Life begins at 54!

My idea of a perfect birthday celebration was what I did last Friday.

I spent some "quality time" with myself – at home – with those I love and the things that matter to me.

That was namely: spending long hours playing with my service dogs who are more than mere pets to me, ringing up a few close friends who support and share in my struggles and chatting with others on social media like Facebook and Twitter, which has become my latest pastime and favourite hobby. 

Birthdays are very special occasions that should never be missed.

This is true especially for me, considering the fact that my family was told by my doctors on the day of my birth that I wouldn't (chuckle) make it past my first birthday.

That was the prognosis given to my bewildered parents in the hospital after the medical team broke the news to them that I have spina bifida.

Spina bifida is a serious condition in which part of the spine is not fully developed at birth, leaving the nerves in the back without any protection.

Fortunately in my situation, however, there was a layer of skin covering the area in my back. When I was born it was only the size of a small pimple or marble.

Today, at 54 years of age, it has grown to half the size of a football.

Spina bifida also affected the control of my bladder and bowel movements. It's a condition I have learnt to accept and live with to this day.

So you would understand why I couldn't help feeling rather tickled over a story I read last week about an overseas man who became incontinent and was contemplating suicide because he thought it was the end of the world.

He wanted to end his life before he became incontinent. He said by doing so, he could call the shots rather than allow a disease to dictate life for him.

By the way, needless to say, most of the specialists who attended to me as a baby have already retired or died. I have clearly outlived them and proven them all wrong.

I started using a wheelchair at the age of 10. A children's bone specialist conducted surgery on my good leg which was giving me problems. But it only made things worse by making me permanently paralysed.

It was an operation that should never have been done. The doctor never admitted this but blamed it on my body instead. "Unfortunately your body failed to respond to my expert treatment," he said, giggling.

Believe it or not, he also told me that he would love to have my “legs completely cut off and put (me) in a flower pot”, adding that I “would look very nice”.

The hospital wasn't the only one who didn't want to accept responsibility for their actions.

The primary school where I was studying also didn't want a cripple in their institute of learning.

They gave the excuse that they didn't have a disabled friendly toilet for students in wheelchairs and I was forced to quit school.

From then on, it was one horrible episode after another. I spent most of my time at home doing practically nothing with myself until I was back in hospital in my 20s with a couple of nasty pressure sores that refused to heal for over two years.

Then my luck started to change in virtual leaps and bounds.

A wonderful foreign couple sponsored me to Singapore to have surgery in which my pressure sores were healed in two weeks.

A church pastor taught me to swim. Although it took me nearly a year to graduate from the babies' pool to the adults, the point is I finally made it.

An elderly kind lady taught me to play the piano – first, amazingly, via the telephone for weeks and months, until I went over for face-to-face lessons. (Transport was a major problem.)

A music specialist relative I had approached earlier laughed at me when I told her about my interest in learning the piano. She suggested that I be “less ambitious instead and try playing the recorder or folk guitar”.

However, my biggest achievement came when I took my first bus ride in my wheelchair in Eugene, Oregon in the US.

Then it was wheelchair water-skiing in the sea with a speeding motor boat and even white-water river rafting down a famous river!

These were all conducted by an organisation called Mobility International USA whose purpose was to inspire disabled persons all over the globe to challenge themselves first in order to challenge the world.

I returned home a much stronger disability activist than I was and began speaking up and writing about disabled rights and issues.

My US trip also inspired me to train service dogs to help me perform daily tasks such as opening doors, picking up objects from the ground and providing animal assisted therapy.

I depend on my three special canines, my Dobermann, German Shepherd dog and Shetland sheepdog, to provide such a service to me today.

As I spent my birthday last week blowing out the candles on my birthday cake and hugging and playing with my tail-wagging trio, how I wished that those doctors could see me now! – November 24, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.