DEAN CLIFFORD: Weightlifting is just a great challenge and it's incredibly rare to have
a EB survivor lifting weights.
DEAN CLIFFORD: Everything in life potentially is painful. It’s just a matter of risk versus
reward and working out if it’s something I really want to do than I am going to find
a way to do it every single time.
DEAN CLIFFORD: My name is Dean Clifford and I am 38 years old.
DEAN CLIFFORD: I was born with a very rare genetic skin condition called Epidermolysis
Bullosa Junctional. The way I describe it to people that I have just met is my skin
is basically as strong as tissue paper or as strong as butterfly wings. So the slightest
little movement will create a blister or create a tear in my skin that will become ulcerated
and become a nightmare to deal with. It’s sort of equivalent to living with third-degree
burns every single day.
DEAN CLIFFORD: As a very young child, I was always aware that something different was
happening to my skin. The doctors treating me openly sort of suggested that my life expectancy
wasn’t more than a few years.
JENNY CLIFFORD: When Dean was first born, he was a beautiful baby - good weight and normal
delivery. The rollercoaster started about four-five days after birth. So doctors painted
a very bleak picture. When he was about a year old, we thought well maybe, two years,
three years we would have.
DEAN CLIFFORD: EB affected growing up a lot because of the trauma to my skin and the severe
blood loss and severe loss of vital nutrients because I was always trying to be so active
and as active as everybody else and growing up, it seemed to affect predominantly my face.
Kids of my age would be very scared to be around the scary looking person. I can’t
ever recall not having pain in my life. That’s always there, but you can still get on and live your life.
DEAN CLIFFORD: Weightlifting was never something that I anticipated. Then I was hanging out
with one of my really good mates and he knew that I had a fair bit of upper body strength
as well from everything that I did and we were sort of mucking around and he said,
said, ‘Well, can you do five pushups?’ and I was able to do five pushups and he said,
‘Well, can you do five more?’ and everything that he asked me to do I was able to do.
DEAN CLIFFORD: We started off with no weights and by the end of that, sort of hour, gym
session I was lifting my body weight and bench-pressing my body weight. And that’s something that
most people have to spend weeks and months and years training to build up their strength
to be able to do.
DEAN CLIFFORD: The heaviest weight I have bench-pressed is about 150 kilos, which at
the time was, I think, it was about 205% of my body weight.
AARON WHITCHURCH: I think weightlifting has meant a lot to Dean. I know he loves it. Yeah, I
just think it’s amazing what he has been able to do to be honest. Yeah!
DEAN CLIFFORD: Is it painful to do weightlifting with EB? Everything in life is painful from
the smallest things to the biggest things. So, yes weightlifting is incredibly painful.
JENNY CLIFFORD: I would say to him sometimes, you know, just take it easy. But, no! If he
wanted to do something he was going to do it.
PETER CLIFFORD: Back in 99, I suppose, when before the 2000 Olympics he was a torchbearer
in the town where we lived and up until then he, he could hardly walk very far, he was
in a wheelchair most of the time. He was determined that he was going to walk 600 meters that he
was allocated to do. And then the whole town was walking with him. So that was a pretty proud effort.
DEAN CLIFFORD: So, I've recently been selected to be a participant in the Queen’s Baton
Relay in the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which is a huge deal to me to be able to almost
recreate the achievement of the 2000 Olympic torch run.
JENNY CLIFFORD: Driving around he is doing what he wants. He has got a job that he loves.
He loves motivational speaking. Who would have thought that that would happen?
DEAN CLIFFORD: It was, sort of, a goal of mine to become a motivational speaker and
I did the talking to my boss at Toyota that I still work with. And I sort of said to Ken
that I have this crazy idea when I was older, to become a motivational speaker and Ken sort
of looked at me and he said, ‘Well, Dean, your entire life is about inspiring people
without you ever realising it. If you don’t think you are motivational speaker already,
you are kidding yourself.
DEAN CLIFFORD: The message I am always trying to spread is basically, to be true to yourself
and to sort of, find that thing that makes your life special, that people can hopefully
see and look past my skin condition to see somebody pretty amazing achieving some phenomenal
things in his own life. The three words that I live my life by
with my motto being to, "Never admit defeat.'