For Kelsey Waghorn, experiencing the Whakaari White Island eruption in December 2019 was only the start of a journey of compounding trauma.
Waghorn was working as a guide when the island erupted, killing 22 people and injuring a further 25. She suffered burns to 45% of her body, spent nearly 10 weeks in hospital recovering.
Speaking to Paula Bennett on the Ask Me Anything podcast, Waghorn says her time in hospital was “arguably more traumatic than the eruption itself”.
She underwent a slew of surgeries, often just days apart. As part of her recovery Waghorn was turned every two hours - an excruciating exercise that filled her with nervous anxiety.
“I was lucid, like you knew it was coming, which almost was the worst part. I had a clock in my room, and you could watch the time pass, and it was like ‘they’re coming soon’.”
“They” were a group of five or six nurses who had to turn Waghorn regularly to prevent serious complications. It wasn’t an easy task as Waghorn’s injuries were so extensive.
“T hose younger nurses had not seen anything like that before. Things that they would normally do, and had been taught to do, no longer worked. Because it was like, ‘well I can’t touch her there because that’s also burned,’ ‘I can’t touch her there because it’s a donor site’ … everything was just open wound, basically.
“They’d be terrified … they didn’t want to do it.”
As Waghorn’s recovery continued outside of hospital, messages from other burns victims began appearing in her inbox.
“ I had a firefighter message me real early on … and he just said, mentally it’s gonna hit you. He said it might be months, might be years, but it’s gonna get you."
Waghorn’s initial thought was “oh okay. Well maybe you’re weaker than I am, because I’m doing very well thank you.”
But the firefighter was right.
“It just sort of progressively got worse and worse and worse and worse. I just felt incredibly unsafe everywhere.”
Waghorn found herself ensuring she was facing a door when she went out so she had easy access to the exit, she became jumpy around strangers, and even the slightest noise could send her “through the roof”.
She also experienced bouts of rage that struck out of the blue.
“I’d yell, throw shit, storm out, slam doors … just implode.”
Years of being in a dark place took their toll, and at times Waghorn felt there was no way out. Conversations with a close friend helped her get through each day.
“He said ‘just keep turning up’- and it was like, that is the worst advice I’ve ever heard,” she says.
“It feels so basic - keep turning up. But you do. You just show up every day; go to the psych session, go for your walk, wake up in the morning, have a glass of water, just keep turning up.”
Waghorn kept turning up and slowly things became less dark. She started travelling again and found herself on South Georgia Island, a sub-Antarctic wildlife sanctuary. Spontaneous trips to Borneo and China followed.
Now, as she continues to process everything she has endured, Waghorn has written a book.
Surviving White Island details Waghorn’s experience of that fateful day in December 2019, and the traumatic journey of physical and mental recovery that followed.
The episode of Ask Me Anything closes with Bennett sharing an excerpt from Waghorn’s book, one that speaks to how far she has come from the days when she felt there was no way out.
I will continue to scream. Squeeze everything I can out of life and encourage you to do the same. Take the trip to Borneo. Take the trip to China. Do it scared. Do it alone.
Treat those heart-shattering moments where you lose everything as a clean slate. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the bottom.
You can only go up. You might not have a choice in some of what happens in your life, but you have the choice in how you show up, and that’s all you can do.
Listen to the full episode for more from Kelsey Waghorn on:
Ask Me Anything is an NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every second Sunday.
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