Day one: It is 7.35pm on January 12 and like most other evenings I’m on the sofa casually glancing at the television, checking my phone, answering text messages and browsing Facebook. ABC News says bushfires are continuing to rage in NSW and a brown snake has bitten a Darling Downs man. China reports the death of a 61-year-old man from Wuhan after contracting a new coronavirus that is not believed to be passed on readily.
As I listen I feel a tingling sensation in my breast and, while looking at my phone, I put my hand inside my t-shirt to find a lump the size of a pea just above my nipple. It’s a discovery that, from that moment on, dominates my life.
Day two: By the end of February, Australia has hundreds of confirmed cases of the virus now called Covid-19. But I have other worries.
Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne has become my solace. It’s cool and green beneath its huge trees, but people walking the paths keep their distance. The lawns are littered with health workers on their laptops, for this is one of Melbourne’s medical precincts. Today, March 19, I sit on the grass following a second surgery, this time to remove lymph nodes from under my arm. Inside the hospital the mood is anxious, even frantic. When a nurse answers my bell she is distracted, attends briefly and rushes back to where staff are discussing how they will deal with the demands this coronavirus will place on their skills and equipment. In the quiet, lonely darkness of 2.30am a nurse expresses concern for his family in the Philippines.
A few days, later at the surgeon’s clinic, temperatures are taken and magazines have been removed from the waiting room. The surgeon moves back and forth between consultation rooms, as 15 minutes is thought to be the time it takes for infection. A kind and affectionate man, he apologises for not hugging me.
Day three: There is talk of interstate borders closing, but I’m not worried about being away from home. I know I’m getting the best possible treatment and imagine this time as a holiday. I visit friends, rest and take photos of the terrace houses of East Melbourne on my daily walks. But on April 1, when the waters of Bass Strait lap the sides of a nearly empty ferry and we manage to slip into Devonport the day before the borders close, I am glad to be coming home. There is a sickle moon in the sky as we drive down a deserted Midlands Highway and slide into a silent Hobart for 14 days isolation.
On the days that follow, I gaze at the branches of a plane tree in the city street outside our window as I do arm exercises to Joe Cocker singing, “You are so beautiful”. I watch people park their cars, put on their masks … or not … and pass by on the footpath. I walk around and around the garage area and see the other units from below – a new perspective.
Day four: It’s 6.30am on May 8 when the doorbell rings. I’ve just begun radiation treatment and in my dozing state I’ve been aware that my phone, on silent, is making buzzing noises. I get up to check and see a message saying simply, “Call asap”. When I do, it is news that is both bewildering and galvanising: our daughter – fit, well and 40 – lies in an induced coma in the ICU of a large hospital 2,000 kilometres away. There are few flights going there, special permission is required to enter the state and police and army are manning the borders.
I cannot go there. As I lie on the radiation board with my arms above my head and giant machines delivering their toxic rays, all I see is her. When TV News shows coronavirus patients covered with tubes and medical equipment, I think of her. Every day for four weeks I walk, alone, the two blocks home from the medical centre. My mind is not in a good place.
After five days she moves to a cardiac ward and is recovering. But I am not.
Day five: Unconsciously, I take on her experience and on June 12, alone in the house, I think I’m having a heart attack. When I tell my story to a doctor she is unsympathetic, even brutal, which appals me. Now I’m angry. I spend a great deal of time talking on the phone to friends. I’m not myself. I try to find a way back to who I was before.
When my partner finally comes home, he must isolate. The rules say we must stay apart and cannot touch, so we spend 14 days moving from one room to another as we try to avoid each other.
Day six: At the end of the fortnight we drive to the country. Spring is coming, I see marsupial lawns as wide as several roads, mussels on rocks and kelp heaped on the sand. With rain and warmth, new leaves are dense and luxuriant and blossoms seem to cover every tree. The world seems more beautiful than ever before.
Then, on August 20, I have a simple eye operation because the medication I’m on can exacerbate vision problems. I arrive at the day surgery at 7.15am. There is snow on the mountain and a salmon sky. I must go in alone. I sanitise and wait. Two weeks later the procedure is repeated.
Two more general anaesthetics and I’m asking why this is necessary? After the second, I run up and down the stairs because I’ve been given so much adrenalin. Then I walk, walk, walk in the sunlight (now thankfully with a companion) and every house and street and park and tree invigorates me.
Day seven: On September 25 I have a lunch date with friends. One of them has a similar cancer. We swap stories and talk of another friend and colleague, younger than both of us, who has recently been diagnosed with a more serious type. I am deeply unsettled, concerned for them both and wonder why all this illness is suddenly happening to otherwise well people.
ABC News reports a drop in Melbourne’s coronavirus cases – the daily average is down to 25.1. Daniel Andrews offers an apology for mistakes in the quarantine program. NSW investigates a mystery infection. I send care packages to friends in Victoria that include Forty South magazines and books. But at the post office I dither, forget an address, drop a parcel. Eventually, despite a long delay in delivery, the recipients are more delighted than I could have imagined and thank me effusively.
Day eight: Just when I should be feeling better, I’m becoming worse. The TV news channel is constantly on and one day in October distress takes over: I shudder involuntarily when I see vaccinations being given – a scene that is repeated over and over again. When I glimpse a simple wound on a friend’s leg I look away in alarm. I panic when I feel a sore throat and notice anything resembling a lump.
I feel vulnerable, threatened and defensive and I’m highly suspicious of every member of the medical profession. I have post-traumatic stress disorder – and which trauma is that exactly?
Day nine: “Visualise a safe place” suggests a psychotherapist on my third visit. It is November 18 and I immediately think of the garden I’ve been making in a small, neglected corner of the city near my home. The ground is resistant and full of stones and weeds, but the two trees above are just beginning to unfurl pale, gold leaves that will eventually almost brush the ground in trailing fronds.
By merely thinking about this space I build an emotional sanctuary for myself and little by little, over weeks and months, the soil improves and the plants thrive and it becomes a physical place that sustains me. When I’m there, people stop and talk – it’s a garden I can share.
Day ten: On December 28 in a much larger garden, the children who are visiting me for the first time in a year meet up with their cousins. They all roll down the long, grassy hill laughing with delight and at the bottom lie for a moment and gaze at the sky. The pandemic is as irrelevant to them as it was mere background noise to me. We sit together in the sun by the pond waiting for their parents and watch the ducks lazily navigate the spaces between lily pads.
Then the phone call comes … and the sunshine splinters into bright shards. A younger relative has died of the disease I have hopefully recovered from. She told no-one she was ill, isolated herself to spare those closest to her. It is tragic. As I sob in grief and disbelief, the children put their arms around me.
And so it was at the end of 2020, I had the worst of days and the very best of days.
Read more of the Van Diemen Decameron here, or submit a story to editor@fortysouth.com.au.
Carol Freeman is researcher and writer who has lived in Hobart for over 30 years. Her work appears in books and academic journals, exhibition catalogues and art magazines on topics that connect art, science and history in innovative and provocative ways. These include a co-edited book Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations, essays such as Is this Picture Worth a Thousand Words? in Australian Zoologist, catalogue essay Reconstructing the Animal for an exhibition at Tasmanian College of the Arts and book reviews for Historical Records of Australian Science. Her major publication, the book Paper Tiger: How Pictures Shaped the Thylacine, is published by Forty South. Since 2015 she has been a regular contributor to Forty South on a variety of subjects.
