Free I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes by Mary Tennant

them near the blanket for my parents. The nearby creek tumbled over stones and birds tweeted in the trees. There was a soft breeze.
    As soon as we had eaten, Mum stood up.
    ‘Let’s go home, Tim. I can’t stand the heat.’
    ‘Why don’t you come back to the house? I can make a pot of tea and we can sit on the verandah.’
    ‘No, I’d rather go home and have tea there, thanks.’ She shrugged her shoulders, indicating her distaste for the outing.
    Why couldn’t I ever get it right?
    Soon after this, I had a little breakdown. My life seemed to be drifting. I was lost and lonely. I spent a whole day crying. Tony, one of my housemates, held me for a long time and I told him everything. He was kind, understanding and non-judgemental. This was the first of many such events that I had in the coming years.
    Coupled with my personal self-doubt, I was experiencing a crisis of doubt about conventional medicine. Though I loved my ward, I was becoming more and more traumatised by invasive medical practices and the use of strong drugs and their damaging side effects. During my nursing training I had gone to a seminar by Doctor Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a psychiatrist who worked with terminally ill patients and had written a book called Death and Dying . I was strongly influenced by her work, particularly her writings on the stages of dying. I was not afraid of death. I thought it would be peaceful. I recall sitting one day with a lung cancer patient in my ward, an elderly man.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, holding his hand. ‘It will soon be over and you’ll be in a much better place. Don’t be afraid.’
    Most patients on the ward who had lung cancer were smokers, or had been. But one man in his mid-forties was the father of two young children and had never smoked. The method of diagnosis for lung cancer was to insert a needle into the pleural cavity and take some fluid for analysis. I assisted in this procedure, and it had a profound effect on me. I was shocked by the intrusion of the needle, the pain he suffered. I couldn’t see the purpose of it. We already knew he was dying.
    I began to rile against modern medicine. I resigned from my position and went travelling.

9
    The papers here are full of the cold war … Cruise missiles are going to be placed on English soil … People say it’s not a matter of if, but when, World War Three will happen …
    I’ve been accepted into an Accident and Emergency course at a London hospital, but I’m conflicted because there is a course in herbal medicine in the south of England and I think that’s the direction I want to take …
    My letters home were those of a young person searching for direction in a chaotic world. My eyes were being opened. I’d come from a small town in the Antipodes and here I was in this huge city of diverse opinions and opportunities. I worked at St Thomas’ Hospital where in 1859 Florence Nightingale opened the world’s first nursing school.
    Each day on my walk to work I passed Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and crossed Westminster Bridge. I loved living in London but on my nurse’s wages I could barely afford to pay rent and buy food. I wanted to take the opportunity of further study in England. I wasn’t satisfied with my one nursing qualification and decided to apply for something more.
    I turned down a place at a London hospital to do a certificate in Accident and Emergency. My experience in the cardiothoracic ward with patients suffering through chemotherapy influenced me and, when I heard about a course in herbal medicine, it seemed a better option. Western medicine was invasive and toxic, I reasoned. I moved to southeast England and the village of Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, and became a student.
    With the benefit of hindsight it was the wrong decision. I was too idealistic. The skills I would have learned in the Accident and Emergency course would have been invaluable in the work I would end up doing. But I threw myself into the course and the