Transcript

A Sense of Self - Monday 21 November 2016

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: Hello and welcome to the last program of the year and for us here at 4 Corners a very special one.

It's hard to describe the feeling of watching someone you admire and love as a colleague come to grips with an illness that is taking away the qualities that make her who she is.

Liz Jackson was a giant of this program and one of the best journalists of her generation. In tonight's program she does what few television reporters ever do which is to turn the camera on herself - not in strength but in frailty - in order to tell the story of her illness: Parkinson's disease.

Liz made this film in part because the disease, the second most common neurological disorder in Australia, is so little understood. But she also made it to show the effects of pain and fear on herself and her family in a way that is both unflinchingly honesty and inspiring.

I wept when I watched this film not out of sentimentality - Liz would not tolerate that - but because she shows us the deeper reaches of what it means to be human.

[FILM PLAYS]

LIZ JACKSON: For over 30 years I reported from the frontlines of war and politics.

LIZ: Are you worried about the chaos, the looting and any possible revenge killing?

SOLDIER: It only takes one of them with a stick of dynamite to throw it in one of these vehicles and…

LIZ: You told Australians that you knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Do you think it's time, now, to tell Australians you were wrong?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, the intelligence assessments haven't been vindicated, but I made my statement based on the intelligence assessments.

LIZ: I'm not disputing that. I'm just asking if it's time, now, to say to Australians, "Look, looks like I was wrong." Can you say that to them?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, the intelligence assessments have turned out to be inaccurate, and I've said that.

LIZ: Can't say, "I was wrong on that"?

MAN: The winner of the 2006 Gold Walkley - Lin Buckfield, Peter Cronau, Liz Jackson for their Four Corners Program Stoking the Fires.

LIZ: Thank you very much indeed. I have to say I'm very much delighted and privileged and a little overwhelmed.

LIZ: In 2014 I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

LIZ: I'm actually disastrous.

DOCTOR: Disastrous. You're not good. Come through. You don't look good.

Are you OK to sit down?

LIZ: I'm due a Madopar. I'm wondering if I should take it now.

DOCTOR: Yeah take it now. You go ahead and have those. Have there been other falls?

LIZ: Yes.

This is a very hard story for me to tell because it involves exposing my current condition to a public audience. I feel that for such a common disease and such an ill understood disease. There's a desire in some senses to keep these things private because in a way you're not the person you were before and you feel more vulnerable. And more open to people's judgment. And pity. I don't want pity and I don't want judgment.

MARTIN BUTLER: Do you want to lie down there?

LIZ: I don't know.

MARTIN: Try and hang onto your breathing.

DOCTOR: This is like I saw you in hospital isn't it?

MARTIN: That's right.

LIZ: Martin.

DOCTOR: This is as bad as a gets. This is terrible.

MARTIN: Go the breathing Liz. Try going in through the nose.

LIZ: I can't do this.

MARTIN: You can.

LIZ: I've got to lie down.

DOCTOR: Of course you can lie down.

LIZ: I can't get up. I'll slip off.

MARTIN: You won't slip off.

DOCTOR: You won't slip off.

MARTIN: Do you want a blanket?

DOCTOR: Don't feel like you have to take part in it for the moment Liz. It might be best if you just take it really easy there OK? And we'll talk through what we can do next.

What we are trying to do at the moment is stabilize the dopamine levels.

MARTIN: Yes.

LIZ: I'm freezing.

LIZ: I've developed apart from Parkinson's a propensity to have panic attacks and I can have them several times in a day.

DOCTOR: Yeah the medication is not kicking in. You are going through a truly hellish experience Liz.

LIZ: The thing that worries me most is what it might do to my brain. I mean there's no doubt that people in my position are much more vulnerable to dementia.

What I've relied on throughout my career and throughout my life - is my capacity to think straight. And it's the fear of losing my sense of intelligence and responsiveness and losing a sense of who you are.

LIZ: That's my mother and father walking down Bourke St in Melbourne. My 2 older sisters. We had matching dresses.

That's the first time I went to England on my own. Classic bedsit.

LIZ: This is where Martin comes in.

MARTIN: Good photo.

LIZ: St Agnes Place.

MARTIN: I don't mind that pose.

LIZ: That's a good one.

The first time I met Martin as I remember was when I went out to his place and I don't know quite how to put this. He and a friend of his were completely off their faces.

MARTIN: Now my memories are a little clouded given the psychological state I was in, or the pharmacological state I was in. But my abiding memory is of extreme health. Liz looked fantastically healthy. Tremendously bright white teeth. And obviously this sort of fantastic body.

LIZ: I remember doing a backbend to impress them. Seemed to make some kind of impression.

I thought Martin was pretty cool and pretty wasted in a sort of Keith Richards kind of way.

But I was actually on with someone else in his house at the time so it was limited to finding him an interesting person.

MARTIN: I think the truth was that you were with 2 or 3 other people at the same time. Didn't have room for a fourth.

LIZ: Well if we are going to be particular about it, there was a girl boy relationship in Oxford that was very advantageous to women and I didn't have any formal commitments so I was open to offers.

I hoped to fit my life in this album but I ran out of room.

LIZ JACKSON: This is pathetic.

MARTIN: Take it slow.

LIZ: I'm going to cry. It's pathetic.

Have you had Parkinson's long?

STEPHEN: 5 years.

LIZ: Were you sure when they first told you? What did you think?

MARTIN: I thought shit!

LIZ: That's what I thought.

Would you say most people get better over time or get used to it?

STEPHEN: You get used to it.

LIZ: You get used to it. I still don't feel great.

STEPHEN: When you've been highly motivated then you get hit with Parkinson's, it slows you down. And that depresses me, however better than having cancer.

LIZ: What sort of work did you do?

STEPHEN: I'm a lawyer.

LIZ: I thought you might be. Do you still work?

Stephen: Yes, well sort of, semi-retired. You could be doing an interview like you're doing on Four Corners.

LIZ: Slightly different take on this one.

PAM: We all seem to have a different set of symptoms. Some people are more tired than others, some people have pain, some are depressed, some are not.

LIZ: And how long have you had it?

PAM: About six years, but I believe you usually have it for three or four years before you get diagnosed.

LIZ: What did you think when they said you'd got Parkinson's?

DIANE: I'd been shaking for quite some time with just this hand and arm. Until all of a sudden one day I noticed my fine motor skills, doing buttons up and my gross motor skills - and I realised that there was more than that.

LIZ JACKSON: What does the doctor say about what is coming down the road for us?

DIANE: I don't ask,

LIZ: You don't ask?

DIANE : I don't want to know.

LIZ: I feel a bit like that actually.

PAM: It does pull you up with a bit of jolt when you see somebody suddenly deteriorates. You think gosh is that what's in store for me, suddenly you can't walk properly, you've got a walker or end up in a wheel chair. There's nothing you can do to put that off if it's going to happen to you. You just have to carry on day by day and be thankful that today is a reasonable day.

LIZ: Good morning sir.

MARTIN: Good morning Madam. How are you?

LIZ: I am very good. My name is Liz Jackson. From ABC TV.

MARTIN: Oh ABC TV yes.

LIZ: Yes.

MARTIN: Da Cruz is the National Commander of the Border Patrol Unit.

Good to speak with you sir.

Commander Rayos says...

LIZ: One of the horrible things about Parkinson's is that you get what they call a mask face. You start losing your facial expressions and you just have this mask. And I notice it now when I look at the rushes of the film. I think Oh my god what has happened to my face? It's like "Oh". Anyway I hate it. Just one of those things.

LIZ: It's the pain that accompanies it, that's what I find difficult.

DOCTOR: Pain is pretty common in Parkinson's disease. The extent to which you've experienced these waves of pain that are inseparable from what we call panic attacks is unusual. You know, it's not, it's not kind of common garden Parkinson's disease. Plummeting levels of dopamine can be associated with all sorts of weird and very unpleasant symptoms.

LIZ: I'm wondering what got me the diagnosis of Parkinson's? Because I've never said to have tremor I just don't feel I have the symptoms.

DOCTOR: 30 to 40 per cent of people with Parkinson's do not have tremor, so you definitely don't have to have tremor.

LIZ: What would be the more classic presentation of Parkinson's than I've got?

DOCTOR: Parkinson disease is a degenerative condition of the brain. The core features that we typically recognize include a combination of tremor, shaking. Stiffness and slowing down of muscles and also fairly often a stiffness and slowing down of gait and walking.

LIZ: So when people say there's no cure for Parkinson's, is that right?

DOCTOR: At the moment there is no cure for Parkinson's. It just, it just means that the damage, the changes ah in the nerve cells and the neurons in the brain at this point in time cannot be reversed.

So in a sense the treatment we are giving is a symptomatic treatment.

LIZ: I have tingles down my legs to my knees. And my knees start jerking and my chest starts getting colder. Because it feels the cold as well as the rest of me and it feels as if my breath is getting colder when I breathe it in.

You can see my eyelids are starting to water. I'm not crying. My knee starts jerking. I'm just moving them to warm me. I figure If it keeps on moving it will keep my body warmer. That's what I figure out but I don't know.

It really hurts.

BENTLEY DEAN: What's the over-riding feeling, the over-riding emotion you're having right now?

LIZ: Fear. I try convince myself that I've done it every other night for the last 2 months and what followed wasn't so bad.

But I fear I'll lose control. I hate that.

My legs are - I might not be able to talk much longer.

BENTLEY: OK just take it easy.

LIZ: I'm going to have to - What's the time Martin?

BENTLEY: It's now 9 o'clock, almost 9 o'clock.

LIZ: Martin. Martin are you there?

MARTIN: Yeah.

LIZ: It's 9 o'clock now I might go to bed.

MARTIN: That's good. Have you done your teeth?

LIZ: Yeah. I brushed my teeth.

MARTIN: OK let's go then.

LIZ: I'm going to go quickly.

MARTIN: Drop this.

LIZ: I'm going to drop it. Hurry up. I'm freezing.

MARTIN: I'll come back.

LIZ: I can't breathe.

MARTIN: OK I'll just get rid of this. She just wanted to get rid of this.

I think that Liz's engagement in this film, the willingness to be in front of the camera, is an extremely brave thing.

These are really devastatingly traumatic times for her, but she's got the courage, the strength to show it like it is, you've got to tell it like it is.

LIZ: People do take that seriously. People don't like to be misled. And It's fair enough for him not to expect to be misled.

JOHN HOWARD: The point I'm making...

MARTIN: I think it does display a fundamental part of Liz's character which is extreme honesty in facing the world.

LIZ: Can we come inside and talk?

MARTIN: She's such a good journalist because she is intensely interested in revealing what she could as honestly as possible about the world.

LIZ: You will stay here until he's gone?

STUDENT: Yes.

You know, try and cut through the bullshit, the spin, everything that didn't enable you to get to the core of the truth.

LIZ: The boy had hanged himself from the end of the bed with a sheet. He was rushed to hospital and died several hours later.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that Detention of a child must be a last resort and for the shortest possible time.

LIZ: Imprisonment as a last resort?

MINISTER: It doesn't say you can't imprison juveniles.

LIZ: No but it says imprisonment must be the last resort.

MARTIN: Yes and we would argue that the last resort in the interest of the child is reached when they have their third conviction in a court of law and it's time for them to get some special attention in a place like Don Dale.

LIZ: Were they in breach would it bother you?

MINISTER: Well first of all you'd have to prove the breach and then I'd consider what we'd do about it.

LIZ: So if you're convinced they are in breach you might do something about it?

MARTIN: I don't believe we are in breach.

LIZ: But if you were convinced. If you were convinced. If someone were to convinced you tomorrow that you were in breach of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child would you do something about it?

MINISTER: No.

LIZ: It was good to feel that you had that engagement with the day-to-day politics of the country and that you could engage in that yourself. You could be a player. It consumed most of my days and often 7 days a week.

LIZ: Yet at the same time you said 100,000 women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year, that a grave decision has been reduced to one of a woman's convenience, and the legacy of this is one of unutterable shame. Can you see why women might feel that you might be judging them for having an abortion and indeed judging them harshly?

TONY ABBOTT: I'm not.

LIZ: But as time wore on at Four Corners I got increasingly tired and increasingly stressed and I found out I was coiled up in a foetal position in hotel rooms before I went out and performed. I think the crunch point came when I was doing the story in WA about Andrew Forrest's dealings with Aboriginal people over land rights.

MAN: But there's a big issue here Andrew and the issue comes for Y people looking after themselves from the country that's making you rich, your shareholders and your investors.

I didn't finish the Twiggy Forrest program and I think it's something I've never quite forgiven myself for. I mean the circumstances being I'd been out in the desert and I was sick.

LIZ: I can't even talk about it.

MARTIN: OK.

LIZ: This was three years before Parkinson's was diagnosed. Looking back these may well have been the first signs of losing dopamine from my brain. I had no idea what was going on. Nobody did.

I went back and made another 2 stories just to show that I could still make a good Four Corners. Then I left. That was a well-considered decision and the right decision. Although I do miss it.

DODSON: What we want is an acceptance of our history. And what has happened to us, the First Australians. Now don't deny the historical truth. If you can do that, you'll free your heart.

LIZ: I'd looked forward to getting fit and healthy and seeing more of my friends. But it proved to be the opposite. I did feel much more lack of energy and initiative that I hadn't felt before. And that was diagnosed as depression.

ROSE JACKSON: Trying to break the record is Liz Jackson from Australia. Going 51 times.

LIZ: Veteran performer.

LIZ: I mean the hardest things for me is being damaged in front of my children and not being the mother that they grew up with.

I was becoming much more isolated and depressed and I didn't want them to, to know any of it.

I didn't like them to see me in a state where I had lost control of my emotions. I guess I'd hoped that somehow, I don't know what I thought, that I could get better without them ever knowing.

ROSE: I knew she was hiding, yeah, hiding her condition from us and the reality of it. She did not want to talk about it, you know, and I didn't want to talk to her about it because every time that you sort of approach that subject, yeah, it was really, really difficult to talk to her about it and she'd get really upset and so, you know, you just avoid it.

JOE JACKSON: Is that OK?

CHARLOTTE: Do it again.

JOE JACKSON: Up, down, side, side.

ROSE: Charlotte didn't want to see Mum didn't want to go, go near her or go with her and Mum would get really stressed out playing with Charlotte. And I thought that's it. Charlotte's not going to have a relationship with mum.

LIZ: So, a trip down to the beach Charlotte?

CHARLOTTE: No thanks.

LIZ: No thanks?

CHARLOTTE: You go.

ROSE: It started out with "Granny can't pick me up", "Granny can't carry me" or "Granny can't carry me very far".

And then yeah, I mean "I don't like Granny", "I don't want Granny" to be near me", "I don't want Granny to touch me". I, of course, tried to explain to Charlotte that Granny was sick and that made things worse. "I don't want to get granny's sickness. And she'd come over and whisper, "I don't want Granny to kiss me."

LIZ: Oh no lolly bag for me!

ROSE: What do you think, can she have one or no?

CHARLOTTE: No.

LIZ: I can manage without it. See you next week. Bye.

MARTIN: No one knew what was going on. It was unknown. It was a bit scary. What is going on? There's no real reason why Liz should be feeling as uncomfortable as she is, as weak as she is without the stress, the triggers that could have been responsible for it. So it was a slow process.

LIZ: I think the crunch point came when I was doing freestyle my legs started flopping in the water. Then my hand writing went weird. The letters would get smaller and smaller until they came to a dead stop.

And that was actually something that I eventually looked up on Google. I said "What does it mean if your handwriting gets smaller and then it stops, you stop?" And you sort of wait while Google searches and it comes up and it says "Parkinson's".

So I knew before I gave the list of symptoms I had to the neurologist that as far as Google was concerned I had Parkinson's disease.

LIZ: I got a second opinion but I wasn't happy. It was Parkinson's again, so I got a third opinion. I remember the doctor said to me "I just want to tell you this Liz. I'm 99.9 per cent sure you have Parkinson's." And that seemed a very definitive answer, so that was that.

MARTIN: At the time I was almost relieved. I knew that there were drugs for Parkinson's that could treat the symptoms and this could at least explain why Liz had been getting so much weaker.

MARTIN: Even though Liz was already feeling not as strong as she was, we were still very, you know, optimistic about the future.

LIZ: Yeah.

MARTIN: We were making a film in Tanna and I was flying backwards and forwards. And we were all loving the process of making the film.

When we finished the film we were invited to the Venice Film Festival, a fantastically well-known international festival and so we were all extremely excited.

We'd arranged for five of the cast to come with us on the trip to Venice.

They'd never left their island home before.

Liz booked into the flight. She had the boarding pass. We were at the departure gate. That's when she has a panic attack.

LIZ: It seemed to me we were waiting forever. I just felt I needed to lie down. And I asked. When they said "You can't get on the plane. You're not well enough" I think the fight out was gone in me. I just took it.

MARTIN: People were boarding and I had to get on the plane, coz I was accompanying the cast from the film. So we had to try and arrange for our friend Anne to come and pick her up from the airport.

When I got on the plane I just cried. I cried for about, you know, 15, 20 minutes because it was one of those occasions where you'd been so looking forward to it, so excited about going. I'd so wanted Liz to go. We'd been to Venice before, it was a special place for both of us and because she didn't get on the plane I just felt really, really horrible, you know, it just seemed such a shame.

That was the time where Liz, I think, had her darkest period.

LIZ: After I went back home from the airport, I went to see my GP because I'd had this pain infection in my bum and she said it's sort of it's like a hard area in there. She said, "I think you better go off to hospital."

And they looked at the size of it and they said "You'll have to stay. You'll have to stay in the emergency ward."

JOE: Mum was really sick and dad's gone, and I was like oh- you know this is this is serious. This is adult business now. Like I have to make some drastic decisions for other people and you can't contact dad on the phone and Rose is going to know just as much as I do so we drove to the hospital and then they saw her at the hospital and it was bad enough to keep her overnight and then it became two nights, then it became three nights. The infection cleared up but then she had to go to the Euroa Center.

To live you know in basically like a psyche - I don't know what you- the Euroa Centre's sort of for people who yeah, need psychological assessment.

Those two weeks were terrible. Truly eye-opening and really hard to deal with.

From all the drugs she was just completely out of it, calling Rose, Charlotte, calling you know like oh Martin was here yesterday and you're like dad hasn't been here for a week. Like what do you do in those scenarios like it was really freaky that you're trying to have a conversation with her and you knew that she wasn't following and then I'm carrying her to the bathroom and you know she's shivering the whole way to the bathroom. And we called dad, you know a week in and said how bad it was but he's like you know I'm coming home as soon as I can. You just got to tough it out.

LIZ: I was really pleased when Martin came back.

MARTIN: While she was in hospital they did in fact try, you know, different drugs but again, nothing seemed to work. I mean still suffering regular daily panic attacks, feeling dreadful, unable to do anything. You know, this was disastrous.

And this continued even after she came out of hospital. What is she suffering? What is the treatment regime? Which way are we moving with these suite of symptoms? No clarity.

We were really lost and I think that, you know, in a way the medical profession was also lost, you know, they couldn't understand what was going on either.

MARTIN: Then came a new and devastating diagnosis.

DOCTOR: So someone who had been treated with sort of conventional treatments for anxiety and depression over a four, five year period and hadn't gotten better. That was kind of, I think, the first giveaway for me that we're not dealing with a standard anxiety or depressive disorder. Could it be something else?

DOCTOR: The Parkinsonism, the nightmares and the mild hallucinations. Those were the main features and that I used to make a clinical diagnosis and it was something that we corroborated with the PET scan.

So that showed some changes which we would see typically in Lewy body disease.

LIZ JACKSON: What is Lewy body disease?

DOCTOR: So the Lewy Bodies refer to these clumps of protein. They're blocking the signals from that part of the brain to the rest of the brain.

LIZ: Do Lewy bodies have any particular malfunction associated with them?

DOCTOR: We can't actually see Lewy bodies. The Lewy bodies are actually only seen under the microscope so it would have to be post-mortem.

LIZ JACKSON: I don't really want to have an autopsy on my brain just yet.

DOCRTOR: The location of the Lewy bodies determines the symptoms that people develop.

LIZ: When they have an impact on your cognitive capacity? Where are they located?

DOCTOR: Then they're also located in the cerebral cortex.

LIZ JACKSON: In the cerebral cortex.

DOCTOR: Which is obviously higher up in the brain.

LIZ JACKSON: So deals with higher order functions?

DOCTOR: Yes.

LIZ JACKSON: And I've got some that are blocked?

DOCTOR: Yes.

LIZ: So that means dementia? For me.

DOCTOR: I'm not clear. I guess it's a possibility, right, but certainly there is it is associated with cognitive impairment.

LIZ: So that's what you think I've got, Lewy's body disease?

DOCTOR: Lewy body disease.

LIZ: Lewy body disease.

DOCTOR: Yes.

LIZ: I don't like the sound of that.

DOCTOR: Shall we have a break?

LIZ: I'm okay. I don't like things that talk about losing my brain function. I don't like the connection with the dementia and Lewy bodies.

Excuse me.

LIZ: Wasn't it Lewy bodies that Robin Williams had when he killed himself?

MARTIN: Mmm.

LIZ: Sometimes I think they think I'm sicker than I am.

MARTIN: It almost certainly is virtually impossible to arrive at a sort of a clinically secure diagnosis because of the sort of the three major things that -that have been raised, which are depression, Parkinson's and Lewy body disease, all of them have no way of definitively saying whether you've got them or not.

There is no test that will tell you yes, you've got depression, yes, you've got Parkinson's, yes, you've got Lewy body disease, none of them.

LIZ: Mentally I just want to block out that I've got Lewy bodies. It's like when I said to him "I don't like that diagnosis. I mean I just don't want to accept that because I know what it means.

I just don't want to believe that.

LIZ: Anyway I'm probably in denial, but I'm in denial because I want to deny it. I mean wouldn't you want to?

That wonderful - actually which I should probably wear it with this skirt, top from Agnes B.

MARTIN: Ah yes.

LIZ: That was a beauty. We're talking Mary Quant. 1970s. I need a tight black polo neck jumper up to here but only to go down to here, but quite thick.

I need quite thick black stockings that are thicker than these but are not as baggy.

I've got some boots, some higher boots up to here.

Then I just need to just have the face lift. The lips done. The boob job and then I'm set.

MARTIN: What the brain transplant.

LIZ: The brain transplant. No that's all to make up for the fact that I won't have a brain by that stage. I'll just try and get away with the cute clothes and the boob job.

Fragile little baby.

I like this one - all lying in bed together. Chubby little bugger.

MARTIN: It's good though.

LIZ: Our farewell kiss.

MARTIN: That's right. On the self-timer. That's a great shot. I've always been really proud of that.

LIZ: You're going to Australia and I'm going back to England.

You start thinking about how long have I got before I have the kind of dementia that I wouldn't want to be living with?

I haven't had suicidal thoughts, but I now understand why people do commit suicide, which I never understood before.

LIZ: I don't think pain is a reason for killing yourself, but I do think that dementia is a reason for wanting to end your life.

It's not a well-developed um thought. It's something that I suppose I've, ah to the extent I've thought about it, I thought I should talk to Martin about it, which I haven't done, um because he would be involved in making that decision, I think, because part of it is to do with being intolerable to look after and not wanting to be, you know, where you have to be toileted and spoon-fed and you don't know your own children. I mean I don't want that.

I don't want to be, not be myself to the extent that I don't have what I regard as the ability to, to love and to work, is what Sigmund Freud said; that's what you need to be a living human being, the capacity to love and to work. And I think he's right.

LIZ: I'd be interested to know what Martin thinks.

MARTIN: I don't um share Liz's view about um suicide, euthanasia, um as she's um described it. I do think um I still can't really understand it.

For me, um l-life is so um, so much all there is and so enjoyable in so many ways um that um even when things get you know really, really desperate I I can't help feeling emotionally that um, you know, y-you'd want to ah hold onto it for as long as you possibly could. Let's, let's, let's talk it out. But um you know, in any event it's going to be um, you know, really, really hard to find the line.

MARTIN: As best you can try and get some regularity into the breathing.

LIZ: Is that mine or yours?

MARTIN: Three years in, we've had the diagnosis of Parkinson's but drugs for that don't seem to make any difference, diagnosis of depression, drugs for that don't make any difference. And Liz getting worse all the time.

We've been seeing all these highly qualified people for a very long time. We've been sort of doing exactly what they've suggested in terms of treatment and nothing is working.

LIZ: Are we doing the Herald or what?

MARTIN: No, no the Australian.

LIZ: That's much easier.

MARTIN: Good. I haven't got any so far.

I'm ceasing to care whether it's depression or Parkinson's or Lewy Bodies. The course of treatment is essentially the same anyway.

Whatever you put as the diagnosis, we've got to get rid of the panic attacks.

LIZ: Hi.

MARTIN: I just got a bag of medicine. So let's try and get a little bit scientific about it.

We wrote a detailed daily log of exactly when Liz woke, what drugs she took, at what time, what the effect on her body throughout the day, day by day.

So you've taken the morning ones. You've got two doses of Madopar left for this afternoon.

I did that for about two weeks. When I read through the log, something seemed apparent to me, that was the panic attacks always started two hours after the dose of Madopar, the dopamine drug. Could the wearing off of dopamine levels be the key?

We sent this detailed log to the psychiatrist, the neurologist, to all the doctors.

"It looks to us like there is a connection between the Madopar and the panic attacks, can we discuss?"

LIZ: Hang on a sec. Oh Martin's getting it, it's alright. What did they come across?

MARTIN: I will send you the email. I'm sure you'll find it interesting, but you do see a pretty depressing pattern in there.

The short story was increase the dosage of the Madopar, increase the frequency of the dosage so that you wouldn't have an hour or an hour and a half of panic between each dose. And the panic attacks did slowly start getting less intense and over time, you know, largely removed from the day.

We've got the appointment at 4.15 with Dr Watson. I reckon I'd take the dose now.

LIZ: Yeah.

MARTIN: It's 2 and half hours now.

LIZ: I was feeling as if I needed it.

Here's a new one. Comtan, Martin?

MARTIN: Yep.

LIZ: Which is proving to be quite useful. It delays the operation of the Madopar so that it lasts longer and you essentially get another 20 minutes out of any dose you take and as it is I'm taking 6 doses a day and so that extra 15 minutes give you 45 minutes which means you can stay up until 9 o'clock.

DOCTOR: How are you?

LIZ: Good thanks, just dropping everything.

have been finding I'm having a good time in the Comtan. I better get it right.

MARTIN: It's made a significant difference.

DOCTOR: Fantastic.

DOCTOR: Well that's the impression I'm getting from just this snapshot compared to what you were going through back then; it was so horrendous. It is also testament to the fact that, you know, we are starting to get the medication right. Which I think we are getting there.

LIZ: I mean what, what's the actual prognosis?

DOCTOR: The whole struggle this last 18 months has been kind of getting you towards where you are now. Once we get, you know, once we get the kind of the dopamine stimulation all kind of evened out, you know, the Madopar and the Comtan stitched together nicely so everything's even, I think there's a very good chance that we'll be able to, you know, keep you good and keep you functioning well with a kind of good, acceptable quality of life.

CHARLOTTE: I want to hear how you say "I love you".

LIZ: You say "Je t'aime."

CHARLOTTE: Je t'aime.

LIZ: That means "I love you." So when your mummy comes around to pick you up you can say "Je t'aime."

LIZ: It's the same sort of fun.

CHARLOTTE: Do you want to be that and host the royal ball?

LIZ: I'm happy to host the royal ball. I'll host the royal ball.

ROSE: This was quite recent I dropped Charlotte off there in the morning and I was heading to work and Mum had just sort of woken up and she came into the kitchen and she stumbled and she smashed her face on the side of the TV, she lost her footing and it was really awful and confronting and she was sort of holding her face and crying and Dad was, you know, holding her and everyone was sort of silent and just tense and Charlotte was, you know, "Granny has an owie, we need to get Granny a band aid", you know, and was sort of bossing everyone around, you know, about how we needed to fix this situation and what Granny needed to do and what we needed to do. And that's a bit like what it is for her now. She really cares for Granny and knows she's sick and sees herself as playing some role in, you know, managing that.

LIZ JACKSON: Oh I forgot it. Thanks for reminding me.

ROSE: I'm going Saturn and which is the one next to Saturn, Uranus or Neptune.

MARTIN: Neptune.

LIZ: She seems to somehow want to know more about it - she asks if she can give me my medicine. If she can give it to me.

ROSE: Bruny Island is part of which state?

MARTIN: Tasmania.

ROSE: In Christian tradition Michael, Gabriel and Rafael are what?

LIZ: Angels.

It hasn't all been plain sailing. I had some terrible times that probably all came from inside my head where sometimes I didn't trust Martin in relation to the medication. He knew much more about it and has spent much more time researching it than I had and knew what he was doing and that I should trust him. And it was really important to him that I did. And that was really difficult because sometimes I felt that he had just given up on me. He'd had enough. That was it. I'd just pushed, you know, my mad paranoia, weakness, too far. And he left the room, and he left the room and he stayed away for ages.

And I went and found him. And I said to him, I just thought you were leaving the room, waiting until I, so you wouldn't have to watch me dying in front of you. And I think that was what I really felt at the time, which is just completely crazy.

I was telling Bentley about the importance you put on trust and how you felt I hadn't trusted you to look after me. I thought that you'd just left me to die. Um I hope you don't now leave me to die as a result of me telling um Bentley the story. I just thought we're here for telling the truth, aren't we?

MARTIN: Oh no, absolutely. Look, there have been, you know, a couple of times where there's been, you know, a conflict over um the treatment, because um, you know, I'm suggesting you know a particular- that you take a particular drug and um and you haven't wanted to. You know, I mean it's happened a few times and, and it is, it is difficult because, you know, ah I I need you to trust me.

LIZ: It comes back to haunt you. Your trust in their affection, that because you're feeling why would you stick around?

People say it's because he loves me.

I think he does like me, quite a lot. And he's used to living with me and he likes the kids, and we're a family. And we respect each other, which I think is really important. Like ah it's important that I keep my intelligence, because I think one of the things Martin respects about me is that I'm reasonably smart, or I was. And ah I used to be okay to have a good time with. So I think there's enough of that left. That sounds really pathetic. Take the pathos out of that, and that's what I think.

MARTIN: That's been my view from the very beginning that Liz is the person that I wanted to spend my life with and I have done, and it's been you know truly fabulous.

I'm looking forward to years of um you know continuing to enjoy Liz's you know unique and fabulous personality.

And that's um, that's a fabulous life.

LIZ: Phew.

MARTIN: Phew! Phew. Give you a choice.

That was good. It was good.

LIZ: OK.

What's the hurry?

CHARLOTTE: You can't catch us.

LIZ: What?

ROSE: You can't catch us!

LIZ: I can catch you. I'll catch you and tickle you.

I'm not going to give up, I'm, I'm going to hang in here, um because it's worth it. There's things outside I love and I'm not giving up on them.

That's the best I could do.