Hi! My name is Mike and the first breath I took was delayed by 18 minutes on the 16th October 1959. I had a very long delivery as my mother was left in labour for too long and when the Doctor was called, I was in a bad way. He had no time to transfer my mother to a Hospital to undergo a cesarean so I was delivered straight away.  When I came into this world I was unable to breathe and when the Doctor asked for the oxygen, he was told that the bottle was empty. This was the start of my life with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy CP, and the long journey of deep dark valleys and tons of Blessing.  

My interests are; photography, art as I'm a disabled artist, keeping fit as I have Fibromyalgia [a form of Arthritis], healthy living with a balanced diet and adequate rest, technology and how it can be used to make better programs to assist the disabled, advocating for other disabled people that cannot do so themselves, the environment as it is a living planet and we need to recycle and reduce our carbon footprint. I'm kept busy managing my disability and all its other associated conditions, and I work part-time as an A/V Engineer editing and producing CD's & DVD's.  I also enjoy the theatre, music, friends and family and I'm a Naturalist. 
 

Why My Story?
 

A friend suggested that I write a book to inspire other folk that may have a disability of some kind, but the costs to publish a book were way out of my dreams!  So by writing My Story it's my intention to inspire and encourage others that struggle through life's journey...

As I look back over my life, and I'm fast approaching my fiftieth birthday, I can remember the times when life was just a great big adventure...There's the times when I was just a young boy and growing up with my siblings on our family farm.  I didn't see myself as any different from other kids, played with friends and relatives doing all the crazy things that we all did, and lived somehow to tell the stories.  I was a happy young chap that loved the farming lifestyle and I was always with my dad, helping him to do all the things that all little farmers do with their dads.  Like drafting off the lambs and shooing up the sheep, telling the dog off and then riding in the truck to take the sheep back to their paddocks. Shearing time was a big excitement and all the noises in the shearing shed, sweeping up the dags was my job and you had to be careful not to knock the shearers feet or there was a hell of a roar!  Then it was hey making time and lots of time spent riding on the tractors, standing on the gearbox in between the drivers legs so we wouldn't fall off.... Yes, those were happy times indeed, life was simple and I will always remember them, just as it seemed to be like yesterday. 

The time came for me to go to school and I had to stay with my nan and grandad in the city, about forty five minutes drive from home.  I was to go to a special needs school with other kinds of kids that all had a disability of some kind.  I can remember that old school and the times when each one was taken to the physio's room and be bent and stretched in all different ways.  I had to walk along between two bars and look at myself in the mirror at the end of the room.  Then I would be put on a wobbly board and try to keep my balance, this was very difficult and I have long memories of that stupid wobbly thing... We also went to hydrotherapy once a week and were buddied up with girls from Southland Girls High and spent thirty minutes in the pool with our buddy trying to swim and exercise.  I still can't swim and sink like a stone.  About this time I felt a bit unlike other kids, I was called, "special. "

I was a struggler in my schooling and I still struggle with life to some extent, but life is a gift and you need to live it to the max!  Primary and secondary school were a kind of living hell and I just kept falling through the gaps.  My reading and writing skills are still a bit foreign but with the advent of the computer and some clever software I am able to write this story.  At my last rehab assessment I was finally told that I have Dyslexic tendencies, probably due to the brain damage I had at birth.  I felt like kissing the Doctor as I had found an answer to my literacy problems.  Going through my schooling days I was usually the brunt of someone's joke and for some reason the weakest gets tormented.  I tried to avoid trouble and quite often hide away out of fear of being laughed at.  I was a good student and tried to do my best, but this was difficult as I have poor hand function and still have difficulty holding a pen. Some of my teachers were very good and tried to help with notes, usually a photocopy of a page from a book but then I had trouble with reading them with my dyslexia.  I can still remember a comment in a school report that I was a good pupil, but just didn't get the results....                                         

After completing school I was employed as a joinery-machinest  apprentice and started working for a Joinery &Timber Company in the city.  By this time we had sold the farm and moved to a lifestyle block, ten minutes drive from the city.  On my first day at work I was kitted out with earmuffs, a heavy leather apron and a tool box, with the tools for my trade.  It's a very noisy environment and you had to learn how to communicate with gestures and some very unique sign language, some of which I wouldn't be brave enough to show a female without embarrassment.  The machines were dangerous and I was told that if you poke a finger too far into them, you wouldn't get it back.  I found that soft student hands weren't the best after handling rough sawn timber all day.  After a couple of weeks work I was getting a lot stronger and developing extra muscles, something to be proud of, and yes, the hands got a lot tougher also. I was told that the best thing was to pee on them in the shower, and that was the best way to toughen them up.   My mum has always been a good cook and would pack a lunch that kept my motor running all day.  One of my work mates had a look at my lunchbox and wouldn't believe that I could eat half a loaf of bread made into sammies, he had a rude comment when they all disappeared after which he called me a Gannet Guts!  Being an apprentice you seem to get all the real good jobs, like crawling into the furnace after it had gone out and shovelling out the wood shavings at lunchtime when the blowers were turned off.  With a good swet up and all the shavings flying around you get quite itchy and you knew that you shouldn't scratch, as if you did it got even itchier. After doing that job all you could do is strip off and shake all the shavings out, and hope that none of the women were watching....

After several other jobs in various occupations, I brought a Rural Delivery contract and started a business as a Mail Man.  My day started at 5am sorting the mail into the run order and marking out parcels, freight, vet supplies and milk to be delivered on that day. I then usually started delivering at 8-8.30am and  most days I was back to the postal agency at 2pm.  When it was Christmas and Mothers Day, I would start at 3.30am and get back about  4pm. I had a Toyota Hilux Double Cab with a canopy on the back and somedays it was absolutely chocka! I had the Hillbilly Run; rough roads, rough country, rough farmers that lived in rough conditions but they all had huge hearts and would do anything to help me.  I enjoyed my time as a Mail Man and loved the rural lifestyle,  and being a country boy seemed to help to understand the different ways farmers think.  The one thing I didn't enjoy was changing flat tires and delivering flowers when there was a bereavement on my mail run.  I found it difficult to find the best way to comfort a family when knocking on a door with an armload of flowers to a grieving family, but with time, wisdom and my Christian faith I coped.  Each mailbox had a family attached and most of these were treated as my friends.  I had to drive 186 km each day on mostly rough metal roads that in some places were only single way.  I delivered mail to 165 - 180 mailboxes in all sorts of weather.  Some days in deep snow and others in times of floods where I couldn't get to every mailbox but I knew where to leave it, usually in another persons/family's mailbox.  The day I started having trouble with my legs and soon found that I couldn't continue with my business came as a very hard blow!  After some time in rehab I was ordered a Wheelchair and I started my life of/with limited mobility....

Love and marriage came when I was thirty, to a lovely lady with beautiful fiery red hair.  We had a Church Wedding with all the trimmings and I thought that I was the luckiest guy in the world.  We started our lives living in a State home and after some time we managed to purchase our second home.  Our times together going out dancing or to see a show were very much a love affair.  We had close family and my wife had eight siblings so there was a birthday party each month of the year.  We both worked and my wife was a government employee and worked as an auditor.  She was gifted with the talent for dressmaking and made all sorts of Wedding and Ball gowns in her spare time.  We loved going camping and had a nice three room tent and most of the camping gear that most campers have.  We loved making a fire on the beech and roast marshmallows then licking the sticky stuff off each others fingers.  We tried to have a family of our own, but that just wasn't to be.  The fertility clinic tried to assist us but, after so many trials we resigned to the fact that we were barren, not a nice thing to accept!  After my rehab it was very difficult for my wife and we went through a challenging couple of years and finally separated.  It broke my heart to go our separate ways and I became extremely depressed.  I went through three years of not wanting to see anybody and was on medication to help me with the depression.  All I could see was no future and was very anxious and afraid that something really bad was going to happen to me, but I didn't really know just what it was, or when it would happen?  I would try to pray or read my Bible but every time this rage inside me would flare up and I had to stop. something was missing?