Andrew Oliver is one of about 8 people in the world living with Fryns-Aftimos syndrome
- he's the oldest known to have it and the only one in New Zealand with the condition.
The extremely rare syndrome is the result of a mutation in one of his chromosomes which
means that at 35 years old, he has the mental age of a 6 year old and suffers many other
symptoms.
For the last 15 years he's had a special relationship with Fonterra tanker drivers.
We went on to night shift for the milk pick up and so he was always home. And you'd hear
the tanker, learnt what it was, came out to see it occasionally and once in awhile would
talk to a driver. But then with Andy, the normal thing is with something like this - it
would become a habit. And so he had to be out to see the tanker. That became part of
his nightly routine.
Andy's nightly routine consists of a list of things he has to tick off.
Every night he draws a picture to give to the tanker driver, he has to watch the weather
report on the 6 o'clock news, then he has dinner and a bath.
But the last thing to tick off - is the tanker.
If the tanker hadn't come he wouldn't go to bed and so he had to see the tanker and so
- you know, this business, I'm up at 5 o'clock in the morning.
We simply didn't know when the tanker was coming. You know, you might get 2
o'clock in the morning or something like that and he wouldn't go to bed until the tanker
had come.
For over a decade, Andrew's parents managed his tanker visits until one day Ken says he
came to a breaking point.
Deirdre had just been diagnosed with having had a minor stroke, I was absolutely out on
my feet trying to keep the farm going. Surviving on three or four hours sleep and I'd just
run out. I'd hit the wall and so I phoned the call centre and actually started crying
on the phone, I was just so shot.
I just said look, my life has just become impossible and just explained what was going
on. I need sleep and I can't get sleep until this boy's in bed.
The person at the call centre...
she said well, I think we can help.
Fonterra is the world's largest dairy exporter with around 10,000 farming families as stakeholders.
After hearing about Ken's call, the company decided to change their entire milk tanker
schedule in the Te Rapa district to make sure Andy could get to bed on time.
Ken is now guaranteed a pick up anywhere between 6:30pm and 8pm.
Fonterra shirt - check, fonterra hat - check, bike lights - check, bike horn - check ...and
Andy's good to go.
When Andy hears the tanker, the honking ceremony begins.
As the tanker drives down the driveway Andy follows the tanker on his bike
Well it's not something we encounter everyday, we can tell you that.
That's Kevin Healey and he's known Andy for almost 15 years.
He draws a picture for us and we take them back to work.
And we put them on the wall at work. It's a special relationship.
And everybody knows Andrew.
On top of Andy's rare syndrome, he also has 5 types of epilepsy.
So the Te-Rapa district tanker drivers have been briefed on health and safety procedures
and what to do if Andy had a seizure during a tanker visit.
A lot of us guys that have been here before, we know what to expect and we have an in cab
screen which has a warning along the bottom to make sure drivers are reminded to be careful
going down the track just in case Andy's floating about.
That's programmed into the screen and would come up every time that vehicle comes into
this farm, it would come up before we go.
And the dialogue is similar every night.
He has to know the driver's name, he normally asks them what they had for dinner. How many
loads they've got.
He likes to know where we've been and have we been to see Mr so and so.
He likes to talk about the trucks.
He knows quite a lot about the trucks.
These drivers mean a lot to Andy, but Kevin says Andy means a lot to them too.
We had one of our drivers came out and he noticed that Andrew's bike was looking a little
bit dilapidated and he came back and sort of ran past the idea at a team brief meeting
and we all thought that was a very good idea.
So the district's tanker drivers held a sausage sizzle fundraiser to buy Andy a new bike and
company staff from all around the world pitched in to help.
So Andy got a new bike and you'll probably see it's got number 1 fonterra fan so we were
able to set it up and really have it good for him.
One of the few things he can do independently is ride his bike
Which he can ride around to visit the tanker. It is a huge part of his life.
The tanker drivers have supplied Andy with a uniform - a high-vis fonterra shirt and
a hat and have also given him a model tanker which is a part of his treasured truck collection.
65 year old Ken who has his PhD in Chemistry and has been a dairy farmer for 40 years,
says the change in pick up time has meant a lot to the family.
A big outfit like Fonterra doesn't have to do that. They simply could've ignored the
request but no, they came through. And we're very grateful.
Kevin says the 15 minute visit to the farm to drain its milk vats every evening is a
special treat for the tanker drivers on that shift.
We like to come out here.
"You realise that you're lucky, how lucky you are that we're able to do this.
If we can make Andy's day well, hey that's the icing on the cake."