Episode 7 Stress ...

It was a stinking hot morning, the wind howling and the air feeling brittle, ready to burst. The morning newspaper ran an article about it being the “Worst Day Ever” with warnings to stay indoors if possible, stay cool. We walked the dog early to avoid the worst of the heat.

Around lunchtime the call came, a fire had started and so I had to go to work. The office was busy in preparation for the day but a colleague and I were being sent elsewhere – westwards an hour’s drive – to help out.

We arrived around two thirty, heading towards a huge plume of smoke as we drove down the freeway. The control centre was chaos as we tried to get a handle on the situation – where was the fire, how big, what was it doing, what were our options. Information was scant.

About four o’clock word came through that another fire had started closer to home.

The day was a blur of hurried conversations and messages and reports and scrambling for resources to do our job.  By ten that night we were knocked off so we could rest up for tomorrow when the battle would continue. The night crew took over.

At midnight I had a call from my wife. The town was blacked out and filled with smoke. On the radio she had heard warnings that the fire was approaching the town and that residents should take precautions. She spent the next hours filling buckets, getting brooms and mops ready to put out any stray embers that may fall. Meanwhile, I tried to sleep in a motel room many miles away.

Over the coming days I continued the fight, talking to my wife back home on the phone and my daughter in Melbourne. Nine days later our fire was over, running into the one closer to home, which was still burning. I could go home.  

Over 120 people had died.

Back home, I learnt about the extent of the local fire. Friends had lost homes. More lives had been lost. A township was destroyed. Still the warnings came as further bad days loomed. We set up drums and bins of water and mops and hoses and sprinklers around our house. Calls were made to my daughter, who was seeing the news on the television and hearing rumours from friends.

Weeks passed before the fire was over. Months have turned into years as the recovery progresses. Last week, at a birthday party, talking to a woman that I have only met once or twice before there were still tears falling for all that had happened.

Following the fires came the investigation – a Royal Commission.  Statements had to be prepared, reliving that first day when so many died. Preparing the statement took weeks with visits to lawyers and advisors and second, third and fourth drafts. The Commission itself lasted an eternity.

Now, some two and a half years later there is a legal action against the power company who owned the cable that fell in the winds that day and started the fire, and against the fire fighters and the police.

I don’t want further conversations with lawyers; I don’t want to relive the day over and over again. I have been through that day many times in my head, wondering what would have made a difference. Given pending legal action I don’t suppose I can discuss it here but it is a day that won’t go away – ever.

In the middle of all that I was diagnosed. There isn’t a known cause of CML. Stress has been mentioned as an agent for making CML– or any cancer – worse and may be a possible cause. Without any real evidence to back it up, I believe that the stress of Black Saturday and all that followed was a factor in my disease developing. I may be wrong – it could be entirely coincidence and not related at all. I also believe that stress will hinder my recovery. I know it won’t help it!

So yoga, writing, music, reading, hiking, being with my family, have become all the more important to me.

And a holiday; it is time for a holiday.