On This Day...

[ruSTynutz]

On this day 7 years ago my brother passed away after a long battle with his health...
The day after his death I put pen to paper (as such) and wrote a brief story about his struggles (which I came across just recently) which I thought I'd share.

Graeme was born with "Situs Inversus", a congenital condition in which the major organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions.
This meant his heart was on the opposite side to "normal" people.
I used to tease him by telling him it wasn't just his heart, his brain was in his bum...  :lol:

Around 24 years ago he went on a holiday with some friends to Tasmania.
He fell in love with the place and decided to move there permanently.

Not long after, his real health issues began...

He found out that his kidneys were stuffed, requiring him to firstly go on peritoneal dialysis.

Many years later a suitable donor kidney became available and he was flown to Melbourne for a transplant.
Already stressed, he was put on the spot and asked if he was willing to trial some experimental anti rejection drugs...He agreed.
I believe that was the start of his real health issues.

Us normal people don't realise how many health problems anti rejection drugs can wreak on your body...cancer being just one...
I remember he ended up covered in extremely painful boils and many other nasty skin conditions.
Eventually it became too much and he demanded that he be taken off those particular drugs.

By this time he was already suffering pain in his legs, which he attributed to them also.

This pain though was to get worse and worse until he could barely walk so he purchased his "buggy", a mobility scooter...

In the meantime, his donor kidney had failed so he was back on dialysis, not peritoneal dialysis this time but dialysis done 3 times a week at the renal hospital.

My brother was an avid motorcycle lover (it must run in the family) He owned a tiny 125cc scooter which, when he was feeling up to it he would ride all over the place, even riding it up the east coast of Tassie and up to the rugged central lakes....Often he would do 400-500km in a day ride, quite a feat when you consider cruising speed on the scooter was around 75kph.
He was returning home from a trip into the mountains to visit friends when he collided with a kangaroo.
Thankfully sometime later a bloke in a 4X4 ute found him laying in the middle of the road.
From all accounts it was lucky the bloke didn't run over him as he thought he was just some road kill...

Luckily for Graeme, he must have landed on his head as he only suffered a few minor injuries, one being to his dialysis "fistula".
A few weeks later, all patched up and back on his scooter, a woman delivering meals on wheels failed to give way, requiring him to lay his scooter down and he was yet again sliding down the road.

He appeared to have suffered no injury this time and it wasn't until he got home and found his crutch was soaked in blood that he realised that wasn't so. He had apparently split his "marble bag"...

Meanwhile some of his toes were starting to die due to the lack of circulation in his extremities, so then came the first of his amputations.
It started with a toe but it soon came clear that his legs needed to go also.
They ended up being lopped off below the knee.
This setback never fazed him, he said he was just so glad to be rid of the pain...
Obviously he was no longer able to drive or ride his motor scooters so his only means of getting around was on his mobility scooter. Something the hospital staff had great doubts about as to his ability to get on the thing.

They didn't need to worry, my brother was like a monkey, easily getting up on it. It was the same with getting into a car, we just used a wooden board between his wheel chair and the passenger car seat but he was soon able to get in without it. He was a very determined bloke!

He had numerous other operations down the track, including having part of his bowel removed due to it dying from the lack of blood circulating.
He suffered so much pain in his fingers that it was a wonder he was sane!
Apparently nerve pain is some of the worse pain you can have, he lived with it 24/7.

He ended up with one finger removed from his left hand and half of one from the right...but it never ended the pain.
Other fingers were just rotting, so it was just a matter of time before his hands would have to be amputated.
A lesser person would have topped themselves long ago, I reckon.

Moving on, he became a regular sight around the area, not just in his own suburb but all over, as he went exploring on his mobility scooter...
He regularly rode his “buggy” into Hobart which would take him around an hour each way and often he barely made it home before the batteries went flat.
His answer to that was to buy a portable generator which he would place where his legs would normally be, plugged in so it would charge the batteries while on the go. Obviously this extended the range of his buggy so he often travelled up to 40km...
If the batteries started to die, he'd just pull up somewhere for an hour while he let the generator do its work.

There is so much more I could say but I'll finish up with this:

Although at times Graeme drove me crazy, I have to say he was also an inspiration, not just to me but for many others he had contact with, he never conceded defeat, he was the eternal optimist and right up until he breathed his last breath, he was still planning on somehow getting home to his hobbies...
He passed away in his sleep during the early hours of yesterday morning at the age of 62.
Finally no more pain...

  Rest in peace, Graeme!

 
This photo was taken 2 weeks after his leg amputations...

[CallMeSteve]

Thanks for posting Rusty.  Your brother was quite a bloke, and quite an inspiration.

[ruSTynutz]

Thanks for your kind words, Steve! 

[Wild Rose]

Thanks Rusty. Great story about your brother and his strength to keep going despite his health problems
RIP Graeme

[ruSTynutz]

Thankyou Leo!

It's a bit disjointed but as you can imagine, I was pretty emotional at the time so wasn't in the best space for writing and recalling finer details.

I think I was a bit inspired to post it on the forum after reading about Lindsay's motorcycle accident, his brother's death and Lindsay's subsequent leg amputation and dialysis...  :/

[ruSTynutz]

Bit of a funny story in regards to the photo I posted...

I took Graeme for a drive down to Port Arthur and while pushing him across the grass one of the front wheels of his wheelchair dropped into a rabbit hole which
promptly stopped the chair's movement. Unfortunately Graeme kept going and ended up dumped on the ground, thankfully with no damage to his recent surgery.
Luckily for me there were some tourists handy who rushed to assist as without their help I had buckleys chance of getting him back into his chair! 

[Gerard & Sandra]

Rusty What a goer and thanks for sharing.
Rgds
GB

[ruSTynutz]

                             A couple more pics...

               
        This was Graeme doing his mad scientist impersonation...

         
        All rugged up while attending the Salamander Market
        not long before he passed...

[Jdbiker]

Thanks for sharing Rusty, may he Rest in eternal Peace.

[ruSTynutz]

Thanks JD! 

[Brock]

Thanks for posting Rusty, I'm sure it cant have been an easy thing to do..

Could he have moonlighted, and appeared in some movies?? He sure looks like that guy you see in the back ground, wheeling past..

[ruSTynutz]

Thanks Brock, yeah, it did stir up a few emotions, even after all this time... 

Not aware of any movie appearances but he did appear in Hobart's "The Mercury" newspaper once or twice! 

[ruSTynutz]

Those thick mittens he was wearing were actually heated which seemed to help a bit with the pain.

I could post up a photo of his hands but I figure it would probably gross people out! 

[pault]

thanks for that. inspiration for all

[Williamson]

Very touching Russell, very sad, thanks for sharing.

I can see a resemblance.

I lost my older brother, Jeff, just over 10 years ago, he was almost 56 years old, too young, hard for Mum & Dad at the time, and his children.  Jeff's death was sudden, no long-term physical illness or condition, but he had struggled with drugs from his early 20's, and that's what got him in the end. 

Doesn't matter how or why they're gone, they're gone.