Melbourne Strong: White Island survivor’s plea to locked-down Melburnians
White Island volcano survivor Stephanie Browitt has overcome extreme adversity, having lost her father and sister in the tragedy. Now the Melbourne woman shares the small thing we can all do to help the city get through stage four lockdown.
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The inspirational Victorians have joined together for the Melbourne Strong campaign – to give encouragement and hope to anyone who is struggling though the lockdown.
Today, and in coming days, inspiring Victorians who have overcome adversity, some famous and others not so well-known, send their messages of strength to you.
As someone who is grieving deeply and has essentially been in lockdown since early December, due to my six months admission in hospital, I truly believe that focusing on what you can’t change is wasted energy that could be used elsewhere.
Nobody enjoys lockdown and it’s okay to be a little upset but instead focus on what you can do and not on what you can’t.
In my entire time in hospital, what kept me going was the thought of going back home to my mum and dog Arlo. And also having my normal day to day life back, as best possible.
Things like seeing my friends again, going shopping, eating out and going to see movies, I still haven’t had because of coming home to lockdown, however, instead of remaining upset, I choose to make the most of being home again with my mum.
I’ve learnt one of the hardest lessons in life which is that you never know when you’re going to lose someone you love.
I lost my dad and sister so suddenly and I would do anything and everything to have them in lockdown with mum and I.
I feel as though people don’t realise how precious time is and that you don’t often get the chance to be with family like this.
So please make the most of it. Watch some family movies, play games, annoy each other, cook together, share in a jigsaw, get creative and find some new hobbies.
Everybody is going through this together and this too, with perseverance will pass.
It isn’t forever and that’s what I choose to focus on.
I choose to take it one day at a time and enjoy my time with mum. I choose to explore what I can do from home and get creative with my time. I choose to stay home and accept this because everybody deserves to feel safe.
We need to be team players to overcome this petrifying pandemic.
We just can’t afford to branch off on our own, at the risk of killing another or perhaps our own family members.
I’ve had surgeries and laser treatment to help my injuries cancelled because of COVID-19 and yet I have no choice but to accept what’s before me.
My long and challenging journey ahead will be a difficult, painful and expensive one.
But it’s one I need to help my recovery progress.
For the interim I choose to stay safely indoors at home in isolation, just as I have been since December 9, 2019.
SEND IN YOUR MESSAGES OF SUPPORT AND POSITIVITY TO news@heraldsun.com.au
THE BROWITT FAMILY’S COVID PLEA
Eight months after her daughter Krystal perished in the catastrophic White Island volcano eruption, and husband Paul succumbed to his injuries in The Alfred hospital, loving mother Marie is holding close her only surviving child.
With amputated fingers and burns to most of her body that require a compression suit and full face mask, 24 year-old Stephanie will tell you she’s “good thanks”, if asked.
“She won’t complain,” Marie said
That’s despite the fact “she’s disfigured and her fingers are chopped and she’s burnt all over … she’s just trying to stay alive”.
If the scars from skin grafts tighten too much around her mouth, Stephanie won’t be able to eat.
And she faces many, many more painful surgeries and medical procedures, some of which she will need to fund herself.
Marie herself has two auto-immune diseases — multiple sclerosis and lupus — and is thought to have recently suffered a small stroke through stress.
But it’s the loss of family — not physical pain or disability — that hurts both mother and daughter most.
“My youngest daughter passed away on the mountain and my husband suffered to death. My other daughter is horrifically injured … I can tell you, there is nothing more important than family … just having your family alive and healthy,” Marie said.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do — I would live in a gutter and give up anything — to bring my husband and child back.”
There were days when Stephanie lay, on the edge of death, in The Alfred, that Marie would return from her hospital bedside, to her empty Craigieburn home, fall to the floor, and scream.
In those darkest of days, she wanted to set fire to the house and burn with it.
The family’s collie dog, Arlo, was her only comfort.
Unable to drive because of her own health conditions, she caught taxis daily — from Craigieburn to the hospital — “in a daze”, numb with grief.
If people didn’t drop off meals or groceries at the end of the day, she didn’t eat.
If she didn’t take sedatives, she didn’t sleep.
“The house was no longer a home, it was just material thing, a building of darkness and photos. No smell of food, no sound of laughter, no television in the background … I had to take tablets to sleep because if I woke during the night, I would cry out in agony, into the darkness … call out for my family, but they were never there.”
Thanks to The Alfred’s world-class medical care, Stephanie, 24, recovered enough to return home in mid-May this year.
That was six months after the volcano eruption, which occurred partway through a long-awaited family cruise to New Zealand.
Marie, with her illnesses, was the only member of the close-knit family who chose to remain on board the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, instead of visiting volcanic White Island on the December 9 day trip.
She declines to talk about the eruption itself, but says authorities were unsure for some time if Krystal, 21, had lived or died.
In the end, it was Krystal’s boyfriend who “brought her body home”.
“The day I buried my husband and my daughter … I came home in a taxi alone … I came home crying with a stranger, who started crying himself, and stopped by his own house to give me food.”
With her suppressed immune system, if she contracted COVID-19 now it would probably kill her, Marie said.
“And then Stephanie would have to go into a nursing home because there would be nobody to care for her,” she added, matter-of-factly.
But for now, safe within her home’s four walls, Stephanie is spending her days learning to use new hands-free technology, watching movies, and grieving for her sister and dad.
“We cry daily, which doesn’t have anything to do with isolation, but because of our grief, our great loss, and our empty home which was once full of laughter and food and people,” Marie said.
“Every week, I go to the cemetery where my husband and daughter lay, just so I can talk to them. ”
Marie’s advice for fellow Melburnians struggling through the coronavirus pandemic and consequent lockdowns is to cherish their families, draw strength from each other and stay home.
Being locked down with their loved ones — to protect their health and that of others — is “a privilege and a blessing,” Marie told the Herald Sun through tears.
“There are people out there, ignoring laws designed to protect their own family’s survival. I can’t comprehend it.
“If you have your family, and you have your health, you have everything. I just wish people could see that.
“But there are people out there putting themselves and their families, and other families, at risk, complaining about being stuck, with their family, at home.
“People are complaining about losing their businesses and the economy, and not being able to go shopping or out for a leisurely stroll, but these things don’t matter.
“There is no amount of money, no possessions, that I wouldn’t give up to get some of what I had back, just to get a glimpse of my child or hear her voice or laugh again, to smell her smell.”
“Material things you can always get back. You cannot get your family back … Death is irreversible.”
Help the Browitt family raise funds needed for Stephanie’s ongoing medical procedures by donating to their GoFundMe.
MARIE’S MESSAGE
I hope we all come together as one, in this small sacrifice to put a stop to the spreading of this deadly virus, once and for all.
Australians pull together in times of hardship and this is one of those times. Compared to what’s really at stake, isolating is a small sacrifice. Young and old, evidently this virus does not discriminate.
Our tragedy, our horrific loss of my child and husband, our tormenting grief and Stephanie’s injuries and yet we are still fighting in isolation in order to see this through and get on with it one day soon.
“We can’t afford to be complacent.
Death is irreversible, containing the virus and having money, buying material things and getting your social life back isn’t. If one has their health.
“It could be your own family you take it home to and kill.
“We have a choice at this stage is how I see it – an informed choice my family were not granted. We would do anything to have our family back.”
MORE NEWS
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HOW A BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY WAS TRAGICALLY CUT SHORT BY VIRUS