Peter and I have always been clowns. You know, I guess when we're together we just enjoy
having fun, and that's...one thing led to another.
We had a friend that went overseas and bought a magic trick for Peter, and from there they
bought a few other tricks and then decided that they'd like to dress up as clowns. "Oh",
I thought, "not clowns!" I'd seen this scary movie years ago and I just...it scarred me.
I just thought, "No, don't be a clown! Don't put make-up on!" But, yeah, I got over it.
I thought, "It's not gonna work. It's not gonna happen," but they proved me wrong.
I have to be pretty honest. I, um...I thought it was a waste of time. Embarrassing, for
starters! "Oh, what does your husband do?" "Oh, well, he's a clown!"
I've gained, I think, a respect for them over time and realised that it's not a serious
job but, boy, it brings a lot of happiness to people - not just the clowning thing, but
when people find out about their lives, people are even more blessed, I think, by the fact
that someone who has to deal with not being able to breathe sometimes wants to get out
there and make someone else have a good time.
Yes, we have got a serious illness, but I look at it - you know, there's other people
out there worse off than what we are. I mean, to look at Peter and I, we look normal from
the outside - some might say good-looking. Oh, turn...Turn it up. No, but it's the inside,
you know - that's where the trouble is. But, you know, I look at myself and think, "Well,
hey, yes, I've got cystic fibrosis but I could be worse off."
When we were born 27 years ago, Mum just thought that she was just having one child. When I
came out first, the doctors went in to get the afterbirth and sure enough, they pulled
it out and it had arms and legs and it was Peter.
Yeah, so I have the afterbirth complex syndrome, which, yeah, I can relate to.
And we still don't know today if David's Peter or Peter's David, because in hospital they
put mercurochrome on David's toes, but a nurse come and give him a big tub one night and
washed it all off, so Peter could be David and David could be Peter. Who knows? Who cares,
you know?
We had a daughter, Tonya, who had cystic fibrosis, and so when we had the boys, they suspected
right from the beginning that they had cystic fibrosis too.
Anything you read or heard - there was just no hope. They wouldn't live past...well, to
adulthood or teen age.
Tonya, our sister, was two years older than David and myself. She was a lot worse than
what Dave and I were. She spent a lot of time in hospital.
For Peter and I, especially when we were growing up, we weren't as sick. We probably didn't
think we had cystic fibrosis.
And I was at the age of 19 when I had my first hospital mission from my lung sort of complications,
and from there it's gone downhill.
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition. The condition affects the lungs, resulting in
chronic infection and inflammation in the airways. It also affects the digestive tract.
At the present time, the average life expectancy is just over 30 years.
It's funny, because you don't see yourself getting worse, because, like, it's a gradual
decline. I still make the most of it but, you know, Peter's a lot healthier than me.
Yeah, but I make the effort to go to the gym and do stuff.
I did it once. Didn't like it. Yeah. Physios won't like that, though.
Peter and I had the privilege of working full-time up until a few years ago - office, administration-type
work with computers and that, and I loved it.
And not many other CFs get that opportunity of working full-time. And then it got to a
stage where we were just getting too sick. Now, being a househusband - it's quite different.
David's supposed to be the house husband, but it doesn't quite work like that sometimes.
He tends to get a little distracted by the fact that he can have fun with his brother
any time of day.
If you consider about five phone calls a day and popping over just for a quick visit - yeah,
that's just how they are. As long as they're hanging out together and just being with each
other. That's just the two boys playing.
And we both got married around the same time. Both been married now for just over six years.
I knew my wife, Shirelle, for about six or seven years. We'd been attending the same
church.
Same story. I met Stephanie at church and...Stephanie did say that she wanted to marry a rich person
and have lots of kids, and I said, "Well, you're gonna marry a poor person and have
none."
No, we can't have kids. The tube's not there or something. And it's blocked. Yeah, and
there's basically no trout in the river, so to speak, so, yeah, finds it very difficult
to actually...Trout in the river - that's what I like to say, you know. I've never heard
that before.
When I found out Peter couldn't have children, we both cried together, 'cause he was afraid
that I would just walk away, but Peter - I, you know, just had so much love for him that
I just looked past all that and just thought, "No, I'm not losing him just because we can't
have children."
I think it does take a special person to want to be with us because there's a lot of issues
that they have to deal with as well and go through a lot of things that we have to.
It's not like I'm thinking, "Oh, I regret that I did this." I certainly don't feel that.
I mean, we've been married six years and in that time I've had heaps of wonderful love,
and some people can never claim to even have that in their whole lives, I suppose. So,
yeah, you take the good with the bad.
We're just so thankful that they're able to experience a marriage life. We get some sort
of joy out of that, you know. Tonya never did ever get to that stage. She never had
a boyfriend or anyone like that, and we felt sad there.
It was three years in August that she passed away. The three weeks that we had before she
died, she just went downhill all the way.
What happened was she got a flu and got a cold, and it was a pretty nasty one.
She was struggling and labouring in her breathing, and it's not easy to see someone you love.
I guess we've always got that hanging over our heads. I mean, a lot of people say, oh,
well, you don't know when you're gonna die. You might be hit by a bus. Yeah, that might
be true for the rest of the population, but for people with illnesses, and especially
us with CF, we know the track that's already been trodden, and, you know, Tonya's been
down that track.
Dave and I have been brought up in a Christian home. We have those Christian values in ourselves
with our strong belief. We know that there's eternity there for us, so we've got that hope.
With CF, it's so unpredictable. You can't really say to someone, "You've got five years
left," or whatever. Now that David's sister is gone, it's made me wonder what's happening
with David, and certainly last year his health had gone right down, so I was thinking, well,
you know, is this the end drawing near? This year has been
a better year for him so far, but who knows what the future holds?
Oh, I needed to come in because I started getting a little bit worse in my health. My
lung function dropped down and I started coughing up more stuff and more production, so you
kind of know when you need to come in. Book yourself in to get a tune-up.
We are close, being twins, and yeah, I've thought about, you know, who's gonna go first.
You know, sometimes I think maybe if we're driving along, we might go together or something
like that but it's, you know...But, yeah, you do, and you think...I guess I kind of
think I'll probably go first because my health is, you know, at a different stage to what
Peter's is but, you know, as you said, the disease is such a disease where anything could
happen.
Well, the antibiotics that they've put me on - like,
half a dozen or whatever - I'm allergic to them. Although I might have maintained some
good lung function now, there is a risk there that you could have an allergic reaction which
may possibly kill you. I guess that puts me back in the picture - you know, in the race.
So to speak. In the race. Not that it is a race, but...
We don't tend to dwell on how long the boys have got, but enjoy the time we've got with
them.
We've been blessed 27 years and we'd like to have another 27 years. And each day's special.
Each year's a bonus. 10 years is a miracle.
I never want to ever go down that road again, but sometimes we don't...can't make those
choices for ourselves. And for the boys too - if they can't have that quality of life
that they enjoy now, I wouldn't...It's very hard to watch someone like your children,
especially - it's very unnatural for your children to go before the parents.
I don't want to be in a marriage for 25 years with someone that's healthy, and I could have
a miserable marriage. So I think at the end of it, if we have 10 happy years of marriage,
then I think that's been worth it.
There are a lot of griefs associated with the life I've chosen - griefs about not being
able to have children, about knowing that you're not gonna grow old with the person
you marry and knowing that, in all likelihood, you're gonna have to face a future where eventually
you're by yourself.
I think you've got to make a couple of choices in life. You could either say, "Yeah, I've
got this illness." And, you know, it is a life-threatening illness and you could sit
back and really play on that. But I guess that does not get you anywhere.
So I guess the only other option is to be positive about it and just say, "Hey, look,
you know, we've got this." Let's try and manage it as best as we possibly can."
They're very well-known and they're very popular. I guess, most importantly, they've acted as
a very positive role model for other younger patients with cystic fibrosis who are managed
at the hospital.
There have been many occasions where we've had to do a show and we've actually put our
faces on and leave the hospital with our drips in our arm.
Peter and I have achieved a lot of things in the short amount of time that we've already
had here. I don't think we probably would've done half the things we've done if we didn't
have cystic fibrosis. I often look at myself and I think, "Well, you know, if I didn't
have cystic fibrosis, maybe I wouldn't be who I am - David Bissell."
David spent two weeks in hospital and was released a fortnight ago.
Both Peter and David were instrumental in lobbying the government for the adult cystic
fibrosis unit at the Prince Charles Hospital.