As a researcher, I was employed to study suicides in my home town. I became quite passionate about trying to help keep people alive using the data from the deceased people. My aim was to turn the deaths into something useful to prevent further suicides. That way the torment felt by those individuals would not be in vain. From all I read, I could not really understand what these people actually felt or experienced. I then came across something that offers a description of what people go through and I realized that this is something useful that people can use to empower themselves to stop the dangerous and tragic downwards trajectory.
This guide is a short explanation of the six stages of suicide with practical activities to help you prepare and assist your mind in the event it becomes irrational and unsafe.
Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist described these stages that people experience prior to carrying out suicidal acts.
Included is a mind-monitoring tool to assist you in identifying if your mind is displaying signs of reacting within the various six stages. This tool provides actions you can do to support your mind. A link to a printable PDF of the tool is included.
At the end of this guide, you can find a list of help crisis hotlines for various countries.
My original article is independently described as a:
‘Very good report, written in a humanistic way. The observed stages of suicide are of serious scientific interest, i.e. can help in preventive terms’.
The more you understand how your thoughts and emotions respond in irrational ways the more you can transform your actions beyond the influence of an unhelpful mind to that of a supportive mind and live freely and fully.
Reference: Baumeister R. F. (1990). Suicide as escape from self. Psychological Review, 97(1), 90-113
Review:
“Stages of Suicide is an excellent insight into the though patterns of those dealing with suicide. Each stage very well describes the kind of thoughts, behaviours and emotions one feels as their condition continues, which I found extremely accurate and relatable. As for someone who has experienced these stages second hand, this is an incredible tool that can help non-suicidal people understand what it is like to be suicidal which I believe is one of the most important things for dealing with suicide on the larger scale.
After each stage there is a ‘prepare your mind’ section which works as a helping hand/’what to do about this’ counterpart of the stage. I found this to be really useful in not only making the content a lot less daunting and overwhelming to take in, but the reader is reminded that regardless of what stage you find yourself or someone close to you in there is always a solution to help you get out of it, which is exactly how this book approaches the terror of suicidal ideation.
Moreover, the mind monitoring tool at the end seems incredibly useful to help the user understand their own thoughts and emotions as they go through stages as well as help to generate some rational thinking patterns.
Overall this is an extremely insightful and practical helping hand for those dealing with suicide. Definitely recommend this to anyone who are either going through it or know someone who is, this book can help!”
–Rhys Jones
If you or anyone you know needs help you can call:
My initial thought of going through radiotherapy to treat my breast cancer was “yeah I’m so not looking forward to grappling with the conflict of allowing my body to be bombarded with radiation”. The word radiation glowed luminous green in my head, and although I hoped that it would kill any remaining rogue cancer cells, I knew that radiation kills people. I’ve seen the extreme photos of Hiroshima where everything turned to ash. The imagery in my head was of my body slowly turning into tiny grey fragments and disintegrating like those Japanese people. Or would my body remain intact until I fell apart one random month into the future? These thoughts crowded my head but I suppressed them.
I didn’t know how I’d cope with a daily schedule of turning up every single day, five days a week for five weeks, whilst being pleasant to everyone… everyday. The effects of the chemotherapy hadn’t worn off and I still felt crappy. What I came to realize during those weeks is that besides the most obvious gain – an increase in the odds of living – there were unexpected bonuses that I could take home from the whole experience.
For my cancer type, radiotherapy increases my overall chance of survival by about 10%. I needed to know this before I commenced the treatment. My radiotherapy doctor spent plenty of time in our consultation showing me the results of studies with and without radiotherapy for my type of breast cancer. Perfect! I told him I needed that to help me feel good about the whole thing. For my cancer, this radiotherapy has better outcomes than the chemotherapy I’d just finished. Type of radiation for me? Photons. Photons are light particles so I tried to think of it as light therapy. Light as in life, and NOT that going up to the heavenly light thing.
So the next thing I had to grapple with was whether my heart would be damaged by the radiation because my tumour sat right above my heart, and the therapy involves focusing the radiation on the tumour. Well two things saved my heart from damage. Firstly, the physicist, who designed my ‘more complex’ treatment plan algorithm with the configuration of directions and angles of all the beams across my upper body, did an excellent job by bypassing my heart. I saw the images of my CT scan and the intricate beam patterns over layering the top. He said that I’m not the usual patient (yes I keep hearing that) as no one has ever asked to talk to the physicist before. It’s not that I don’t trust people’s words, it is just that I understand better when things are more tangible and then I feel like I get it then. I wished to see what they are talking about not just hear it from their mouths. He went through the plan report in detail explaining the acronyms and jargon terms for me. And I had questions that only he could answer. Serious questions about radiation that had been bugging me the whole time but I was too scared to know the truth till I was near the end of treatment in case I backed out and didn’t complete it. I’ll get to that soon.
The beam configuration over my left chest wall and shoulder.
The second heart saving measure relied on remaining perfectly still. I had to hold my breath to push my chest cavity out and drop my heart away from the deadly beams. Perfecting this technique became my goal. Thanks to the staff who reassured me all the way through the process, I began to look forward to holding my breath twelve times each day for the 80 second period it took to radiate me. These long breaths could have been broken into 40 seconds instead but that meant more time taken up. At first I tried to imagine that I was surfing. I envisioned taking a breath before enduring a massive underwater hold down but this backfired because the reality of a surfing hold down is that if you panic you can drown. That scenario was too confronting. Instead, I imagined I was diving down to a deep coral reef on snorkel, which stretched time into 80 seconds. In my mind I could see the anemone fish close by, and high above, the Barracudas circling backlit against the sun. There was also a cheeky green moray eel but not wanting to involve sharks, I soon ran out of new things with this adventure. I then developed a whole string of different walks that I knew well, adding in as much detail as I could. (One of these is a childhood walk or rather run you can read about in my memoir story Freedom Creek). Using this visual imagery relaxed me, and kept my heart rate down, and allowed me to hold my breath for the duration of the walk, sometimes with air to spare. Later, practiced this in the spa at home, and made sure I used my method of taking up the air slowly and ‘locking the chest’ compartment while I held onto the bottom of the pool. I then practiced this while body surfing and then when my skin became strong again, I could do it whilst surfing. I even taught me daughter my technique so she has more confidence surfing. I wasn’t expecting that!
On the radiation bed
Another bonus I didn’t expect was becoming comfy in my own skin…without boobs…fast. I thought I had come to terms with losing the ‘girls’ but actually I hadn’t. My mind was still catching up with the reality of the surgery that removed a part of my femininity. At the time all I could think was that the boobs were bombs implanted inside me which needed defusing by removal before they exploded and sent me to oblivion. Due to my skin feeling too sensitive during the radiotherapy treatment I couldn’t wear any restrictive clothing like bras or synthetic materials. At first I felt resentful that I couldn’t wear my padded bras and feel normal after all I had been through. My boobs had come off nine months earlier and I no longer had any cleavage, I had a flat pre-prepubescent chest. I ended up wearing skimpy tops like halter necks with no padded bra for boobs. It was summer and it was hot. Before long I felt normal and attractive again in my attire thanks to being forced to go without the fake boobs day in and day out during the treatment. I worked out that if I chose the right top such as a gathered style at the front, then I looked sexier than some of my old outfits with the padded bra. Now six months on I remain equally comfortable wearing or not wearing cleavage. Without undergoing the radiotherapy I doubt I could have reached this mindset so fast.
As it turned out, in the end I didn’t have to worry about coping with the daily radiotherapy treatment session. I looked forward to seeing the staff who looked after me, and I enjoyed great conversations with everyone from the manager to the radiologists to the nurses, the other patients, and even their partners. One time my daughter came with me and the ladies were happy to show her everything and let her check out what they did with the machine behind the window. I asked if she could take a photo of the screen on the machine, which was great because only then could I actually seemy heart dropped back in the cavity with my breath holding technique in action. These people are a special type to care for us when we are at our most vulnerable and I am so grateful to them for their warmth and the humanness that they gave me.
A photo my daughter took
Towards the end of the five week treatment, I was walking past the wooden book swap cupboard in our neighborhood, and as I peered in I found the book ‘Shockwave Countdown to Hiroshima’ by Stephen Walker. I took it but I couldn’t start reading it for a while. Then I couldn’t put it down. Some of the assumptions I had about Hiroshima were wrong. Hundreds of thousands of people perished, but miraculously, some survived. The author interviewed a handful of Hiroshima survivors who were healthy, even though they were relatively close to the T-shaped target Aioi bridge where the bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ landed two hundred meters away. The bridge itself survived. Not everyone who survived suffered a long term decline from radiation sickness. Today, radiation is being used to save lives. My body and my life may have been saved thanks to a technological breakthrough that wreaked horror in 1945.
Now to that serious question for the Physicist. Yes the physicist not the physican. How does the photon ray bombardment compare with the rays that victims experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What I really wanted to know is if the long term side effects would be the same. Photons used in radiotherapy treatment are non-ionizing radiation and have less energy than ionizing nuclear reaction radiation. The rays passed right through my body rather than linger. On the back of my shoulder there is a dark patch of skin where the rays exited my body away from my organs and bones. This is amazing technology. My bones should be quite intact and my heart has been protected. I wondered about my circulating blood being irradiated but I suppose as it keeps moving, and cells keep turning over then it should be fine too.
Exit point of radiation can be seen as the red circular area on my upper back
So I have no regrets about going through this treatment. My concerns and fear were replaced with good things. I’m glad I asked the questions about the treatment, but I should not have been such a chicken and asked them way earlier.
Until now, I have managed to escape injury and death during my encounters with wild animals, but depending on how you see it, either my luck ran out recently or it kept running because I’m alive and writing this after one animal closed in on me.
For some reason, it seems to be those moments when I am relaxed and having fun that my world is flipped on its back. Minutes before El Toro the scrub bull confronted me I had been walking along a tranquil sandy creek bed anticipating a cool soothing wash downstream. Minutes before Jaw’s fin sliced through the water I had just begun to really relax out in those crowd free waves. This time was no different. Earlier in the day I had driven for forty minutes out to a floodplain paddock I’d leased for two of my horses. The grassy green field is in one of the narrow valleys that are flanked by the steep ridges of the Ourimbah State Forest, west of Gosford, an hour north of Sydney. I had my heavy breaking-in saddle and my light weight all-purpose saddle with me, and I planned to ride my new young gelding Jindy first and then my mare Twiggy. Jindy is pretty green and I had no idea how he’d react to the dirt bikes and four wheel drives we’d encounter so I rode him in the breaking-in stock saddle. When the first car approached us along the main road he freaked out, running backwards and he did the same when a string of very noisy guttural dirt bikes motored down past us as we climbed up the steep 300 meter accent onto the forest ridge line. I urged him past them with my calves gently pushing round his barrel and then he gained some confidence and started to relax and enjoy himself. His paces were smooth and super comfy and he behaved perfectly when we encountered more bikes, cars and wildlife during the ride.
Next it was my Arabian palomino mare, Twiggy’s turn. We had been training over the last few months for an endurance race so on that Saturday afternoon I planned to ride for thirty kilometers. Starting out slow my plan was to maintain a steady pace for the middle third, and then finish with a fast pace ride home. Usually I ride her in the light saddle but thankfully, this time I used the more secure breaking-in saddle. On the ride out she shied along the track a lot more than Jindy but mostly at rocks and stumps which is usual for her. We passed quite a few packs of dirt bike riders; a father with his boys on teeny cute dirt bikes and a few 4WDs coasting along. People were friendly and calm as I rode past.
Twiggy and I on a trail
After about seven kilometers, we chose the left fork at the main intersection and headed further west. I knew this track was pretty remote reaching deeper into the forest far from the hobby farms and well-used roads. I didn’t expect to see anyone this far out this late in the day. One red 4WD did drive past us but that was it. We kept on and the late autumn sun dipped below a large round high hill ahead of us. I felt my body start to cool down although I was wearing a fleece jumper.
I don’t know if it was the hill’s sweeping, dark black shadow or intuition but as we trotted along, the track ahead constricted into the bush and the air become super still. My instincts told me that we should turn around and not go any further. My eternal problem is I always want to know what’s around the corner so I ignored my gut and decided to explore further. We’d push on and just see what it looks like up the top there and then head home. Near the top, the track turned sharply to the left skirting around the steep hill while an embankment flanked the track on the left. The sun shone again, we slowed to a walk and I relaxed. I was just about to turn back when I heard a car engine slowly climbing the hill behind us.
The sound became louder and then it was drowned out by the noise of people yelling and screaming. I thought they were some drunk young hooligans driving along that were about to seriously hassle me. I coolly asked Twiggy to trot and looked ahead for side tracks but there were none. The screaming became more crazy sounding and I glanced back but only made out the blur of a white ute.
Then we saw it….Cujo (like from the horror movie). This grey bull-arab hunting dog, a meter high with a monstrous head had bolted hundreds of meters in front of the ute to intercept us. Cujo crossed the distance between us in seconds. So fast in fact that we didn’t know she was there until she was a few meters from of us. (I refer to her as female because the image of her is etched sharply into my brain and there is no willy in that memory). She didn’t stay within the three meter perimeter zone like wary dogs tend to do. Instead, she quickly circled us and moved in close very quickly, looking for an opportunity to strike. I spun Twiggy to face the dog, and when it refused to back off, I yelled at it “Go away” with my deepest voice. The dog didn’t back off. I looked up to see what the owners were doing, and I could see they were still 20 meters away. I looked back to the dog and it raised its head, staring up at me, rolling the whites of its orange colored eyes, mouth agape. It darted in under Twiggy’s neck and locked its massive jaws into Twiggy’s front hoof and pastern. Twiggy’s worst nightmare. Instantly she jumped away from it and leaped up the steep cliff rocky embankment next to us. Luckily she dislodged the dog’s grip, but she kept going and turning side on she started to fall back down towards the track. In that instant I weighed up the risk of bailing off her backwards verses becoming crushed if she rolled over me if she did continue her fall. Plus I didn’t know if I’d stay on anyway because I could not predict where she was headed or how. In the past I have saved my butt with a deliberate ejection and as a kid I fell off so many horses I kind of learned how to fall and not go thump and instead dissipate the momentum of energy by slowly rolling.
A dog with the same appearance as one that attacked my mare
As Twiggy fell sideways, the last thing I remember was pulling my feet backwards out of my oxbow stirrups, letting go of the reins and trying to leap off her back as Twiggy’s body rose up in front of me. Usually in these situations, this is when time slows right down and I’ll remember the every detail in slow motion, from leaving the saddle to hitting the ground but not this time. No opportunity for that prayer of contrition, Betwixt the stirrup and the ground or having my life flash before me.
I blacked out. I came to, my entire body a bundle of pain. I lay on the rocky dirt track and I think I was face down on my front. I couldn’t move at all nor could I speak. Eventually I started getting annoyed at the bloke who owned the dog whose voice I could hear telling me to get up just over and over. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak and he expected me to get up! At one point there was some commotion I couldn’t see and I irrationally thought maybe I could be run over by a car and would not be able to do anything about it. The all body pain rush started to subside and I realized the worst pain patch was my wrist. My leg and elbow were sore too. Moving my fingers I told myself and the man that it’s probably just a sprain. That type of pain however felt quite severe. I had no bones sticking way out of my arm, only a small bump protruded. I sat up and the bloke proceeded to talk at me. I still could hardly speak. He kept on a few times about how my horse jumped up the cliff like it was her fault. All I could do was listen and store his words for later thinking. He said that the dog was his friend’s and that it didn’t bite the horse. I was in no state to even look at Twiggy’s body or really take in what his words even meant. Something took over in me in that vulnerable state that even if I could manage words, no way would I argue as I needed the help of the man and the woman that was with him. I couldn’t see the dog and they must have caught Twiggy. I did ask two things. Was it a pig dog? ‘No never hunted’ was his answer. I remember the feeling that there was this urgency that they wanted me back on my horse so they could just leave the scene. The second question I asked was ‘can you hold my horse while I get on’? They were happy to help. Both of them looked into my face and apologized to me which brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I think because those words gave me a sense of relief that they wouldn’t hurt me and vulnerability is not my thing. The man clutched hard at the reins and I remember the whites of his knuckles gleaming round lumps. The first attempt to mount failed because Twiggy moved. I knew I had strength for only one more go so I’d better make it as good as I could I told myself. Somehow my body let me swing over her back and settle into the comfort of the saddle and security of being able to get away. I turned towards home and the lady handed me the visor from my helmet which I didn’t know had broken. I vaguely recall another dog and maybe a kid but don’t remember the car number plate but over the few weeks since this happened, I’m starting to get an image of it suggesting I did try and take it in.
Aggressive dog
The first ten kilometers after that were a mix of relief and trepidation. My left hand stopped working; it was broken, so I had to keep a firm right handed grip on the reins. My left leg ached with every movement and my right elbow hurt. I knew if Twiggy shied, I’d have trouble staying aboard and if I fell, I would really injure myself due to lack of muscle control and balance. I would hit hard. My body was a cauldron of pain especially my back which jarred at very step. My phone was strapped around my waist so if I came off, and there was reception and I could move, I’d be able to use it. After those first kilometers my fear was the people and Cujo would drive back behind me so on the slight inclines, I began to force myself to endure a slow trot to cover ground faster. I realized that if I lent forward and we trotted slow enough, I became distracted, and the pain became bearable and I loosened up. Twiggy shied slightly once which hurt but she really looked after me and carried me back the 15 kilometers safe and sound.
Puncture wounds to my mare’s pastern after dog attack
I slid from her back, tied her up but it was hard going undoing all the buckles and I knew the saddle was too heavy to hoist into the Landcruiser with one arm. I called out to my friend Jane who was feeding her horses across the road and she helped me out by doing it all and washing Twiggy down and later disinfected the puncture wounds in Twiggy’s pastern. In contrast to what the man had told me, his dog had inflicted deep wounds to the horse’s leg. Jane helped me take my bangle off my swelling wrist and gave me some panadol from the glove box. She offered to drive me to the hospital and take me to her house to sit with a cuppa but I said that if I could manage to turn my car around using her driveway then I’d be right. The hospital was on the way home. I managed to drive one handed although roundabouts were a bit tricky and I couldn’t park properly. Three hours later I left the hospital and drove home with a plaster cast after an x-ray showed a piece of bone protruding from my wrist and fracture across the main bone. No breaks in my elbow but a later bone scan revealed a compression injury to my tibia. The injuries I have don’t match with how I found myself face down on the ground and it is frustrating having a memory gap like this. My injuries included a grapefruit sized swelling and green thunder bruise from the back of my left knee to the top of my thigh, a serious knee injury, a broken left wrist with bone protruding, a bruise to my right bum cheek and elbow. And I had busted my helmet visor. But it could have been much worse. Twiggy could have lept down the cliff, the horse could have fallen on me, and the dog could have mauled me as I lay unconscious on the ground. So my luck is still running with me I reckon. And faster than Cujo can run!
Twiggy’s wounds healed and a month later, although I wore a cast on my broken arm, we successfully competed in an endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race after the dog attack
During a possum-catching trip near Kakadu National Park with a team of blokes, I needed some time by myself to unwind and relax by the creek that flowed beyond our rough campsite. However, this tranquil sojourn ended up pumping my adrenaline to maximum.
It was mid morning, and warming up fast. I’d not long woken in my cozy canvas swag after catching Rock Ringtail possums (Petropseudes dahli) during the night. I was on a short working break from my research work for CSIRO in Canberra, to hunt down and catch wild possums for the Territory Wildlife Park in Northern Australia for a new public display. My role was to train their staff in my unique method for capturing possums. These possums shun traps so after trying an array of unsuccessful methods I had devised a new way to catch them. The adrenaline filled nights of stalking and running down possums were one aspect of this trip but I also had the stressful responsibility of the team’s safety. Abandoned mine shafts and getting lost were the main hazards. The nights were inky pitch black, this was country I didn’t know and unless I kept my wits and concentrated on my continuous landmark configurations of rocks, trees, bushes and logs as we walked through the bush, I could very easily cause us all to become dangerously lost. Late one night a few years before, in the remote Kimberley, after taking behavioral observations of Scaly-tailed possums (Wyulda squamicaudata) with my two volunteers, I was leading us back to our campsite and I became distracted with a conversation we were having and my concentration was lost for my marks. All of a sudden we were lost. We had been helicoptered into the site and the rugged dissected sandstone terrain stretched out for hundreds of kilometers in three directions and spanned about thirty clicks to the remote coast. The pilot wasn’t due to pick us up for over a week at that stage and the land was all roughly the same height with no knolls or mountains. Becoming lost out there could easily mean losing our lives. Luckily I had catastrophied just about everything beforehand and I had a plan for this very moment. When backtracking failed we halted and I pulled out of my backpack the heavy radio-tracking receiver I carried for this very occasion. We had radio-collars on six possums and I had located their various den sites during the day so we could wait on nearby rocks to observe them at night. Tuning in to a spare radio-collar I had stashed at camp, we then followed the blipping sounds until we alighted into familiar terrain.
Back amongst the dodgy mineshafts, I didn’t have a receiver. One particularly large sandstone rock outcrop a few acres across was one site that was a long way from the vehicles so I was cautious enough to tie some pink flagging tape to a tree. That marker actually saved my arse. A fair while later when I was leading the men back, I felt that initial, small sharp knot of black panic. Were these rocks familiar or did I just imagine it? Just when I thought I’d really stuffed up and become disorientated, the bright pink strip materialized, boom, right in front of me. My marker told me the point where I needed to turn left 90 degrees and head north from those rocks to get back to where the 4WDs sat in the scrub waiting.
The adrenaline during the night was fuelled from the point of finding multiple red spots of eye shine in trees away from the nearby rocks. The men stayed still and quiet so as not to spook the possums while I crept up silently, heart thumping, towards them, positioning myself between them and the nearby rocks. I’d leave enough space for them to make a run for it and wait. Then when they did, I’d run a bit faster and leap carefully onto them and swiftly maneuver them into a cloth bag. I really didn’t require more adrenaline peaks during the day after doing all this at night.
It was time for me to get a little space and solitude and find somewhere nice to have a wash and rid myself of the dirt and sweat. A brief hiatus from the nocturnal work was in order to re-energize. A wide bottomed, shallow creek flowed along one border of the campsite and out into the savanna woodland into no man’s land. Perfect. Padding away from the others with my favorite purple thongs (AKA flip-flops) on my feet towards the creek, I envisaged some quiet secluded pool I would soak in. Soak up the sun a bit and relax I thought. Lie back lazily on the sand somewhere. No one around to disturb me I thought……. Wrong.
So here I was after waking up in the morning, la de la de la, walking down the sandy creek bed, relaxing more and more by the minute, inhaling the damp earthy loam scent of the creek and enjoying the sun’s warmth through my shirt and on the back of my legs. The flat creek channel was around five meters across with steep dirt banks up to about three meters high. I rounded a bend and for a time kept walking, watching where I was placing my feet and zoning out rather than my usual thing of taking in everything around me as I went.
Looking up, my eyes instantly locked onto the enormous eyes of a very large and powerful looking young buffalo bull. Only about five meters directly in front of me, completely barring my path, he stood square and rigid. Attached to his head were two very large buffalo horns. His expression was a mixture of annoyance and fear. Me in that moment? Just terrified. Wild buffalo kill more humans in Africa than any other creature. This was not Africa but nonetheless this was a large wild feral buffalo. His eyes seemed enormous and we both stood still like matching marble statues facing each other. We had a standoff. I then ever so slowly turned my head to scope the banks for trees. All that was near was a spindly dead trunk all of about three meters high, and useless to me for escaping up.
I turned back to look at the beast and he grunted something to himself and started actually pawing the ground like he thought he was El bloody Toro straight out of Spain!
I remember thinking how odd it was that he used his left hoof to paw the ground, not his right leg and that he must be in that perhaps 7% rare cohort of buffalo that are left-handed. Not a particularly useful thought. Sensing that attempting a runner back up the creek bed would probably mean I’d lose this particular bout in a spectacularly painful way, I had to think quickly. Yelling might work but it was impossible to make myself look big. I dared not hold out my beach towel to look bigger or flap it at him to try and scare him in case he decided it is close enough to looking like the proverbial red rag, even though it wasn’t red, and charge at me. Thinking fast, I then remembered how hunters shot wild buffalo in the region and maybe the sound of a gunshot might scare him witless. Instantly I thought of my trusty old cheap purple thongs. Ever so slowly I let bag and towel slide down to rest at my feet while I simultaneously unhooked each thong from my toes. As I did this El Toro pawed again trying and succeeding in looking tough. He even lowered his monstrous head, eyes not wavering a millimeter from mine.
My eyes locked and loaded on his, I drew my arms slowly apart and slapped the rubber soles together hard and BANG! Wow! A sharp and loud gunshot sound came out!
Hesitation shuddered through El Toro and I mimicked the steady time frame between shots from a rifle and let fly with another loud shot. This was too much for ET and he turned and clambered up the bank away from me, his unappealing droopy ball sacks swaying from side to side before he turned around to look at me and bloody stare some more. I thought we were finished staring so I widened my stance, rose my torso and shoulders up and out, opened my eyes wide into a blaring angry glare and yelled loud and deep at him while letting rip another cartridge of thong slapping. He finally turned away from me and trotted off into the scrub. El Toro was not so brave after all. Bravo! I crept up the bank to make sure he kept going and watched him shrink into the distance.
So so relieved, I picked up my stuff and set off walking but back the other way. I was too shaken to keep venturing into unknown buffalo filled territory, so I backtracked to a less than ideal part of the creek with a section where I could bath. It had a nice long stretch so that I could scan for any more intruding bulls wanting their go at a stoush with me. My ‘gun’ thongs were within arm’s reach. After my bath, I lay back on the sand and reflected on how I had somehow survived three direct active threats on my life by three very different types of animal, a Great White Shark, an Eastern Brown Snake and now a wild buffalo bull. I thought about how one thing I am quite happy about is my ability to actually act under acute stress. Solve the puzzle and move.
I thought too how although I wouldn’t volunteer for these scary animal encounters, the floaty and overwhelming sensation of euphoria sparked from these life death events is enjoyable and that vivid base knowledge of really being alive in this world is with me until I die.
Last month I knew I had to do something. May 1st was on its way. That day I would be doing something I truly feared. The fear is from not knowing if I am doing the right thing. I knew that if I went through with it then I alone would be responsible for the consequences. If I choose this I would allow my body and brain to cop a heavy hit of cell-destroying drugs. These drugs have a low probability of working on my rare subtype of breast cancer but maybe, just maybe they will save my life. The drugs may have irreversible side effects including serious cognitive impairment. This scares me the most. I know that these drugs may prevent secondary cancer that I may not even have right now, or later on in the future. I feel like there is nothing rogue left in me. No bad cells anywhere. Do I put my body through this and come out the other side a zombie? Or do I not go through with it and maybe regret my decision because I die young from a cancer that spread? So this is the fear.
I cannot reconcile my fear in my head. Usually I am good at doing that but for this I can’t, not yet. I needed something additional to give me some strength. Already I have been overwhelmed by support from friends, family, acquaintances and strangers but I am greedy. I reached beyond the living to the dead. I gathered up strength from my ancestors to go through the third nasty infusion of chemotherapy drugs. Two weeks before the horrible day, I asked my mum for her father’s old Masonic ring. The next week she gave it me.
I never knew this man but everyone is strong in their way and that’s what I wanted from him, a little piece of his strength.
Same goes for my other ancestors. I wished to suck up some of their strength.
On May 1st 2018, I dressed and slipped onto my fingers, my grandfather’s ring from my mum’s side of the family and my grandmother’s ring from my dad’s side who, with her husband I never knew. I wore my wedding ring and gained my husband’s strength and I wore a ring from his grandmother who I was very close to. I also wore a ring I had made at school for myself to remind me not to forget my own inner strength. None of these rings are full of jewels and they are not valuable in terms of money but to me they are priceless. To touch and handle items my ancestors wore, particularly those I never met, helps makes these people real and tangible to me.
As I settled into the passenger seat of mum’s car to go to the hospital, mum presented me with her mother’s beautiful Dux award from school. She told me she would wear this around her neck with a piece of string during exams for good luck. This took me by surprise. It made me feel complete. I loved my Nan and now I had something from her. I thanked mum and told her I didn’t need to wear jewelry she had given me because I had what was better and that is the real thing, her, by my side. I now had all my families with me now and I felt ready to face my fears.
They all took a piece of that fear and dread away and they all gave me a piece of their strength.
Snakes will not hesitate to hunt you down, chase you so they can bite you. That’s what I thought. I believed this so much that I only had to see a photo of one and then I’d dream of snakes all night. And these dreams were not fun. As a kid, I was often in the bush stepping across creeks, walking around swamps, over sunny logs, through the long grass. I wandered among all the favorite lairs snakes would be waiting and lurking. Mum always warned me of them, maybe a little too much. One particular snaky experience instilled the wretched phobic fear into me.
Walking around a dam on my parents’ remote 150 acre property, I looked at the dirty brown water. A bare soil patch extended up the hill from the water’s edge. Turning my head from the water, I sensed something to my left. Looking there, I saw a huge Brown snake with its head level with mine, opening and shutting its mouth.
Two thirds of its big body came at me through the air fast whilst only a foot or so of its tail anchored it to the soil.
I probably screamed but I know I ran. I ran past it fast. That snake’s face said it was angry and it was going to bite me. A bite from that monster could have killed me because we were situated hours away from any hospital. Mum saw the whole thing and said the snake was taller than me. Because this snake aggressively chased me whilst rearing up impressively on its tail it looked extra tall. Because the ground where it launched from was higher than where I was, it looked even larger. This, coupled with my young and impressionable age, led me to believe that all snakes all did that. Later I discovered only male Eastern Brown snakes become more aggressive in spring when they are fighting other males; most snakes just try and avoid people. Other species will even pretend to bite you if you hurt them by accidently stepping on them. They might strike your leg but many do this with their mouth firmly shut; it serves as a warning.
One time I heard a tale from my older brother who I thought for a while must be some crazy man. He sat down by this little creek one summer with the cicadas blaring and fell asleep in some shade. In fact, he lay across the footpath or slither path of the snakes. They weirdly slid their way alongside the creek next to the water. A big venomous blacksnake mistook Peter’s lower legs as logs or general forest paraphernalia. Gripping onto Pete’s skin with its multitude of little scales, it slithered up and over him tongue flicking and tasting the air as it went. My brother awoke, looked down, saw the snake and stayed as still as a tree trunk. Absorbed in its own rhythm of the moment, the snake meandered on along the creek and out of sight, apparently oblivious of the live legs it had encountered. Over time I realized this is the personality of the snake. I had them all wrong.
The game changer for me was my gradual mental deconstruction that all snakes behaved like the Flying Big Brown and that some are quite exquisitely beautiful.
On a walk I discovered that Northern Green Tree snakes were iridescent with an electric blue covering their sleek body and fluorescent yellow highlighting their head. Handling the cool smooth bodies of the non venomous species made me realize that snakes are no different to all the other beautiful wildlife I am lucky to encounter. Snakes are not out to get me. One cranky Olive python did manage to sink its sharp teeth into my thigh one time. It even left a tooth in me and gave me four purple bruises. It wasn’t happy with me lifting it off a road where it could have been run over. For a wild snake, it would probably feel strange and scary to be picked up and held off the ground by a human.
Death Adder – Artist: Obed Wurrkidj
Death adders came into my life in a large way while I spent my nights in the tropical bush observing rock possums for my Doctoral studies. My main study site in Kakadu has a soft sandy substrate and heaps of leaf litter. As I walked between my possum groups through the bush, I had to be wary of every step I took. These adders are sit-and-wait predators so they usually would remain absolutely still in total contrast to the Flying Big Brown and many times I nearly stepped on their sausage bodies. One time I stepped out into the night in complete darkness barefoot. As my foot came down I somehow sensed something and managed to do an awkward stride. Looking back with a light, there was a big death adder lying inert on this concrete paver.. It was strikingly beautiful golden markings. The fangs on these snakes are very long, and their bite is deadly. Another time I heard a rustling on the path in front of me and it was an adder thrashing it’s body from side to side to let me know it was lying there and not to tread on it. Later, my boy friend started research on the floodplain type of Death adder. These are larger and duller patterned than my sandstone ones. For a while, all thirty of his study animals lived at home with us in purpose built snake boxes and when we moved house, so did all of the snakes. I do remember a few times at night when I’d seen the slithering dark form of a snake either on the bedroom floor, on the bed or hanging off the ceiling fan and I’d wake up Jonno and tell him ‘There’s a snake’. I’d be standing on the bed and somehow reach the light switch to find of course yes, zero snakes.
Death Adder painting – Artist: Abraham Dakgalawuy
A few more incidents happened more recently that signaled to me that I was over the worst of my illogical serpentine fear. One night I was walking and spotlighting around a beautiful limestone rock wall in the remote Kimberley region known as the Ningbins. This area is an important and significant indigenous burial place that I had accidently stumbled into.
As I turned a corner, a large Red Tree snake dropped from the sky, and landed in a large loop onto my neck before entwining me like a necklace.
As I stopped and stepped backwards, it flopped to earth and sidled away. Tree snakes are arboreal and it isn’t surprising that one above me in a tree or a rock ledge should drop down occasionally. That is the logical, rational thought, but instead of thinking that or feeling fear, I felt a calm understanding that that red tree snake was actively protecting a sacred site and that it was time to leave.
Yes, I respect the snake.
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You can now read more stories in my series about Encounters with Wild Animals such as a Eaten Alive, El Toro and Cujo-The Attack in my new bookWILD Life death encounters with wild animals.
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