Rustproof Highlights

So … down to business … there’s one thing about me that should be known from the very beginning – my indomitable spirit and determination and the fact that I’ve had 40 years to refine it. I also have one hell of a temper when I choose. I am strong and intelligent. I call myself Rustproof for a reason. I’m not one, contrary to the belief of some, to advertise my life but I will talk about it freely and easily to anyone who might be interested for the aforementioned reasons. It’s a long story though and so I tend to stick to the highlights or whatever events happen to suit a given situation.

The first highlight was my birth. Amazing isn’t it, she says with tongue in cheek! But it was rather amazing I suppose as I was born with the congenital birth defect known as Spina Bifida. I’m still usually a surprise to everyone, including doctors because I’m not what people expect. And I must say that I’m tired of other peoples expectations. There are several levels of Spina Bifida ranging from the mildest called Occulta to the most severe called Myelomeningocele (also Meningomylocele or so I've heard)). It’s even possible, according to my research (and the experience of my ex-brother-in-law), for some with the mildest form to not even know they have it. Me on the other hand, everyone knew I had it. I never knew, until I read a letter my doctor Mr Durham-Smith wrote for me to add to job applications, what kind of Spina Bifida I had. I just knew that I had Spina Bifida and a bunch of accompanying problems but then I read what he had written and I learned that I had Spina Bifida Myelomeningocele.

As I mentioned earlier though I’m a bit a surprise to most folks. I am not what they expect. For starters, I can walk … unaided. I dance pretty well too. I got rhythm! A very common accompaniment to Spina Bifida is Hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus occurs when spinal fluid drains into the skull, putting pressure on the brain. It can cause the skull to swell and it can cause brain damage. A shunt is a special tube that sits near the base of the skull and drains the fluid out of the skull, often into the abdomen if my memory serves. According to what I have read approximately 90% of those with Myelomeningocele have shunts. I don’t. These two things alone make me pretty special to begin with but that didn’t make my birth any less stressful and difficult for myself or my parents. It was a hard thing for first time parents. Of course, I’m told that everyone had to wait to see if I would develop the Hydrocephalus in the first months of my life.

The only reason that I can find to account for such uncommon luck is that my lesion is at the very base of my spine. Where others have a coccyx, I have a lesion. I used to think, for some reason, that I had a coccyx but that it was mangled in some way. Wasn’t until I had x-rays done, when my husband and I joined the IVF program, that I realised that I don’t have one at all. So, what is a lesion? It’s a place, anywhere along the spine, where the spinal cord protrudes through a gap in the spine. Sometimes it can produce only a little bump and causes no trouble at all except that the bump can be a bit sensitive. In the case of Myelomeningocele, at least, in my case, the end of my spinal cord protruded right out of my body. It’s only protection being a membraneous sac of spinal fluid. In Spina Bifida nerve damage occurs “below the level of the lesion”. In my case the nerves affecting my urinary tract and bowel were damaged. Fortunately, that was it but I’ve been told that there was still some question as to whether or not I would walk.

Mum and Dad were shown how to care for the lesion and allowed to take me home, not sure how long after I was born but I did spend the first weeks of my life sleeping, on my stomach, on a specially constructed mesh-lined metal frame to protect my lesion. At least until one bitterly cold Melbourne night when Mum did what I consider the right thing and took me off the damn thing to wrap me up in warm clothes and a blanket. Until that moment I had been sleeping on the frame with not too much more than a blanket over me. Five weeks after I was born I had my first surgery and the lesion was repaired. Mum told me once that the hardest thing for her then was seeing a tiny pink dummy pinned to the pillow beside her equally tiny baby who had just come out of surgery.

Now this is where the story starts to get interesting because sometime after that Dad, a young officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was posted to Tindal Air Force Base near Katherine in the Northern Territory and so began another chapter in my life - our nomadic lifestyle.

We were living at Tindal when I did finally start to walk. My Aunt gave Mum a pair of caliphers for me to wear but, in the heat of the Northern Territory, Mum only put them on me once. I guess now would be a good time to mention that – technically speaking – I think I have club feet, though they’re not nearly as bad as most. The very high arches are a family trait but the toes and the rest are all mine. My feet are pretty small and my toes were essentially “curled” up. Best way I can think to describe it. The last joint of my big toes kind of stuck up, the rest were kind of curled. It’s hard to put into words how they looked but I still have terrible balance. In all my legs weren’t and still aren’t all that strong but hey … I was walking so who cared. Well actually Mum and Dad did but that came later.

Something I was especially good at though was swimming! I’m part fish you know. In the shade of the house on hot afternoons Mum used to fill a blow up wading pool with water and sit me in it. She would sit on a chair beside the pool with her feet in the water. One particular afternoon I scared the hell out of her and Dad when they looked down to see me under the water. It was only a few inches deep but I was a lot smaller then. They say that I got to the other side of the pool, sat up and grinned at them. I don’t do nearly enough of it now but I still love swimming. Should do something about that. Anyway, as I grew one of my favourite activities was swimming in the Katherine Gorge. Of course you wouldn’t dare do it nowadays – not, from what I hear, with all the crocs that like to hang around there but my Grandmother told me once that, back then, I would get out of the car and run to go swimming in the water.

I was also a very entertaining toddler and quite helpful at times. Mum once spent time stuffing paper into the grooves that held the sliding doors on their buffet cabinet so that I couldn’t get into it. Apparently I then went and pulled all the paper out again and gave it back to Mum. It was good game. On another occasion I thought I’d help out and wash the bathroom floor – with Mum’s best vinyl LP (record). While living at Tindal my sister Rochelle was born and I was there again, helping where I could. To this day Rochelle still will not eat vegemite. What can I say, the new baby was hungry so I spoon fed her what I could find. Of course I did drop her on her head once but I swear that was an accident! She helped me clean all the shoes in the house once. It was a little difficult to find all the right shoe polish colours though so we just used the black polish on the shoes, the bath and anything else within reach. I never did like white shoes anyway.

Reality is never really very far away though and on one occasion I got into trouble and received a smack on my backside from Dad. Unfortunately for him, he hit my lesion and, if things went as they still do, I expect I hit the ground like a sack of potato’s. It was several minutes apparently before I could move again. I feel bad for Dad. It must have scared all hell out of him and thereafter smacks were administered to my arms and legs.

And don’t give me any of that modern crap about not smacking your children! Yes, I believe that child abuse is a nasty business and frankly would like to turn tables on child abusers myself and see how they like it but a good smack never did me, or any of my siblings or an entire generation for that matter, any harm. In this day and age it seems to me that all these “don’t smack your kids” do-gooders have done more harm than a good smack ever did and they’ve blurred the line between a good smack and child abuse so that many parents no longer appear to know how to discipline their kids. Yes, I agree, there are other methods,