It started when my Mum asked me to organise for her to be killed.
She didn't want me to do the deed (thanks Mum!), but rather she wanted me to take her home, put her in her bedroom, shut the door and get a doctor or a lawyer to end it. "This is ridiculous! This is ridiculous!", she kept saying.
My Mum was in palliative care in a hospice, more dead than alive. This was a Saturday night and it was just me visiting her. She couldn't follow Family Feud on the TV. Sometimes she didn't know where she was. I think that there were times when she didn't even know who she was. But this night she had gathered what mental acumen that she had left to make this request of me.
Just eight months earlier she was a healthy, independent woman who worked as a teacher in a remote Aboriginal community. After a couple of "funny episodes" she took herself off to the community doctor who transferred her to Darwin hospital for a scan. They found a mass on her brain. I flew up to Darwin that weekend to bring her back to my home in Brisbane. By the following weekend that neurosurgeon told us it was Stage IV Glioblastoma. In layman's terms: brain cancer -- the worst kind. Doctor Google told me that only 22% of people survive beyond two years after diagnosis.
Those eight months had been tough on all of us. My Mum had gone through three brain surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and some near death events. Her life was going to be cut short in a way that she had always said that she didn't want to die: not in her right mind.
I was the communications officer, managing the flow of information between the hospital administration, doctors, nurses, medical support staff, friends, Mum's workplace and family members. All had varying priorities, needs and agendas. It was stakeholder management on steroids.
So back to this night that my Mum had asked me to organise her death. I honestly thought I was ok. Sure, I had a lot of balls juggling in the air and I was stretched so thin that I was transparent, but I truly thought that I was coping.
Until a couple of weeks later when I couldn't get out of bed.
The back pain that I experienced was off the scale compared to anything I had ever encountered. My husband called 000, the ambulance came, they gave me the green whistle and took me to hospital. The nurse and physio who checked me over told me to take the painkillers they prescribed, see my osteo and sent me on my way.
The next morning I could get out of bed for a minute and then my back locked up again. Again, the ambulance was called and took me off to hospital. I remember the lead paramedic telling me that it took his wife a year to physically get over the death of her mother. I thought, "Pig's butt it will take me a year!"
At the hospital, the nurse was curt. Effectively, she told me to, "Suck it up, there's nothing wrong with you" and repeated the initial instruction to take my painkiller meds and go to my osteo.
I dreaded the following morning.
Sure enough, I got four steps out of bed before my back locked up again in excruciating pain. This was getting embarrassing. The same ambulance crew as the previous day came and took me to a different hospital. The doctor checked me over and told me that I was fine. I asked him, "What was I to do if this happens the next day?" He took pity on me, did more tests and admitted me overnight.
I was scared.
I didn't know what was wrong with me and I felt like I was letting my family down. I didn't know how to make things better.
The tests came back clear. Although I was still ginger and could feel the shadow of the pain wanting to claw into my back muscles again, the overnight stay seemed to help. But I didn't know what caused the pain and if...or when!...it would come back.
I went home.
The following day, a wise family friend told me to write down all the things that I was feeling. I was angry that my Mum was dying. I was angry with myself for being angry. I wrote down every bit of anger, guilt, shame and pressure about the circumstances that were impacting on my life.
I wrote five pages of how I was feeling and immediately felt better physically.
I don't know if what I had was a panic attack or not. What I do know is that there are a number of people in my life who have since confided in me that they have experienced stressors such as anxiety, panic attacks and depression. To the naked eye, you would never know. They are smart, strong, capable people who seem to have their act together.
Each of these people has their own way of preventing and managing these issues.
We can only hold a certain amount of stress in out lives before there are consequences. And this capacity is different for each individual and can change within each person. It's important to have self-awareness of this capacity. Recognise when limits are being reached beforehand and implement boundaries and strategies to prevent outcomes that cause pain and suffering.