My name is John Macintosh.
I’m 69.
The reason I have a walking stick is that I have,
my disability is Scoliosis
which is a curvature of the spine.
Okay can I make the font a little bigger?
Camera guy: I don’t know if I can make it any bigger than that. Let’s have a look.
The doctor said to my parents
put him in an institution and come back and get him when he’s 18 years of age.
Now I was very lucky my parents didn’t want to do that
and so,
went to a so called normal school
but the unfortunate part was the school had no facilities whatsoever
back then in the 40s it was,
a lot of people with disabilities were
kept out of sight out of the way, out of the public eye
and then that started to change at the end of the second world war when
a lot of people came back from war injured.
In the early days it affected me because
my spine was curved,
I had one leg shorter than the other
so I used to have to wear built up shoes,
when I was born my feet were facing backwards,
all the muscles on the left side of my body
were very tight
to the point where my lung, on my left side
never developed at all.
I had a burning desire to be accepted by other people when I was little
and I guess that’s because I was different.
I used to loathe walking passed shop windows
because I could see my own reflection
and I’d see this
disabled person walking along and I didn’t like it.
Well actually my parents got me over it actually,
and that’s by getting me into music.
The biggest thing that got me
over my disability or the way I looked was
performing on stage in front of crowds of people
because there’s no where to hide.
(Laughter)
Um she thought I was a bit of a hard case,
she always thought I was nice looking
and my disability never, ever came into question.
Over the years I’ve been a CEO of a company,
I’ve been head of laboratories,
my background is in technical things.
Ah! Good question!
Oh it sucks really.
In my case,
my curvature of the spine is actually getting worse,
therefore my breathing is getting worse
therefore I get tireder easily,
I fatigue very easily
and I’ve developed Glaucoma,
and I’ve lost about 48% of my sight,
and that’s just gradually getting worse.
I’ve had to stop playing drums because I found that
towards the end of my
playing rock and roll for a long period of time I was pretty exhausted.
I think independence is important for your soul.
There’s a difference between
being totally independent and having someone to assist you
to become independent
we all need someone to rely on as well.
So it’s wrap yourself with good support
however,
try and stay independent as long as you can.
Ha! Jesus!
Okay! Go on.
(Drumming)