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Christou's turmoil
30th June 2001
By: Jake Niall
Publication: The Age
© The Age. Reproduced by Permission

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Ang Christou compares his journey back from despair to a rollercoaster. He is now in an upswing, having emerged from one of those dips into a dark tunnel. He is back.
Christou smiles often now. His football career is restored, if not to its former glory, then it is on the road back to 1995, when he was an All-Australian and a feted member of the Carlton premiership team, when ``Ang and Kouta" were always in the same sentence.

Certainly, his life is more like 1995 than 1997, when he was stuck in a hospital bed for 25 days and could barely walk.

He doubted then he would play again, became addicted to mild pain-killers and even wondered if life was worth living. In hindsight, he seems to have suffered from what experts define as depression.

The bad back that nearly ended his career and caused such physical and mental torment is effectively healed. Christou says it will never be 100percent, and an MRI scan today would still reveal a prolapsed disc, but it does not trouble him greatly. ``It's how you feel," he explained.

He feels fine. The dark age is gone, his life is in renaissance. He might never recover that 1995 form, but no matter. He is now 29 and not as quick.

``I'm just happy with the way I'm going. I don't know if it's '95 form. But, you know, I've been following instructions, doing my job, initiating, going for my runs and kicking long."

Last weekend, as the Blues strangled Port Adelaide, there were more signs than ever of a resurgent Ang.

Pain provides perspective. When walking once presented a challenge and coughing or sneezing hurt, just to play again, at any level, is cause for joy.

``I'm trying to enjoy every game, every moment. And I'm sure everybody else would who were in my predicament."

Christou's rebirth has been a steady, incremental climb back from the nadir of 1997. It has been, as they say, a game of inches.

The dark age, on the other hand, arrived suddenly. Christou had felt some back pain in 1996, but dismissed it as bruising. Then, after a game against Fremantle in round nine of 1997, the pain hit harder than Tony Lockett on the lead.

``It was excruciating, more down more one side than the other ... I couldn't bear it, especially the first month I was just in pain."

Christou said that after the Fremantle game, he threw down his navy blue jumper and declared: ``That's it. I don't think I'll play again. I just knew within, that my body just said, `Give it up. I can't go again'."

Within two weeks, Christou found himself in the Freemasons Hospital. He was diagnosed with a prolapsed disc. The disc bulged and nudged the spinal cord, touching the nerves. Back surgery seemed inevitable.

But Ang did not want the knife. He still had 18months to run on his contract. It would take three experts before he found one who spared him the scalpel.

The life he had known had vanished. The pain was chronic and, worst of all, he could not conceive of recovery. ``I could just walk actually. I mean, I couldn't go to the toilet, couldn't sit down. I could only lie down. That's why I was in hospital. I was supposed to be in there for four days, I was in there for 25days."

It was then that he first became dependent on Panadeine Forte painkillers, then that he looked out the hospital window and contemplated what tens of thousands of Australians consider every year and most dismiss.

``I'm happy to talk about it, but at the time, I wasn't, I can tell you," Christou said of his suicidal thoughts. ``Yeah, it crossed my mind." He laughed, remembering that had asked for a balcony in his room. ``I can laugh about it now. I actually asked for a balcony!

``Just nothing was going for me, at all. I could walk, but with great discomfort. And I thought, `It really isn't getting better'. For those 25 days, I was just like a dummy ... just couldn't do anything. Tried to, couldn't."

The thought popped into his mind that he could ``easily" jump. ``Oh, I could ... easily. I mean, it didn't worry me. Back then, it didn't worry me." Terrible pain, severe limitations on his movements and a loss of hope had brought him to this point.

Christou agreed that, in such circumstances, it was an understandable, if foolish, reaction. ``It's not unreasonable, but it's a tough decision." He smiled at the understatement.

Asked how he viewed those notions now, he said: ``How silly of me, how silly. But again, if you were in my position, you'd be thinking of (it)."

Friends found it hard to believe he would consider such a drastic step. He was told: ``Don't be silly. You wouldn't do it. That's not the Ang, not the Ang we know." But he was ``pretty much" serious. ``I mean, people don't take me seriously. Always happy and nothing seems to faze Ang. So, they were just like, `Oh yeah, sure, sure thing.'

``But honestly mate, I just (said), `What do I have to live for? I mean I can't even walk'."

If the silly notion of suicide was a fleeting one that disappeared when he left hospital, Ang took a bad habit home.

He said he took two Panadeine Fortes - the strongest of the analgesic brand - every morning.

He took another two in the evening and ``then some just normal Panadeines during the day as well". He guessed this pattern lasted for up to 12 months.

``I did at one stage ... got addicted to the whole lot of the Panadeine Fortes and what not. I thought, `This can't go on forever'. So, slowly, slowly, I pegged off. And I was taking double doses, even a bit more."

He disregarded the doctors' warning not to take too many pain-killers. ``They'd tell you not to. I was the one that actually had it, so they had no idea of the pain. ... I took it whenever I felt I needed it."

Ang's medical savior was a back surgeon called Gary Speck. He was the third and last expert whose opinion Christou had sought. The first two surgeons had recommended surgery. Garry Lyon and Brad Boyd, fellow footballers and back victims, had extolled the virtues of surgery, encouraging Ang to follow their lead. He declined.

``The first one said, `Let's go tomorrow for an op' and I said, `You're kidding, mate'. I walked out and I honestly cried. I walked out and I didn't cry in front of him, I cried all the way home.

``So I went to the next surgeon. He said, `It's inevitable that you will be needing it one day'. I didn't cry as much."

Speck told Ang what he had to hear: ``You don't need surgery." Speck instructed Christou to ``go your merry way", and return every month for reassessments. ``And ever so slowly again, it got better and better, until I felt better."

Rest was the cure, but Ang tried his share of alternative remedies in the interim. Advice had poured in via faxes and letters from everywhere. Ang experimented behind the club's back with unsanctioned treatments.

``So a couple of times I went out on my own, my own accord and paid for a few little things, without them knowing." He even gave ``Mum's Greek remedies" a shot.

``The thing was when I'd go back to the club and have my physio done, they'd look at me and they'd say, `It's been tampered with'. So they'd know. I couldn't lie." Recognising his frustration, the club tolerated his cheating.

Christou thinks the turning point came one day when he was finally able to reach over from the driver's seat of his car and pick up a pen on the passenger's seat floor. He had been trying for months. ``Within a few months, I grabbed the pen. That's when I thought I'm getting better."

His goal had always been to play again. It happened late in 1998. He managed four reserves games. ``It was the biggest thrill, just to get back - even to run, even running. I mean, I couldn't even go to the toilet, difficult to sneeze, cough, break wind, you name it."

Since then, he has inched his way back. He managed 12 mostly undistinguished senior games in 1999, including a grand final defeat. He played 10 senior games last year, his season ended by a minor knee injury. The 10games in 2000 were ``way better" than the dozen of '99.

Now, he is rediscovering some of that Christou flair. He is creating, not merely ``trying to beat my man", as Ang did in his inhibited 1999 comeback. He has resumed as the team's main man for kick-ins and the designated kicker from defence.

Perhaps surprisingly, given his apparent depression, Christou said he never sought nor received formal counselling. He relied on the conventional support of family, friends and teammates.

Professor Ian Hickie, chief executive of ``Beyond Blue, the National Depression Initiative" and a clinical psychiatrist, said it was common young men in Christou's position to avoid professional help.

Hickie said serious injuries, such as chronic back pain, were often ``serious risk factors" for depression.

If there was no formal help, Christou still had a great informal support structure: the Carlton Football Club. To belong to a club, Christou said, was a great tonic. Carlton, he said, had kept him on the list and supported him when he was struggling. ``I mean, they could have kicked me out."

The entire club had cared. ``I couldn't pull one out of a hat that showed more than anyone else. Everybody, and I'm talking boot studders to the CEO, just the whole lot."

One other Blue was singled out for gratitude. Not his mate Kouta, who was always upbeat. Not the physio, chief executive or boot studder. Christou thanked Ang. ``I have to thank them, honestly, and thank myself as well, because, you know, I did the hard yards."

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