Waghorn was candid about her recovery and her challenges with PTSD during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Twenty-two people – mainly tourists on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship – died when the volcanic island off the Bay of Plenty erupted on December 9, 2019.
Best known as the heavily muscled, military-trained host of SAS: Who Dares Win, Middleton had his own brush with death when he summited Mount Everest.
He has spoken out about how it was his “psychological understanding that helped [him] survive” and now he hosts the podcast Head Game to help others share how they did the same.
She said she was often referred to as the “drill sergeant” by her colleagues, which came to fruition during the eruption as she barked orders at the wounded.
“Someone said ‘I am really hurt I can’t move’ and I just yelled ‘So am I come on’.
“Because we survived the unsurvivable, it never crossed my mind that we could die.”
She was whisked to the nearest hospital and then again to Wellington Hospital where she was placed into an induced coma.
Waghorn told Middleton - a decorated former British SAS soldier who has also written a series of motivational books - that for the next four weeks she heavily medicated, hallucinating and unaware of the horrors that occurred on the island.
She said she was only told a month later when she asked about a close friend and colleague Marshall-Inman, not making it off the island.
Kelsey Waghorn was just 25 years old and working as a tour guide on New Zealand’s Whakaari White Island, when the volcano erupted and her life changed forever.
She said Marshall-Inman’s funeral took place while she was still in her coma so his death “didn’t feel real”.
A light-hearted conversation she had on the morning of the fateful day about which group should go first haunted her while she recovered.
“I said I was fastest... I told him I doubted he could keep up with me and he said he would go second so he could push me if we were going to slow,” Waghorn said.
She said she suffered the most mentally when the Covid pandemic hit and she was separated from her family for three weeks.
“It destroyed me,” Waghorn said.
An aerial view of Whakaari/White Island after it erupted on December 9, 2019. Photo / George Novak
Then a year on from the eruption, she said PTSD started “infiltrating her entire life”.
“It had taken the wheel and taken over my entire life,” Waghorn said.
“Uncontrollable fits of rage, I would just so absolutely numb... I was always prepared to run.
Waghorn said the psychological injuries were much harder to recover from compared to the physical injuries, but she is making major strides in both areas after having her last surgery in July last year.
“Thankfully I found help and now I am the happiest I have been in my life.”
Rachel Maher is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. She has worked for the Herald since 2022.
