Normal People Keep Their Phones On Silent
Dinggggggggg… The sound of the incoming notification echoes off the cold walls of the hospital room, a welcome reprieve from the incessant beeping of the machines. This is how this story should start if it weren’t for the fact that every normal person I know keeps their phone on silent at all times. But let’s ignore that for a second and focus on what this message says:
It’s from @jannyutah, “Don’t know you bro, but good luck with the recovery, stay positive and hopefully it will be a quick recovery. You can do whatever you put your mind to bro! You are a Surfer. Best wishes all the way from Panama”
Seeing this message come all the way from Panama to an iPhone sitting on a cluttered bedside table in a chaotic intensive care unit makes me pause…
Panama?
Up until this point, I’ve heard from or seen a lot of people I’d expect to see. The ones I love, the closest friends, the familiar faces. So this feels a little different to me.
Who are they? How did they find out? Is this the real Panamanian Johnny Utah from ‘Punto de Quiebre’?
I have so many questions when suddenly another notification pops up on my screen, this time from @esraozerk.
“Sending love from Istanbul, get well soon 🙏🏼 proud of u ✌🏼️💐🌸”
Turkey this time? This is crazy! Has someone paid them to make me feel better? Are they bots?
I wouldn’t consider myself a sceptical person, but I find it interesting that my initial response isn’t to accept these well-wishes. Perhaps it’s due to online anonymity, but it’s more likely due to the fact that up until that point I’d felt so alone based purely on what I’d been through.
A shark attack is not a common occurrence at all; the stats I’ve found put the odds at roughly 1 in 11.5 million, so it’s difficult to look around and find someone who knows what you’re feeling and has been through what you’ve been through.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the messages of support, I just haven’t found out how to connect with them in a way that doesn’t throw me back into the depths of my lonely struggle.
Then… Another message:
@riklove72: “Hey @brettconnellan just wanted to wish you a speedy recovery mate. For whatever reason we are given challenges in life that test our resolve and inner strength... I lost a decent % of muscle from my right thigh when I had the top of my right femur replaced due to cancer. The body heals and will adjust... You got this, stay positive and focused on the recovery, you'll be back in the water in no time!!”
Wait. Richie Lovett? I remember watching Richie surfing on the World Tour in the early 2000’s when I was just getting into surfing.
So these aren’t bots. They’re real people. People with experiences and genuine well-wishes to offer. I know what Richie’s been through and although it’s not a shark attack, I can start to relate to our similar physical challenges.
@_johnnyboy_gomes: “Aloha @brettconnellan Wishing you a full & speedy recovery and when you come Hawaii, let's go surfing together.”
I’d absolutely love that…
@totolemesoff: “Come on man you can do it stay strong💪”
The desperation from a complete stranger who cares enough to take the time to send this message sends me into tears.
I’ve never been much of a crier in the traditional sense. There are the obvious occasions of loss that we all experience but outside of that my tears are, for some reason, usually reserved for triumphant sporting moments. Maybe this is because I have an idea of what goes into trying to achieve sporting success, and while the joy of the moment brings tears to my eyes, it’s rarely enough to properly cry.
With that being said, when it does come out, I find the swelling of emotion nearly impossible to control. As much as I don’t like to admit, I’m one of those messy criers who is overwhelmingly embarrassed by showing that kind of reaction.
All this to say that reading these messages is the most I’ve ever cried in my entire life.
By far.
Like, not even a contest.
I just can’t grasp how these people have hit the point of empathy to bother sending anything to a complete stranger. And on top of that, to leave some genuinely heartfelt and touching words that go far beyond the typical “Get well soon”.
Why am I the lucky person who has been given this gift?
These are just a few of the thousands of messages that are flooding my phone but I think @selema sums it up when he posts: “I don't know you but I've seen the outpouring of support as well as how hard you absolutely rip. Wishing you and your family strength and healing energy. One day at a time sir. You got this”
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Humans are social creatures. Ones who need people around them as much as we need to be there for each other. That sense of community and togetherness has always been something that, in the best of times, has brought us together, and in the worst of times, has pulled us apart.
When I see Sal’s message that confirms that he doesn’t know me, but is reaching out because he’s seen others do so is quite telling of this situation, as well as the whole point of me writing this piece right now.
I’m not accusing anyone of being a sheep that’s purely following the herd, because the specificity and empathy in each individual message I received shows that it’s much more than a ‘box tick’. However, we are influenced by the people around us, which in this case was everything I needed. The support at the start of my recovery journey was what gave me hope, connection, and a reason to want to push forward to show people what’s possible.
Here’s a writing quirk that my inexperienced fingers don’t exactly know how to format. I speak above in first person not just to set the tone of this piece, but to show how vividly I remember all the details and emotions of what it was like to experience this support. People say “I’ll never forget this” with maybe a bit too much abandon because while you may remember what happened, do you remember how it happened? What’s crystallised in that moment of time? How did it make you feel?
I love the process of writing, despite the fact that I have no idea if I’m good at it, or if I can properly get my points across, don’t even get me started on my confusion around some grammatical concepts and the correct way to approach ‘tense’. It’s all very overwhelming, and something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around as I’ve been slowly working on a book that details my story.
It’s not just another pure recount of what happened; it’s a deeper look into how other people perceive sharks, shark attacks, and what it means to have empathy in a world where it feels like we’re not allowed to understand people who hold different views from us.
Despite the direction of so much of the public discourse, I do have hope, which stems from the messages I have shared at the start of this. These messages came from people with all sorts of backgrounds, upbringings, cultural views and experiences, but they were all united through this rare moment of open and shared empathy.
The response to what was an isolated and horrific incident in my life has given me a unique perspective on what kindness can do, which I want to take some time to explain.
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From the community side of this coin, I saw people coming together with a shared purpose which was to support someone who, from their perspective, was dealing with unimaginable trauma. But from a personal view, I felt noticed, looked out for, and safe.
This is what a strong community can do.
We can rally, lift others up and inspire positivity, which, to me, is essential to know if we are to have any sort of confidence in the broader concept of humanity.
This may all sound like an optimistic delusion for me to expect that every single person I come across is an absolute A-grade human being, because of course, we know that’s not the case for everyone.
That being said, in my experience, I have a hard time being able to single out anyone who wasn’t kind and supportive, which may have altered my long-term worldview.
The thought that I’m trying to not only understand for myself, but also articulate in a way that pays respect to support, is this feeling:
When people pick you up once, it has the unintended, but also completely understandable side-effect that you begin to assume that someone will always be there for you.
A belief that somehow, things will always work out.
This is my experience.
It feels taboo to write these words down because of the implication of support being a bad thing. However, my rebuttal to that is the knowledge that I wouldn’t be where I am today without all of the people around me, so it’s clear that support is good.
But what I’ve started to wonder is whether that experience also planted a tiny expectation in the back of my mind, the idea that if I keep moving forward, the world will somehow step in and help carry the next thing as well.
Writing this book has forced me to question that belief.
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The book is called “Beneath The Surface”. So, I’ve got a title, I’ve got a projected storyline mapped out, and I’ve even designed a draft cover. But I’m only 7 chapters in.
I have no experience in writing a book, but I can pretty confidently say that this is not how the process should go. The reason I’ve done it this way is because somewhere along the line, I subconsciously decided that if I made it all sound cool, someone would pick it up and help me get it finished.
That hasn’t happened. Which leads to a critical self-reflective question that I’ve been pondering over the last few weeks.
Why do I think the world owes this book so much?
I’ve never been in this for money, exposure, or fame. I always thought that by starting with a pure intention of just wanting to share my story with the hopes that it could help someone, that would be enough. Hopefully, someone else would feel the same.
However, what I’ve found through multiple rejections from various publishers is that they don’t care about all of this heartfelt backstory at all, nor should they. They are under absolutely no obligation to support me in the same way @jannyutah did back in 2016.
It has taken me an entire 10 years to realise that the support I received after the attack wasn’t about guarantees. It was much more about this social phenomenon of people banding together and showing up.
We are all incredibly strong individuals, and the support from those around us amplifies this strength, driving us to achieve great things.
Back then, my support didn’t do the work for me, they simply reminded me of my own strength which at the end of the day is what got me back on my feet, walking again, and eventually surfing again.
Today, I’ve started to view the writing of this book in the same way.
If it is going to be finished, the responsibility for that sits with me. But the same kind of community and support that once helped me stand up again might still have a role to play.
My primary goal from this point forward is to get my book finished and out there, which is why I’ve decided to share the chapters as I write them, one by one, on my website. Accountability is one thing, but for me, the greater reason for this approach is to reconnect with why I started writing this in the first place.
Maybe it can help someone.
Maybe it can inspire hope.
Maybe it can remind someone that they’re not alone.
And if a few people choose to follow along, share, or provide feedback as the story is told, then perhaps the same spirit of support that once helped me find my feet again might help this book find its way too.
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So stay tuned for that, but for now, I’ll finish this with another short story about support as a reminder that the way that we show up for people matters more than we often see.
Getting bitten by a shark doesn’t hurt that much. At least in my experience, that’s what I’ve found to be true. Fight, flight and freeze, the production and release of adrenaline. There’s a lot of reasons why this may be the case but the real pain is often in the aftermath. The psychological battles, the loneliness, and the loss of purpose or identity can form their own kinds of pain, but I want to talk about a slightly more relatable pain.
Band-Aids.
And before your imagination makes you think that my missing chunk of quad was repaired by a couple of band-aids, it wasn’t. That was hours of microsurgery, skin grafts and medical expertise that will forever blow my mind.
A free-flap muscle transplant took my left latissimus dorsi muscle and relocated it to my left leg. This was to try to avoid amputation, while giving me the hope of having a potentially usable replacement muscle after a blood supply and nerve were connected to complete the operation.
The skin grafts are where this band-aids story will all start to make sense. I had 3 separate donor sites on my body to provide enough skin to try to repair my leg. They took skin from my left hip, my left hamstring, and the problematic area of my left calf.
Notice how everything is on the left side?
I wondered if there was a medical or scientific explanation as to why they chose everything from the left. I thought maybe it had to do with overall strength balance, or having a preferred side when adaptation starts to form. After speaking to my surgeon years later, it turns out, due to the fact that I was lying on my right side for the surgery, it was just easier for them to access the left side and take everything from there.
Mystery solved.
The reason the left side was problematic is that once I finished the operation and had a cast on my leg, the cast began to rub against the skin graft site on my calf, causing issues with healing and potential infection.
To solve this, a large, clear band-aid was applied to cover the wound, which was roughly 30cm long and 5cm wide. I was told to keep it on for a week before it was to be changed.
The good news is that it worked, it protected the wound from the cast, and it had healed surprisingly well. The bad news is that they didn’t shave my leg before applying this large band-aid. So the removal process took over 2 hours, ripping each individual hair out one by one.
Not only is this the most painful part of the shark attack for me, but categorically one of the more painful experiences of my life to date.
I knew I didn’t want to deal with the big band-aid again, so I paid attention to how the world around me affected skin graft sites. The one that I was worried most about was the one on my hip, as the waistband of any pants that I was wearing could potentially be abrasive.
I researched to see if there was anything I could wear that had a soft, flat waistband, which led me to a very specific pair of RecGen shorts that were only available at a store in Wollongong Mall.
The day came when I could finally leave the hospital, and amidst the emotions of progress, there were some logistical issues to sort out. The first of which was figuring out how to sit in a car when my leg was locked in a straight position, the second was making time to stop on the way home to get my new shorts.
As I clumsily battled my way out of the back seat of the car, I had a brief thought where I wondered if I would see anyone I knew in the mall. I’d been in the hospital for 5 weeks and had seen a lot of people in that time, but was still figuring out how to speak properly about my experience.
I concluded that the chances of seeing anyone were pretty low, and as I hobbled through the mall on my rental crutches, that proved to be true.
However, what I didn’t account for were the people I didn’t know.
Often, when you see someone walking on crutches, your attention is naturally drawn to them as you wonder, “How did they break their leg?” or something similar. But when that person has been the subject of a major news story that has gone on for weeks, they become instantly recognisable.
I felt myself being watched as I wondered how I would react if someone came up and asked some invasive or personal questions about the attack. That “if” turned into a certainty as I locked eyes with a lady who was walking directly towards me.
They stopped, and without introducing themselves, said “It’s so good to see you up and on your feet”
That was it. No questions, no need to try to figure out how to share my story, and no time for a thoughtful response from me, so all I said was “Thank you” as they smiled and carried on.
As I continued, I received some friendly smiles from other people walking past. Who knows if they actually knew me or if I’d developed some sort of main character syndrome by that point. But after a minute I needed to stop to take a rest as this was by far the longest I’d walked in 5 weeks.
I gathered myself when I realised we’d stopped next to another lady who was lugging some shopping bags around and had also taken a quick break. She looked at me and I could see the moment she realised that she was staring as she stumbled her way through saying “Are you the guy… The one with the… How are you? Are you ok?”
As we chatted, she mentioned that she’d been following along with my progress and was surprised to see me out of hospital so soon. She said she had left a comment on a Facebook post about me, but never thought she would get to see me in real life, let alone on two feet.
This encounter was such a cathartic experience as it was the first time I’d been able to put a face to one of the online messages. Not that I’d specifically seen her message, but to know that people can be just as caring in real life brought so much warmth to an interaction that I was fearing only minutes earlier.
It was from that point that I decided the motivation behind my recovery would serve a secondary purpose beyond just recovering for myself. I wanted to push myself incredibly hard, and to achieve things that nobody thought was possible as a way of saying thank you, and inspiring those who believed in me before I even did.
This lady in the mall is just one of many who fit this description.
10 years have now passed, and I can proudly say that I’ve given it everything I have, all while sticking to this purpose that will continue to drive me for years to come.
We’ve achieved so much together.
And for anyone who sent a message at any stage of this journey, I hope you know it mattered, and I know I wouldn’t be here without you.
Thank You