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Koko Casey was a flight nurse. She spent her career flying into disaster zones and distant countries, keeping critically ill strangers alive at 30,000 feet, until the night a routine medical retrieval turned into the plane crash she was never supposed to survive. On the 17th of November, 2009, the jet she was working on ran out of fuel in a storm off Norfolk Island and ditched into the ocean at close to 200 kilometres an hour. Koko and everyone else on board lived. What came next very nearly took her life anyway.

In this episode, Koko tells Kate Langbroek what the official story leaves out: the sixteen years of chronic pain and PTSD that followed the crash, the slow slide into addiction and self-loathing she now calls "the hitchhikers," and the points where she came closest to not making it at all, including an overdose discovered by her own children. She talks about the group therapy session that changed how she spoke to herself, the flying lesson she booked to face her fear head-on, meeting the man who would become her husband while he was landscaping her backyard, and the decision to legally change her name as a symbol of who she'd become. She also talks about her work today, presenting to the Royal Australian Air Force's Human Performance and Safety team, and what it took to finally put her story on the page.

If you or anyone you know needs to speak with an expert, please contact your GP or in Australia, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800) or Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636), all of which provide trained counsellors you can talk with 24/7.

Koko Casey's book, Stay: From Flight Nurse to Patient, is out now through New Holland Publishers.

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CREDITS:

Guest: Koko Casey

Host: Kate Langbroek

Executive Producer: Bree Player

Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green

Content and Social Producer: Jess Chan

Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast.