It was February on the farm autumn in Australia. We were top dressing superphosphate onto our pastures using an aerial contractor. This was two weeks after the rage party. Helen started to lose her balance to one side. We had noticed a change in her general behavior about a day before when she took my motorbike as she often did; she had a problem balancing on the bike and kept falling off toward the one side. Helen said that she thought she was getting a virus as she felt a bit off colour. After the super Helen started to deteriorate quickly, and definitely had problems standing up. We took Helen 30 k's into Tumby Bay to the local hospital where the caring country GP was really worried. He called the air ambulance and shipped her and Glenys off to Adelaide for treatment. The GP thought she may have had a blood clot from a minor car accident she had been in about three weeks before. I followed the women over to the city by commercial airlines the next day. Helen was confined to bed and had deteriorated badly in the day I had not seen her.

Test after test was carried out. The final diagnosis was that she had encephalitis and that there was not much hope of her surviving. Helen was hardly coherent at the time; she sat up in bed with her head twisted back unnaturally to one side. This was a very traumatic time for Glenys and I. The only thing that Helen could say that was coherent was "I am going to beat this." This positive attitude was probably what saved her life. Helen was in hospital in the city for sixteen weeks. We convinced ourselves that she was getting better. We consulted the doctors and specialists about her condition and were informed that she had massive brain damage and would probably not improve much from her present condition. One option was to leave her in Adelaide in a home. We chose to bring her home with us to the farm. The closest that we could work out with the doctors was that Helen had been bitten by a mosquito at the all night rage.

Helen had to be taught the most basic things even washing herself and toilet trained again, we had a lot of accidents. Years of therapy followed. Helen did do a lot to help on the farm in her limiting manner. Thoughts and memories prior to her accident were easily recalled but not what she had done the day before. We tried to bring some sort of normality into Helen's life by taking her to disco's and the local hotels where her old friends congregated. A very sad part of this was that a lot of her friends of old would not have anything to do with her. I overheard plenty of disparaging remarks; I had a lot of trouble not buying into arguments on her behalf. A couple of young girls took Helen under their wing when we went to town, they were not her former best friends as they had vanished. Helen had not had her driver's license taken away and her driving ability was just as good as before the accident. Helen desperately wanted to work and help people. We were lucky to get her voluntary work in the local hospital in the laundry. She worked there for about eighteen months, driving herself to town. I know a few creeps took advantage of Helen. Out of sight of Helen, I was going to thump one of them one night, but luckily didn't. I walked into the local bar one night, one of the local alcoholics came up to me and informed me that they had taken Helen under their wing and had warned off the creeps who were hanging around. Marvelous from where help comes from, a few of the more persistent bums had a punch in the nose from Helen's Knights in shining armor.

Helen moved to Port Lincoln. She had been looking for accom-modation unbeknown to us. A man rang one day and offered her a flat in town. We all talked this over and decided that we may have been trying to be over protective and that the experiment should be given a try. A few weeks after moving in to town Helen informed us that she had met a guy and that he was going to help her look after her money. Helen was a compulsive spender, an easy touch for any sales girl in a shop. We met Steve and had reservations as to his motives. Steve has had a few problems himself at times and moved in with Helen in the flat. The spending stopped and Helen began saving money again. Steve had a slight marijuana problem Helen was dead against this. The two have helped each other.