In 2004, on Kim Ballantine’s 40th birthday, her husband brought her breakfast in bed wearing nothing but an apron. You could say her personal naked chef left her speechless and in fact that wouldn’t be far from the truth. It did – literally, and for years.
Within days she was reduced to making strange, animalistic noises, uncontrollable laryngeal spasms, and communicating with her family in rudimentary sign language. Bewildered and fearful, she consulted a specialist, assuming that whatever was causing this condition could be managed and swiftly treated. She was in for a shock.
The diagnosis was spasmodic dysphonia, a rare condition in which, essentially, the body’s vocal cords do not respond to messages from the brain in a normal manner, resulting in intractable intermittent laryngeal spasm and severe voice dysfunction. There was no known cure. No fully understood explanation as to the cause. The cold clinical prediction was that Kim would never speak again.
In the face of such bleak news Kim found herself reeling and afraid. The personal loss was profound – from health and voice to friends and the closure of her consulting business – but the wider impact of this trauma was only just beginning. The timing could not have felt more cruel.
Her specialist physician husband, Rob, was beginning to build his own medical practice and worked long hours. Their children were still in primary school … Natalie was 10 and twins Ryan and Ashleigh only 7. How could Kim be both wife and mother with no voice and severely compromised health? And what of her own professional and personal ambitions and aspirations?
Hours after receiving this life-altering diagnosis, Kim wrote on a piece of paper: ‘I will speak again. You don’t know how big my God is, how determined I am. One day I will have a story to share.’
Hot Tea and Apricots is that story. There would be many twists and turns and hairpin bends in the road to come, and many times when panic, despair and desperation threatened to overwhelm Kim and derail her close-knit family. But the biggest challenge, bigger even than voice loss and, later, a cancer diagnosis that saw her in for the fight of her life, was trying to help her children process trauma and loss at the same time as she was struggling to navigate her own utterly altered, mute world.
Some things worked, others did not. Most of the time she felt like she was flying blind on broken wings – but out of it came affirmation, love unimagined, renewed faith, and three young experts in the Heimlich manoeuvre.
Kim learned first hand what those living with disability experience on a daily basis and it changed her profoundly. She learned that kindness and generosity of spirit can come from unexpected places and judgement can come from those who should know better. She learned the meaning of true friendship and how, when courage deserts you, there is someone who will pick you up … or pass you a bucket to puke in. And that every woman needs lifetime membership of a Mad Cows Club and friends who know when to just CTK (come talk kak).
As heart-breaking, raw and painfully honest – and at times darkly humorous – as the memoir is, Hot Tea and Apricots is a triumphant story of hope and holding onto life.
Hot Tea and Apricots a Memoir of Loss and Hope. Published by Nurden Cross. R300
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