered my children to take his prescription for Prozac, get it filled immediately and start dosing me up. Oh, and see the receptionist on the way out.
It was the same treating psychiatrist who would admit me to the Sydney Clinic at Clovelly two weeks later, by which time my condition had deteriorated significantly, there having been serious psychotic episodes within days of commencing the Prozac; one involving my husband and a pair of scissors, the other an attempt to throw myself in front of a speeding car on Ocean Street, Woollahra. But the good doctor would eventually wake up to the problem he had helped create and begin prescribing new types of SSRIs, monitoring me closely as the mania subsided.
Unfortunately, the pendulum soon swung too far to the other extreme. I began sinking into a debilitating depression, compliant when the specialist arranged for my admission into the care of the professionals at Clovelly.
Mistakes would pile on however, and things would go from bad to worse. By the time a week in residence at the Sydney Clinic had passed, and I was almost comatose with drugs, the psychiatrist would be calling in the police and having me locked up and scheduled under Clause 10 of the NSW Mental Health Act. It was a brutal response to what was an insignificant act on the part of a very sick patient. I was in a darkly depressive state, harbouring suicidal thoughts, refusing food, my weight dropping dramatically, and the clinic people so concerned they were considering intravenous feeding.
It was late on the Sunday afternoon. Mothers’ Day. Although a special day, my eldest son, Jonathon, was the only one of my family allowed to visit me because I was in such a fragile state of health, physically and mentally. The idea was that this sensible––and sensitive––young man might be able to encourage his mother to eat something. A scone and a cup of coffee was the kindly nurse’s short-term goal that afternoon.
Mine was to be left alone. To lay in bed under the sheets and simply fade away.
Although our desires were incompatible, the nurse was always going to win because I was too weak to resist and my son was/is a good talker. The nurse turned me out of bed, tidied me up and congratulated me on my valiant effort to co-operate. I might even enjoy the afternoon tea I was about to have with my son, she said.
Nodding to her, Jon took my arm and helped me down the flight of stairs and in to the canteen.
Our timing was lousy. The canteen was empty and just closing up for the day. However, the woman behind the counter, another kindly soul, generously offered to make us coffees and to retrieve a couple of scones from out in the kitchen. We could sit here while she cleaned up. No worries, love, she said and Jon thanked her and led me to a table. It was then that a man’s head emerged from the kitchen, and the scone-maker abruptly ordered us out of his realm.
Meekly, I began to apologize and tried to explain the special circumstance, that it was not my idea but the order of the nurse upstairs.
I have had a significant hearing loss since childhood and did not hear his reply, but he snatched the plate of scones out of the woman’s