By Stephen MacDonald

My disabilty at the time when I was born, my mum had very high blood pressure & toxemia & I was born by (emergency caesarian) due to cardiac distress which would explain my mental retardation (though there is no proof that the very low fetal heart rate did/or did-not cause my retardation). Appeared to worsen after i had my tonsils removed at 2 ½ years old. At 4 ½ years old I had to be placed on medication to control my extreme behavior that was off the rails at the time as things went from bad to worse in some cases.

Then at school in my first year, at about 5 1/2- 6 years old I was hit on the back of my head by a football near the top of my neck/base of my skull. Then things went from worse to extreme, then after that’s when my disability became more well known, & that’s when trouble with the bullies started, like doing things to make fun of me in public, e.g menacing me for money/accusing me of doing things that I didn’t do, trying to rob me of my transistor pocket radio at the age 7 years old and wilfully damaging my property in public, like pulling & ripping my clothes/pulling & breaking the strap on my schoolbag/shoppingbag/backpack, etc-humiliating me in public-like graffiting offensive pictures & slogans refering to me, assaulting/or threatening to assault me in public & just making every day life difficult & because I have trouble with my neck & upper back, my disabilty stands out more so because I have a co-ordination imbalance on my right hand side (I have falls from time to time) I over balance easily therefore I can’t drive a car/or ride a normal 2 wheeler bike or motor bike or swim at a surf beach or climb a tree or climb up on a ladder.

At about 15½ to 17 years old I came off medication because the excessive dosage was having an adverse effect on me & it was becoming toxic.

Since then I have many successes like mastering the art of standing up for my rights & entitlements even though sometimes I get very angry when I do so I’ve mastered that art very well. I’ve also learnt to dig my heels in and stand my ground & say no, like refuse/or just go ahead with my decision to do something when I need to do it. I can’t tolerate arguing the toss which makes me get very angry & sometimes I do tend to boil-over (verbally) when my decisions are challenged, repeatedly like eg raise my voice/swear & use very unpleasant words to display my extreme irritation.

Now I am in my very early 40’s I am into custom modifying tricycles & quadcycles to what ever requirements I need have them to. I am into the web dating so sometimes I reject advice. If I think it’s deemed inapropriate which I must admit, causes a bit of friction at times. If the advice turns out be the wrong advice it could be a bit messy to try and reverse.

At my age now, because of my co-ordination imbalance I now from time to time suffer from arthritis in my lower right hip & my right knee & right ankle which will worsern with age from now on.this & any of the other things have never stopped me from doing the things that I want to do. All I want is to be able to do the things I want to do while I am still fit enough to do them like my 1st overseas trip (since the end of the last dinosour age) & which the next chance may not come around till the end of the next dinosour age in about the next 27/28 years if I am still alive, I will be aged in my late 60’s, lots of tests have been done to try & find what caused my disabilty & they have all come back negative, I’ve accepted that very well I may go to my grave never knowing what caused my disablity, & that’s a very hard fact of life that I’ve learnt to come to terms with.

Positives outcomes: well I’ve learnt to mix in the community, sort of most people seem to accept me apart from a small minority who are prejudice towards people who are different. No more so than someone who has a different color skin or worships a different religion & I’ve learnt to be independent in my decision making, like relationship choices even though some people like my mum, may think the type of girls that I choose may be a bit odd & where I get them from. It’s still my choice in the end, to control over my money & effectively control over what I do & don’t buy & where I go places & when I like going interstate for any holiday breaks, whether I take unpaid time off work or not & if so how much of it I take like if I want to catch a shop in Sydney or Brisbane e.g a warehouse that sells bike or bus parts or computer program c.d roms, or tools or mp3 players & other similar items that are difficult or very expensive to obtain in the normal retail shops. He may close early on a friday or maybe closed on friday’s so I have to arrange my time-table to suit. When I eventually live, when I move out of home & what type of housing I would live in my family once I’ve made my choice eventually they do accept it only after a few problems.

Negative outcomes: not a lot, just sometimes when an issue becomes a dispute & things get overheated, from time to time I occasionally storm out onto the streets & explode verbally like yell or swear & scream abusive or insulting & indecent words at the top of my lungs in a blazing fit of fury though I do try not to make a regular habit of it the fact that I take offence very rapidly, it does attract bad attention to my self sometimes, I do admit no more so than it would to anyone else.

This is 41 y/o
Stephen Macdonald from Frankston in Melbourne Australia

2009.