A paramedic, his career ruined by PTSD after serving the communities of Kyabram, and then Echuca, for years, took his own life earlier this month. Austen Todd was not quite 37, the father of two young children and husband of a former paramedic. Now his friends and former colleagues have rallied with a GoFundMe page to help fund the traumatised and very uncertain future of his family.
Sarah Todd doesn’t try to stop the tears rolling down her face.
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They just keep coming.
The 39-year-old mother-of-two never realised a grown woman could cry this much.
And now she knows they won’t be stopping anytime soon, even if she wanted them too.
Because it is just four weeks since Sarah found the body of her 36-year-old husband Austen, who had taken his own life.
It was his final act in a downward spiral that played out for years.
She watched her beautiful, kind, funny and so caring husband slowly erode, succumbing to demons no-one but he could see. Or feel. Or fear.
Only a few years ago, Austen was a highly skilled paramedic; when he turned up at an emergency everyone relaxed a notch, because he would take the lead, he would know what to do and he would be able to connect with the patient, or patients.
When Austen was there, everything would be all right.
Except, eventually, for Austen it wasn’t all right. And never would be again.
It was something no-one would have seen coming; Austen wasn’t just a paramedic, he had been the benchmark of first responders in his home town of Echuca.
Four pages were devoted to him in the 2020 edition of echucamoama magazine — his huge smile radiating from the pages, his story of service and commitment headlined ‘Paramedic is standing strong’.
Austen had always worked on the front line, first in the UK and then back in Australia.
He had seen and done the best and worst of the job, got through the pandemic and had friends around the world who had seen what he had done and how good he had been doing it.
He never got COVID, he was always one of those guys who could walk dry through the raindrops. He turned out, day after day, night after night, year after year, still with the smile, still determined to do his best in his job.
The last paragraphs of that 2020 story summed up the Austen everyone thought they knew and loved: “It’s important to remember why you’re doing it. I’ve found that really helps me, trying to empathise with people about their situation, and I actually get a lot out of that. Some of the best moments are when you can really make an impact on someone’s life. It doesn’t have to be a life-threatening emergency, but just making someone feel supported and being able to make a difference to their life.”
Sarah is compelled to try to tell the true Austen story. Eventually their children, Heidi and Jesse, now aged six and four, will want to know all the details about why their daddy isn’t with them anymore.
Just as Sarah knows that will be more tears, more grief, even more guilt about whether there was more she could have done.
God knows, as do their many friends and colleagues, Sarah gave everything of herself, everything a young woman, a wife and a working mother, could do.
And then some.
Austen definitely tried so hard, to get it all back, to get back to being one of the guys, to being Dad, to being a husband, a friend.
The couple were from different states, and being a paramedic had not been first choice for either of them. Sarah went from administration to a degree at university in NSW and Austen, who had tried his hand at a few things, including as a butcher and having a paper run, came via Victorian University in Melbourne.
They would meet in London in 2015 where they, and a veritable small army of Aussie ambos, would gather in what has almost become an industry rite of passage and work there for two years before coming home.
“When we came back to Melbourne and joined Ambulance Victoria, we tried to see if we could get a double offer anywhere — and the first spot was Kyabram,” Sarah explained.
“Then one place, and another, opened at Echuca, which seemed perfect for us and we transferred there.
“We were paramedics here for four years and Heidi, our eldest, was born in 2020, and it was around then Austen first started showing signs that he was struggling, that there was something wrong.
“You have to understand all paramedics face the daily demands differently, but the rotating shifts, changing partners, the shock of your pager going off in the middle of the night, the uncertainty, it can be relentless and everyone is going to react differently.
“For all of us it totally screws up your circadian rhythms, you never seem to get enough sleep to offset it.”
Eventually the smile hadn’t just slipped, it was fading away. Austen wasn’t Austen, and he needed a break before the job broke him.
Sarah said he ended up taking almost eight months off, and even though he returned to frontline duty, this time he was armed with a medical certificate exempting him from night shift and the rotating roster — for health reasons and to give his nervous system a rest.
Because things truly do go bump in the night.
But staff shortages and demand saw him sucked back into the 24-hour system, going to some of the worst settings where not everyone walks away as the person who only an hour or so earlier had turned out for the call.
Like water on a stone, the blood and the tragedy dripped on Austen’s mind, and sank into the depths of his imagination, where only he could see it, and feel it.
By 2022 Sarah and Austen had son Jesse, yet Austen’s struggle was quickly worsening, fuelled by an overactive determination to deliver for his family — he had a wife, a family, a mortgage and responsibilities. In Austen’s mind it was time to man up. And that was an impossible ask. He was not the man Sarah had married, was not the man who was the heartbeat of every station where he had served, and try as he might, the gap between him and his family, and in the end, reality, grew wider, not closer.
Post traumatic stress disorder happens in more ways than the shrinks have catalogued, because it will hit every victim differently.
“He experienced jobs which were very traumatic and increasingly difficult to process emotionally and physically,” Sarah explained.
Yes, things really do go bump in the night.
Sarah said Austen tried everything; yoga, craft brewing, coaching courses, a different job, anything to keep his mind busy, to keep those lurking shadows pushed back into the deepest recesses, to not see them, to not feel them.
“He just could not rest, and once that gets away from you it gets very ugly, very confronting,” Sarah said.
“Austen just wanted to feel the joy, we wanted to give it to him, but increasingly he just wasn’t there, not physically, not mentally, and he kept blaming himself — I watched it shred him, every day, watched him scramble to try and get better.
“He was wracked with guilt, and then self-hatred, and could not see how much we loved him, how much people valued him and he missed it all so much, he really missed his job, it was him, defined him, and he was so good at it, he was perfect for it.”
Austen would have turned 37 on September 12.
Now Sarah and their children will go on alone, hanging on to each other to get through the first phase of the rest of their lives.
And through her tears Sarah said if only Austen could have seen all the people who turned up for his funeral, felt their love.
“I just wish that with all the kindness, and love and support we have had since he died, I just wish I could give it to him, have given it to him, so he could have experienced that joy, just once before he died,” she said.
The tears, never far away, started rolling again, you could hear them in her words, all through the interview. It was late, it was dark, the children were finally asleep, and Sarah hung up the phone. Alone again.
If you want to help Austen Todd's family, you can go to tinyurl.com/39ttw5fv and donate.
• If you or someone you know needs help, please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.