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My Journey - By Michelle Anderson of Pamper Boxes

After I finished my secondary schooling in the 1980s I had a couple of jobs which didn’t really hold my interest and then I joined the ambulance service when I was 20 years of age. I felt I had found the perfect job and believed it would be my lifelong vocation.

Being an ambulance officer is a great privilege. You are given instant access to people’s homes and lives with complete faith and trust. It is an exciting role. No two shifts are ever the same and it is impossible to predict what any particular work day will bring.

Being an ambulance officer is also emotionally taxing. You are thrown into situations that are life-threatening and life-changing. You are expected to be professional and to avoid becoming emotionally involved in individual cases. I was never very good at that last bit. I would often replay cases in my mind and worry and wonder about the patients I had treated. I would also be hyper-critical about my clinical abilities – did I give the correct treatment, should I have given this medication instead of that medication?

Looking back I think it was this overly critical and overly sensitive approach to my work that contributed to my being diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After almost 20 years in the job I had become an anxious wreck. I would jump at the sound of the telephone ringing, my heart would race if I heard a child crying and there was a constant thought in my head – what if I accidently killed someone by giving the wrong treatment? Added to this was a diagnosis of major depression. I had suffered with post natal depression with each of my three children so depression was not a new thing for me. But a diagnosis of PTSD combined with surgery on my spine from a work-related injury was enough to signal a downward spiral into a black hole I didn’t think I would ever climb out of.

In fact, by August 2009 I had convinced myself that my family would be better off without me. I filled a bath with hot water and ingested and injected enough drugs to end my life. A feeling of terror then overcame me and I rang a friend (and work colleague) and asked her to come to my house. Unbeknown to me, sitting at her kitchen table while she took my call were two ambulance officers who had dropped in for a chat. Within two minutes an ambulance was in my driveway.

I was taken to my local hospital and then transferred via helicopter to the Intensive Care Unit of a larger hospital where I spent six days. I was then transferred to a public psychiatric hospital for another six days and finally to a private psychiatric hospital for a further four weeks.  

Believe me, psychiatric hospitals can be very scary places. But they can also be remarkably healing places where you can learn much about yourself. The psychiatric hospital was the place where I realised just how unfair I had been to myself. It was there that I learned the value of self-nurturing, of considering my own needs, of being kind to myself. I had always considered such things to be selfish acts. When your work involves life and death situations you can tend to focus on the bigger picture and the bigger questions while neglecting the ‘little’ things in life.  ‘Little’ things like beautiful music, comforting scents, uplifting quotations, hand creams and bubble baths.

Recently I launched a website – www.pamperboxes.com.au . PamperBoxes is about indulgence, inspiration and nourishment. It is about my new way of thinking about myself and about how important the little things in life can be. Although I can no longer help people directly as an ambulance officer I can do so indirectly by encouraging others – men and women – to look after themselves psychologically. A PamperBox can be a gift to a loved one or a gift to oneself. It is a keepsake gift – not to be thrown away. It contains items that indulge, inspire and nourish.

The PamperBoxes logo includes a butterfly – a common enough image – but for me a poignant one:

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over it became a butterfly.

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