Thought to have originated from the [Inaudible word] province in China. It was warning of a virus and to be alert for any travellers from that region. It was thought to be zoonotic and down the bottom in italics, it read around 360 known cases, but no known deaths and I was really perplexed. 

 I thought, this sounds like something really benign from the other side of the world. So why on earth is this appearing in my inbox? I’ve never seen anything like this in all the years I’ve worked in health. So I didn’t give it much thought, deleted, until weeks later when the virus had a name and a pandemic was issued. 

And then on February the 8th, my complex, fraught, exhausted 21-year marriage ended. And I went through so many emotions as people do in separations. There was, a great sadness and a loss of failure or a sense of failure and, but overwhelming relief. And, the truth is that I only cried twice. Once when I told my mum and once late at night when I was alone and that fury of failure and loss became too loud to ignore any longer. 

And with two teenage kids, it was that loss of the family unit, which was the hardest for me. But with every day that passed, you know, that, that heavy smog of blame and disdain lifted and dissipated and I started to breathe again. And so at the end of February, I bought myself an early birthday present, an off-road touring bike and it’s a delicious smurf blue with attachment points all along its frame and it’s got two drink holders and pannier racks and, and it represents just endless opportunities for adventure here and overseas. 

And so suddenly it was like this window was flung open and I was ready to discover myself again after so long. So, but then weeks later, COVID came along and interrupted mine and everyone’s plans. So, as you’ve heard, I’m a speech pathologist, allied health represent, and I work at Midlands St John Of God Hospital, so we’re a middle-sized secondary hospital, I suppose. 

And to give you a bit of background, won’t bore you with too much, but In addition to seeing people with communication difficulties, we also see people who have swallowing difficulties. So if there’s any impairment to the mouth or the throat or even the esophagus, through surgery from something like cancer, or through head injury, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, or any of that can affect someone swallowing. 

So, you know, I think we’ve got the best job in the world where we help people to eat and drink. And talk and really what else is there? So, at the end of 2019, though, I stepped away from that. direct patient care and into the role of manager of our little team of about 15 speech pathologists. And got a blank of where I’m up to. 

Yeah, our little team of speech pathologists. That’s right. And then, so within those few short months, I saw my role shift from just being an administrator really from of the day to day and then thrust into that leadership position in, in really frightening times. So, March began with my daughter turning 16 and our last live concert, to see Julia Jacklin at the Astor Theatre. 

And I only realised today, it was one year ago this weekend that we saw her. And she was planning on doing a Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston cover, for her final show of her national tour, which was going to be on the following night. But at that stage, she didn’t know whether that was going to go ahead. 

So, you know, that was when I first heard about the ‘rona and there was so much uncertainty and it was a packed theatre and you could really feel that uncertainty, between everybody and, and I was already starting to wonder whether we should have been there, was the threat of infection, yet real, but it was a guilty pleasure. 

One last live show in a big crowd. So she, she stepped out, lit by that single spotlight with a guitar over her shoulder. And if you know Julia Jackman, she had a long flowing floral gown and, and I’m not going to sing it. And she sang, in her rich, deep vocals, I will always love you. And I hadn’t considered it a goodbye song before, but it was because she didn’t get to play it the following night. 

And on the Monday, we went into the harsh lockdown. So that March rolled into April and May, and there was a really rapid response to understand the disease. So our first COVID positive patient was admitted from one of the cruise ships. And we were grappling to learn as much as we could from overseas. 

And we were told, or what we know that these patients, COVID often affects patients breathing, their lungs. And so when someone can’t, someone’s lungs can’t function enough, they need to be ventilated. And what that means is that they’re sedated and a tube is inserted into the throat to hold the airways open. 

Ventilator is attached to the tube and forces air into the lungs, essentially breathing for the patient. And, but while a patient is being kept alive on ventilation. The body can respond in insidious ways, so the throat can swell and granulate around that inserted tube and there can be changes to the sensation and to the movement of the throat and there can be long-term damage to the vocal cords. 

So this is where we as speech pathologists step in, so hopefully a patient gets well enough and recovers, starts to breathe again on their own. And comes off ventilation and we have to carefully manage them to eat and drink again so they don’t choke or aspirate into their lungs and then eventually to help them use their vocal cords again. 

So, this is a whole new clinical area for us. We don’t often get ventilated patients at Midland. They’re normally transferred off to tertiary sites, but we had to become experts in a really short period of time because there was nobody else. And that was a lot of pressure on the team to upskill and, and you know, there were new terms thrown at us all the time, like N95 masks and aerosol-generating procedures and cohorting and donning and doffing and intubation, and extubation and PPE, which is Personal Protective Equipment, if you’ve been living under a rock in the last 12 months. These would have become part of our everyday vocabulary. And our colleagues from overseas told us that these patients were often very, very fatigued. They had cognitive and memory changes. They often went very hungry, but they had an insatiable thirst. 

And then recovery was very, very long. And around that time, I look back on my diary and my diary entry from that time read, it feels like we’ve been waiting for this for a long time, but I’m wrong. A week ago our conversation was different. Two weeks ago, even mundane. And we don’t have mundane conversations anymore. 

We, we talk in, we talk about China and Northern Italy. We talk about social distancing and isolation. And we talk about asymptomatic carriers. So that gathering of information and practicing all of our infection control procedures and stocking up on PPE, it was like we were preparing for a battle. And around that time, my daughter’s New York arts trip was cancelled. 

And on the day that Central Park was supposed to host a group of unruly Perth teenagers cycling through its gardens, there were instead, ambulance sirens filling the avenues and, and a field hospital was set up in the gardens. And you know, we all saw that footage. It looked like they were already at war. 

And they were really long, frenetic weeks. There was endless emails and phone calls and meetings and dissemination of information that could be update and, and updated and changed in a moment. And fatigue was a daily presence. And we were starting to get really tired and I remember going home and not wanting to have a look at another screen, but feeling that urgency of keeping up to date. 

And, you know, it was so busy, I didn’t have a lot of time or energy to reflect on my separation. But I remember being able to go to bed alone and wake up alone and have that one less burden to carry. And everyone responded in their own ways, you know, some people had showed so much strength and they, they just rocked up and they got on with their day and they’re really stoic. 

And then there were others who showed so much fragility and fear. And I had lots of phone calls on the weekends and people pulling me aside at work, teary and worried about taking COVID home to their loved ones and, and, and vulnerable, family members and friends. And, you know, I supported them in the best way I knew how. 

Yeah, I supported them in the best way that I knew how, but the truth is that I didn’t know how it would pan out or indeed how it’s going to. And at work our days changed, so we lunched outside in smaller numbers at a distance from each other. We put our phones in little snap-lock plastic bags to be wiped down regularly. 

And we had to change our clothes on arriving to work and then change our clothes again on leaving. And then at home, our shoes, we kept by the front door and our clothes were washed at 60 degrees. Sorry, I’ve got a blank of where I’m up to. And then yeah, and you know, the way, the way we coped was to keep in touch with each other and to support each other. 

And there were a lot of COVID memes going around at that time. And then on the weekends, I was able to take my bike out up into the hills, up into the trails. Where the bush was exactly the same as it was before. And I was able to puff and fill my lungs at odds with lungs elsewhere in the world. And then July and August came, but the COVID patients didn’t, fortunately. 

So my son and his friends were able to finally celebrate their 18th birthdays. And at work, there was this there was this, there was this shift, so even though we were still really busy, we, there was a lot less stress and we were able to relax and, and start to breathe again. So, we, we had and we still have lots of updates around COVID and, and PPE training and regular reminders with outbreaks closer to home, but somehow we got back to business as usual or as close to it as possible. 

And then, in the last three months of the year, something curious happened. We had, everyone started dropping like flies. So we had two to three times more sick leave than usual. You know, COVID fatigue is real, I think. And so that December and the Christmas break was so desperately needed. And I, like many, needed to draw that arbitrary line between last and this year. 

So, in summing up, 2020 was a big year. I separated from my husband. I bought a bike. I forgot to mention I turned 50. But COVID really was just a backdrop to our lives because in our little team there were two engagements, a baby, no, two engagements, a wedding, two babies, and none of them related. 

There was a death of a father, the death of a grandmother. There were, and my dad continues to live with terminal cancer, and another’s mom is in and out of hospital with cardiac disease. And I’m sure there’s other stuff that people keep closer to their chest, but, the point is that, you know, life throws stuff at us and, and still we get up on a Monday morning and we go to work. 

So, I follow this Facebook group called Medical Speech-Language Pathologists and it’s mainly acute care speech pathologists working in the U.S. And I saved a post from November because it really touched me. And someone posted, ‘Hey friends, it’s been a while, are we still crying in our cars? #askingforafriend’. So this last year of mulled over this concept of resilience, something that’s bandied around. And if you Google it, you’ll get a very underwhelming response. Google defines it as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulty. But I think it’s so much more than that. And in 2020 I could see that resilience on a daily basis. 

In my colleagues lives and also in my life and, and it became real for us. We were able to get up and come to work again. So, in January this year, it was almost a year to the date of that original health department circular. The team, our team got together again and to celebrate our successes of 2020 because there were lots and to develop a team charter or a set of values which are most important to us. 

And these are the six we came up with. Passion, innovation, diligence, collegiality, equanimity, Yes, we are quite wordy. And the last but not least is fun. And you know, I wonder whether that’s a magic mix. So it wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but I wonder if my, my desire for adventure and discovery was fulfilled after all. Thank you.  

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