Footy legend Neale Daniher's MND shock
AFL legend Neale Daniher danced with his daughter at her wedding this month, almost three years after he discovered he has motor-neurone disease.
It is a triumph for anyone with the paralyzing disease — for which there is no cure and no known cause — which typically claims its victims within three years, sparing some for up to five years.
Neale's decline has been gradual, granting him a few more precious memories with his family.
"Life is about people and the memories that um and the things you do together, strove together, fail together um it is always about people rather than places,' he told Melissa Doyle.
"Compared to people, places are insignificant. Great memories but they are just places."
Like hundreds of Australians each year, the former Melbourne Football Club star and coach received his MND diagnosis after experiencing weakness in his arm muscles.
Neale immediately dedicated his remaining years to funding more research into the deadly disease and even calls himself lucky to have had so much time.
"I can still pick up a beer with two hands," he laughs.
"This is a fight against a disease that has never lost. Once you are diagnosed, you are dead …It affects the way I talk but I can still walk, so I am lucky that way.'
"It gives us a purpose, it gives us a mission, makes our life meaningful and it's the only alternative we have to remain hopeful."
And he is lucky, compared to good friend and MND sufferer Ange Cunningham, for whom the physical deterioration from pro tennis player has been swift.
"She is incredible. I feel very lucky that for some unknown reason, there was a reason she came into our lives."
Trapped in an already paralysed body, Ange communicates via a sophisticated computer and voice processer, which she operates by blinking at a menu of words and letters.
Husband Pat says she is the strongest person he knows, that she somehow maintains a sense of humour every day.
"Ange is incredibly strong, incredibly strong, mentally [there's] no one tougher I've come across which shows in the way that she thinks about the disease, she always thought about MND as not controlling her,' Pat said.
Through MND Neale and Ange also met former intensive care nurse Cath Baker, a childhood friend of Ange's who has also been caring for her.
But in a shocking twist of fate, while Cath was helping her friend navigate the devastating effects of MND she too was about to receive her own shock diagnosis.
In their small circle of friends, the odds of another falling victim were next to none.
'It’s here, we just have to live with it.'
"I wish it didn’t happen to us and I wish my kids didn’t have to see me do this and I wish Grant didn’t have to see, my family, my parents, but I have got it."
Cath’s husband Grant was travelling on the day Cath received her results.
"Cath broke the news. [She said] We know what’s wrong with my arm, I’ve just been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. And I was standing in the middle of the Sydney terminal and you just – your body just goes numb."
Their three daughters had watched Ange deteriorate so news of Cath's diagnosis was a terrible blow.
"It was probably the five, 10 minutes as a parent, I just felt completely out of my depth with the reaction that I got from the girls.
"They look at where Ange is at now with the disease and they look at Cath and they think, “OK, mum’s gonna wake up tomorrow and not be able to walk.”
Neale, Ange and Cath's days may be numbered, but Melissa Doyle says there isn't a more positive group of friends she's met.
"You have got to find the light somewhere. The alternative is hopeless and that doesn't take you out to a great spot,' Neale said.
He recently shared his story, and MND prognosis with the young members of his beloved football club to help raise awareness for the disease.
"It takes a while for you to absorb, "This is what you got... this is what it will do to you" and in your own head you go "how are you going to respond to that?"
"Everyone has to deal with it in their own way, tomorrow there will be two or three others who will get the diagnosis."
'''If you want to help Neale Daniher's Cure for MND Foundation, go to:
On Monday, June 13, at the MCG in Melbourne, a bunch of celebs will slip down the slide into a pool of icy water - all for the cause.
This is what they did last year, when Neale's foundation raised an extraordinary $2.7million.
WATCH
Clinical trials are about to commence but it will take much more to find a cure.
