media reports

media reports - 2001

Selected newspaper article reprints about people of short stature, including SSPA members, as well as short stature in general from newspapers and magazines around Australia from 2001.
For articles from around the world about people of short stature and short stature in general, go to http://www.shortsupport.org/cgi-bin/news_list.cgi

2001

Headlines

18 July 2001 City hosts expert on dwarfism
Cairns Post (Queensland, Australia)
28 July 2001 Golden dream for giant stars
Cairns Post (Queensland, Australia)
1 October 2001 Never mind height, check width
Herald-Sun (Victoria, Australia)
1 November 2001 Not short on humour
Kalgoorlie Miner (Western Australia)
1 December 2001 Dwarf files giant suit
Gold Coast Bulletin (Queensland, Australia)

City hosts expert on dwarfism.
The Cairns Post (Queensland, Australia), 18 July 2001, p. 5.

AN Australian expert on short stature disorders will be in Cairns this week to meet locally affected children and their families.Professor David Sillence from Sydney will hold consultations for the first time with a number of North Queensland children of short stature (dwarfism), some of whom are coming from Charters Towers, Mackay, Townsville and Ravenshoe for the clinic and a social get-together during the weekend.
Co-ordinator of the North Queensland branch of Short Statured People of Australia, Heather Knuth of Charters Towers, said it was the first time the group had met in Cairns.
She said the gathering would have the dual purpose of seeing Professor Sillence for medical consultations and enjoying a social get-together with a network of members.
"The parents get advice, encouragement and support and the short stature kids get to know their other short friends, which is vital as they grow up, to know they are not alone," she said.
David Sillence is Professor of Medical Genetics at Westmead Children' s Hospital in Parramatta, Sydney, and is a medical adviser to the SSPA group. He is Australia's leading medical professional on short stature disorders and has done extensive work on the genetics of bone disorders.
While in Cairns, he will also address the Australasian Society of Genetic Counsellors and attend the annual scientific meeting of the Human Genetics Society of Australasia.
The NQSSPA will hold a barbecue lunch on Saturday at 5 Ginger Close, Redlynch, from 11.30am-3pm.
For further information, contact Shelley Patterson on 4039 1543.

Golden dreams for giant stars.
The Cairns Post (Queensland, Australia), 28 July 2001, p. 46.

Grant Patterson and Chris Diehm may be short in stature, but they' re big on ideas for the future - and the Athens Paralympics are just part of the plan.
TWO different kids. Two different problems. Same result. For Chris Diehm, it was a simple lack of collagen. For Grant Patterson, a deficiency in sulphur. For both, there was a clash of genes and a dashing of hopes that either boy would become a six footer.
Chris and Grant - longtime friends and near neighbours from Cairns - suffer from rare disorders with tongue twisting names that have stunted bone growth and left both severely short in stature.
Chris, 15, was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED), which has resulted in a lack of collagen - needed to create bone, ligament and cartilage. Grant, 12, has diastrophic dysplasia (DD) and is sulphur deficient, resulting in lack of cartilage around his joints.
At 138cm, Chris already has been outstripped by his 12-year-old brother Sean, while Grant's 114cm frame now is overshadowed by that of his seven-year-old brother Mitchell.
But physical stature aside, these two have become giants in the sporting arena and a match for anyone in the classroom.
Both have entered the ranks of Australia's elite disabled swimmers - qualifying for this year's National Junior Disabled Games and breaking 34 national records between them in a single swimming season. In the process, they have slashed their International Paralympic Committee world rankings and been earmarked as contenders for the 2004 Athens Paralympics.
Members of the Cairns Trinity Aquatic Centre under coach Adam Luscombe, they are within a tumble turn of a top 16 world ranking, at which point they qualify for Queensland Academy of Sport funding and eligibility for Paralympic selection.
Earlier this year, both qualified for the British National Multi Disability Championships (though the team was cancelled due to lack of funding) and Grant was named Male Swimmer of the Meet at the State Swimming Championships in Brisbane - a title previously only held by Paralympians over the age of 18. Chris had been runner-up to those Paralympians in the previous two years.
For Grant, his enjoyment of - and success with - swimming is a turnaround from his earliest days in the pool.
"I thought it sucked at first. I didn't think I'd be a good swimmer. Now, my biggest goal is to swim for Australia at the Paralympics in Athens and win a gold medal if I can."
The superhuman performances of the two are all the more spectacular given their shaky start to life.
"They virtually said he was going to die," says Shelley of the doctors' less than rosy outlook when she and husband Steve had Grant in May 1989.
It was much the same story Jewel Diehm heard when she gave birth to Chris.
"The prognosis for him wasn't particularly good from the medical fraternity because they didn't really know what he had."
Both boys were born with club feet and cleft palates. Grant had a shortened trunk, short
limbs and a very large head. Chris had a very small body, but his severely crippled and wasted limbs were in proportion.
"His feet were very deformed," says Jewel, "and his lungs were very tiny, so he had respiratory problems. He still is asthmatic."
Neither woman had any warning something was amiss.
"It wasn't until an hour or so before I had him that they did a scan, " says Shelley. "Grant was breech and they discovered his head was very big. What they told Steve and I was very gruesome. They just didn't know what was wrong with him."
Jewel: "I didn't discover it until he was born - and Chris was born two months premature, which compounded all his medical problems."
Grant was diagnosed with DD within a month.
"He had some classic features," says Shelley, "and one of them is the hitchhiker's thumb. When he was born, his thumb was bent back. His hands were also quite broad, his fingers short and his bones fused. They were classic features of diastrophic dysplasia. Virtually no other disorder has that."
Jewel and Garry Diehm waited a little longer to discover the cause of Chris's problems.
"It took a trip to Brisbane two months later to find out what Chris had and then it took until he was six for us to get really good, solid information."
In the end, it was a magazine article in the Australian Women's Weekly that set the Diehms on the right track.
"I found out about a support group in Sydney and that there was a clinic in Sydney that looks after children with bone dysplasias," says Jewel.
The clinic was that of Professor David Sillence, head of medical genetics at the Westmead Children's Hospital in Parramatta. He is Australia' s leading medical professional on short stature disorders and has done extensive work on the genetics of bone disorders.
"We saw him for about two hours," says Jewel. "We learnt more in that two hours than we'd learnt in six years."
Grant - one of five children in Australia with his particular disorder - also has travelled to Sydney to see Professor Sillence, who now is thoroughly familiar with the pair.
In a freak of nature, Grant suffers from an inherited disorder which neither his parents, grandparents or any other family member is known to have had. Quite simply, his parents were both carriers of the wrong genes. In Chris's case, there was unexplained damage to a vital gene.
"Because my husband and I don't have the disorder, they came to the conclusion that it was a new mutation," says Jewel Diehm.
Chris has a 50 per cent chance of passing his disorder on to any children he has. In Grant's case, the inheritance factor depends on whether he marries someone like himself or an able-bodied person.
Shelley and Jewel say they had to think carefully before having a second child and the pregnancies were closely monitored.
"Doctors took a lot of precautions," says Jewel, "and there were no problems. But it's always in the back of your mind that whatever went wrong and caused the problem in the first place, could reoccur. You just don't know."
Shelley says there was a 25 per cent chance her second baby would be born with Grant's disorder.
"So it is a really huge decision as to whether you want to go ahead and have another child and it's very clinical. There's nothing nice and lovely about it. It's very planned and ritual and we flew to Brisbane a couple of times to make sure Mitchell was OK."
Adding an able-bodied child to the home was an experience in itself.
"It's like having a terrorist in the family," says Jewel. "I'd never had the experience of a toddler that took off across the road or ran riot in the supermarket."
Shelley likened Mitchell's arrival to a tornado. "It was a nightmare. We had to tie the doors up because he'd worked out at 18 months how to unlock them. Grant never got into that mischief. But it was good for Grant. I think that's what helped build his character."
Jewel says her second son, Sean, has been Chris's greatest supporter.
"If it's going to a swimming carnival, he'll carry Chris's swim bag, make sure he's ready for his races and help him in whatever way he can. He's carried Chris's port to school, helped him with books and fought a lot of battles for Chris along the way."
The care that began when Grant and Chris were born, continues today. At the beginning, it was the difficulties of feeding a baby with a cleft palate or sleeping with one eye open in case of respiratory troubles.
Then came the surgery. Chris has had 17 hospitalisations to correct his club feet, reconstruct both hips and rotate his legs into the right position. All have been successful and he finally got to walk unaided at the age of 10.
Grant has had major surgery as well, but sadly, none of it worked. Having walked between the ages of two and five, he is now dependent on a custom-made tricycle. Further surgery has been ruled out.
Even simple things in life present difficulties.
Finding suitable clothing and shoes is an ordeal. Chris needs Size 8 clothes, but most are totally inappropriate for a teenager. Thus, additions to the wardrobe often require alterations.
School has been - and continues to be - a problem. Playground equipment, water fountains, chairs, desks, door handles, shelves and toilets all are designed with the average-sized child in mind.
Chris found his usual school - Trinity Anglican School in Cairns - very accommodating. Less so is the Australian International School in Singapore, where he is studying this year. It's spread over three levels, without a single lift. For Grant, who enters high school next year, there was little choice.
"A lot of the high schools in Cairns are on different levels," says his mother, "and there's no lifts available in those schools.
"At the moment, we're leaning towards Smithfield High - being low level and because they've got a really good technology department, which Grant would like to get into. It's a good option for him, since he's not going to be a bricklayer or anything like that."
Attitude is another headache.
"People have this misconception that size equates with age," says Shelley. "When Grant started swimming last year, he was put in a group with five and six year olds. When that happens, you wish you could get people and shake them."
Some assume the disorder is not just physical.
"People see Chris in a wheelchair and feel that he has an intellectual disability," says Jewel.
If anyone can put them right on that score, it is Chris himself.
"You've just got to be able to see past the design flaw and you'll find a normal person," he says with a maturity far beyond his 15 years.

Never mind height, check width.
Melbourne Herald-Sun (Victoria, Australia), 1 October 2001, p. 26.

EVERYONE goes on a holiday to enjoy themselves, especially to somewhere like Queensland where you have the four theme parks. But imagine what it is like going to a theme park to go on a ride you always wanted to go on, only to find you are under the height restriction.

I have achondroplasia which means I am short statured. I went to Dream World for a holiday and the first ride I tried to go on had a height restriction of 120cm. I measured 118cm, but after my parents talked to the manager I was allowed on. While I was on the ride, I looked over at my younger, yet taller, sister and she nearly squeezed through the shoulder braces.

So, theme parks, take off the height restrictions and add a different restriction, such as shoulder width, to provide more options for more people.

Justin Gillivour, 13, Mill Park (Letter published in Herald-Sun Opinion section)

Not short on humour.
Kalgoorlie Miner (Western Australia), 1 November 2001.

HE is a little man with a lot of power. But that does not stop West Australian Liberal Senator Alan Eggleston facing the odd practical difficulty as a result of his short stature.
And spending an entire day dealing with the lofty height of Federal MP Barry Haase in Kalgoorlie-Boulder this week surely could not have helped.
But when it came time to officially launch Mr Haase's campaign in front of a 70-strong crowd, Senator Eggleston proved a sense of humour was certainly something on which he was not short.
Master of ceremonies Doug Daws - not a person HOH would describe as particularly towering himself - handed over the podium to Senator Eggleston.
Amid the rousing applause of the Liberal Party faithfuls it was realised there was not a chance the Senator would be able to reach the microphone.
Luckily the mouthpiece was detachable and the proceedings could get under way, but not before Senator Eggleston quipped that there were times he was sure there was a conspiracy against short people.

Dwarf files giant suit.
The Gold Coast Bulletin (Queensland, Australia), 1 December 2001, p. 59.

A TAMPA radio broadcaster known as 'Dave the Dwarf' has sued to overturn Florida's ban on 'dwarf tossing'. He says he should be allowed to decide for himself whether to participate in the bar-room contests in which dwarfs don harnesses and allow bar patrons to hurl them through the air on to mattresses.
Florida banned it in 1989 amid intense lobbying from the advocacy group Little People of America, which said the contests were demeaning and encouraged people to treat dwarfs as objects.
Bars that allow the contests can be stripped of their liquor licences.
David Flood, 37, who is 96.5cm tall, filed suit this week in the US District Court in Tampa. "As soon as you have a physical handicap - they treat you like you don't have a mind of your own," Flood told the Tampa Tribune. "Just because I'm 3-foot-2 doesn't mean I can't make decisions."

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