The Healer Within. Mariena Foley
exams, hearing tests, the lot. Out of 1200 applicants, sixty got in and only three were women. I was one of the three.
I left you hanging about my doctor, Greg, “doing me harm”. It turned out that Greg had some pretty serious issues, I’m afraid. Allegedly, Greg had been having sex with his patients in his rooms and charging the time to Medicare. What was worse, he was HIV positive, as now are many of the men he’d had sex with. While I’d known him he had married and had a daughter; thankfully, both his wife and daughter are not HIV positive. As you can well imagine, when all of this came to light my shock was miniscule compared to the shock his wife experienced. He had also, in his incredibly charistmatic and charming way, convinced many of his elderly clients to leave their millions to him…and the list goes on. He’s now jailed, having been charged with many crimes, including millions of dollars of Medicare fraud. I had been quite the “beard” for my doctor!
No doubt because he was covering his tracks, my medical records disappeared. That is no mean feat, I tell you, and it wasn’t just mine alone. Many of his patients have had to deal with this. These records were removed from a number of databases. It’s never been a convenient thing, I might add. The only medical records I have left are of a tonsillectomy I had at eighteen. However, this worked well when I was entering the military.
I was in the army now.
My mother was horrified, the relatives disbelieving; my father, however, having been in the army himself, said “It will be the making of you.“ He was so right! It was some of the best times and some of the worst times I can recall.
I had no expectations except that it would be hard. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed it so much; every day I was pushed to my limit and then beyond, so every day I had a hugely empowering sense of accomplishment. Even today I live very much by the Infantry corps motto: “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome”.
I later found out that during my basic training, there was a huge betting pool on how long I would stay in; the longest bet was three weeks. Probably because of my physical appearance, people have a habit of grossly underestimating me.
It wasn’t long before my fellow recruits figured that out. The guys later confessed that I pushed them all, because I would whip them on the obstacle course, on the firing range, and tactically. We would run at a 10-foot wall and I would make it over first time, one-handed, rifle slung. You can imagine the male ego response to that.
And it was that male ego thing, too, that created some of my worst moments in the army.
Early on it was discovered that I had a talent with weapons. I have a dead eye when shooting and a love for the mechanism of the weapons we used. My first love was rifles and individual automatic weapons. No need to worry, it’s not some demented, crazed obsession. The military ensures that not only are you proficient in handling the weapon, but that you revere it and handle it with the utmost respect.
As time came for me to choose a corps, I wanted to go into armoured; tanks, etc. I mean, why carry the weapon when the weapon can carry you? That, and I loved the sound of the 30 cal and 50 cal guns; beautiful. But justifiably, women aren’t allowed in armoured. We aren’t allowed in infantry either, but that is the corps I entered.
I think my father was right. I saw so many great guys grow into great men in the military. And I’m sure it was the “making of me” too. I made some awesome friendships whilst in the military that last to this day, and could tell you a thousand hysterically funny “war stories” about our service, training and exercises, that to this day have tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.
It was a truly amazing time. But I had to leave…
Something strange started happening with my balance. One moment I would be standing up straight and then, without any sensation of overbalance at all, I would be lying on the ground. I had headaches, nose bleeds, a weird pressure in the back of my throat and a strange taste in my mouth. They thought it was extreme fatigue and sent me to the Regimental Medical Officer. He did tests, blood counts, a CT and MRI.
Brain Tumour
They gave me the option: take a medical discharge, or take leave and “deal with it”. I chose the latter. But the news wasn’t good. The tumour was inoperable. This time I was given twelve months to live.
The death sentence, again.
Many people must simply give up when they hear that. You trust your doctor. We’ve been conditioned to do so. You believe what he says to you! So where does that leave your mindset?
The fight wasn’t going well. There is nothing quite the same as the feeling of your own brain deceiving you. There was a pinnacle day when I went to walk out the door of my apartment down into the courtyard, an automatic process I had never had to think about. I fell, badly, landing hard on the pavers. There were three steps down to the yard and my body could not remember how to walk down them. Determined, damn stubborn in fact, I would not let this tumour win, so I kept trying. Again and again. Cognitively, deliberately, battered and bleeding…and I kept falling.
Three months later at a “routine” check-up with he specialists, they changed their minds. “You’ve probably only got six months.”
I joked, “What if I’m on a schedule here? You just stripped me of three months!” But I was the only one laughing. “I’m sorry”, they said.
I wasn’t sorry. I was angry. And as I’m an Indigo, I was really angry. I began to have blackouts, and when I would come to, the pain was absolutely horrendous. I would crawl very, very slowly, with my head hanging low between my arms, to a place where I could rest comfortably, then sleep and sleep.
I was rapidly entering depression and had started to think self-pitying thoughts like, Is everyone else’s life this bloody hard? I went home to my family for Christmas that year and could barely crack a smile. Then an amazing gift was put before me…
A friend with whom I went to primary school rumbled down our driveway on his Harley Davidson one day. I hadn’t seen him for eleven years. He’d heard I was in town and thought he’d drop in. We spent the next couple of weeks purring our way around the beautiful Gippsland Lakes region of Victoria on the Harley. It was summer, dappled light, warm salty breezes, the freedom of the bike: just exquisite.
One afternoon my friend said, “Let’s go rollerblading. I know this guy who is a great skater, we’ll go with him. I’ll meet you at 8 pm down at Lakes Entrance…”
So at 8 pm I drove into the driveway and stepped out of the car into destiny’s play. The skater friend was remarkably articulate, obviously intelligent, warm and very, very funny.
I was not interested in any sort of romance. I was absolutely not looking. After all, I had no future. So of course, that is when I met a friend who for a chapter would become my husband. I had known him only two days and can remember the very moment when I knew I was going to marry him. I was halfway across a street, between the traffic lanes, when it hit me. I nearly got run over in my shock!
My health started getting better. As it turns out, and as can happen with illness, it was a great time for me to slow down and re-evaluate things. From the outset, for as long as I could remember, I had been in a hurry. I had to achieve this, try that, beat that system, go there, and in all things, I had to excel. I expected no less of myself. But I had been so busy achieving that I had not actually been enjoying my achievements. And I still hadn’t discovered where I really wanted to go.
Throughout it all, I was driven. I knew there was purpose, but as yet, not what it was.
Somehow, against all odds, I started to recover, although it didn’t feel like it. Friends witnessed me blacking out and vomiting. I would be on the floor when I regained consciousness and my husband would be lying next to me, his face inches from mine, wet with tears, his brow furrowed with such concern.
Andrew had a wickedly fast sense of humour and a wonderful ability to speak to anyone and make them feel like he was an old friend. His humour was intelligent, yet comfortable. At a time when I could