Princess Shorty
RENEE: My name is Renee and I have geleophysic dysplasia. It's a condition where my bones, they don't grow.
MELISSA DOYLE: Renee, how old are you?
RENEE: I am 20 now and turning 21 soon in May.Very excited, very weird.
MELISSA: If size was measured by a zest for life, Renee Eliades would tower over all of us which is just one of the reasons why Steve Waugh and his wife Lynette are dropping by.
STEVE WAUGH: Hello. Hi, Mary. Good to see you. Renee. Good to see you.
MELISSA: From the moment they met Renee, they quickly learned not to judge this tiny book by its cover.
STEVE: Interested to see what sort of pictures you've got in here. What's going on here?
RENEE: That was when I turned 18.
STEVE: OK, and Pure Blonde, what's going on there? How many did you have?
RENEE: Oh, too many! No, I'm joking.
STEVE: Every time you meet someone like Renee, you feel better for having met Renee. I mean, she has this sort of magnetic personality that makes you feel good about yourself.
RENEE: Come see my room. What do you think?
STEVE: Oh, who's that guy? I don't I recognise him. Who is he? Why are there so many posters of him?
RENEE: Zac Efron. He's a hottie, isn't he?
STEVE: Well, that's not the word I'd use but, you know, he's OK, yeah.
MELISSA: So, are you gonna go to a cricket game with him?
RENEE: No! (LAUGHS)
STEVE: This is one of my old posters. What do you think? You love it so much, I'm gonna go up there and cover one of Zac Efron's posters up.
RENEE: No, I don't really like cricket. He's trying to convince me...but I like Zac Efron.
STEVE: We'll cover Zac up. That'll be a lot better.
RENEE: No! No!
STEVE: You might get used to it if you look at it a couple of times.
RENEE: Oh, I dunno.
STEVE: I'd always wanted to start a charity up in Australia and I'd always wanted to help kids who had fought against the odds. Something in me always connected with the underdog and that spirit.
MELISSA: Renee, explain your exact condition to anyone who's watching. What's it called?
RENEE: OK, well, the name - it's geleophysic dysplasia. Since I was about two years old, I've been the same size since then.
MELISSA: So you were growing normally until then, until that point?
RENEE: I was growing normally until, I think, around 18 months is when I officially slowed down and then after, just stopped growing.
MELISSA: Do you feel 20?
RENEE: Yeah, I feel 20. But I know what people on the other side, how they see me. I look like a baby or a little kid, but that's OK. I don't mind. Cosmo for me!
FRIEND: I'm getting an apple martini.
MELISSA: Do your friends treat you the same?
RENEE: Yes, the same.
MELISSA: You're Renee. Doesn't matter?
RENEE: Doesn't matter. I've gotta try yours. Don't choke on the apple!
MELISSA: They do have a fun nickname for you, don't they?
RENEE: Yes, 'Princess Shorty'. And I'm fine with that. That's cool. I love to go out even just the movies or even just walking down the beach.
MELISSA: Do you like shopping?
RENEE: Love shopping. Have you got, like, a size one in that? It's very hard to find my sized clothes, especially without, like, Barbie on it.
MELISSA: Do people stare at you? What's the reaction?
RENEE: They're curious, very curious - they haven't seen anyone like me. Usually the question is "How old is she?" and like Mum or I say how old I am and they freak. They freak out. Like, they're like "No, are you sure?" Of course I know how old I am!
MELISSA: Do you have to show your ID?
RENEE: Yes, gotta show my ID because they don't believe. Even if you say, "She's 20, she can get in," they don't believe it.
MELISSA: Do they argue?
RENEE: Oh, yeah. Some of them they do, yeah. It's, like, ridiculous. "No, no, she's not 20" and yeah, like, "Here's the passport if you don't believe us."
MELISSA: How much harder would life be if you hadn't met Steve and Lynette?
RENEE: Oh...very hard, like, financially. It would be very hard.
MELISSA: That's because after Renee suffered heart failure and pneumonia five years ago, her tiny lungs needed extra help. A social worker at her hospital contacted Steve and Lynette who guaranteed a portable oxygen supply 24/7, changing Renee's life.
STEVE: And what about driving a car? Do you reckon one day you might be able to drive a car?
MELISSA: Without the extra oxygen, she'd be housebound.
STEVE: Do you reckon you'd be a good driver or not?
RENEE: I reckon I would be - I drive a wheelchair.
STEVE: Exactly. If you drive a wheelchair, you can drive that. Piece of cake.
MELISSA: How do you choose who to support? What constitutes a rare disease?
STEVE: Rare disease is classified as less than a 1-in-2,000 condition. Quite often, some of the kids we support are the only kids in the world with that particular condition and, as such, have got no support groups, they get no government funding regularly, and they really have got nowhere else to turn.
LYNETTE: We learnt very early on that charity isn't easy. It's not playing cricket, let's put it that way. It's harder.
MELISSA: It was during a cricket tour of India in 1997 that Steve met Mother Teresa. Her work with the less fortunate rubbed off on the Aussie captain.
STEVE: I just thought, "If she can dedicate her whole life to helping the poorest of the poor, then maybe I can do something in a small way."
MELISSA: Lynette, were you - I don't know whether surprised is the right word - to see this philanthropic Steve emerge?
LYNETTE: I think it's sort of the Australian way, isn't it? I mean, it's in all Australian hearts to help.
MELISSA: Steve's first step was to help a rehabilitation centre in Calcutta for children affected by leprosy. It's called Udayan.
STEVE: I think it was fate brought me to that place and I thought, "I can't just walk away and pretend I didn't see what I've seen."
MELISSA: I mean, that's a pretty confronting thing.
LYNETTE: He came home and I went "Oh, right. Leprosy. OK." Like anyone else, I was completely uninformed about what leprosy was so it was one of those diseases that were quite dark and I went to visit with him - and it was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.
MELISSA: So fast-forward from that experience. You've come home with all of that in your heart and your head and decided to start your foundation. How did you choose who to help?
STEVE: I was about to retire in Australia. A lot of people came up to me and said "You're going to have a testimonial year, make a lot of money." I thought "Well, hang on. "I've already done pretty well out of cricket - is there something better I can do with that?" We wanted to help kids who had nowhere else to turn and we found out pretty soon after that there were a lot of kids that needed a lot of help.
MELISSA: Kids like Liam Titterton who, five months after being born, was diagnosed with a rare brain and spinal cord disease.
KAREN TITTERTON: ADEM, which is acute disseminating encephalomyelitis. It's very rare. It only happens in about 8 in a million and he's the youngest known case.
ROSS TITTERTON: It took me a while to come around that the little healthy boy that went in is not what we brought home.
KAREN: And we went to this physical disability doctor and I remember sitting there and her saying to me... that he was gonna need a wheelchair and a walking frame and he would have a hip operation and I just sat there and...was like a stunned mullet - someone had slapped me with a fish, I suppose - and thought "How do I go home and say this to my husband and how do I face the future? How am I going to deal with this?" And you don't know where to start. It's just, just...
MELISSA: Liam's family needed help. A friend put them in touch with Steve and Lynette's foundation. Soon after, Liam was driving a state-of-the-art wheelchair. The $36,000 gift gave Liam independence and his mum Karen a whole lot more. Tell me that moment when he first stood up in that chair and hugged you.
KAREN: He stood up and he said "Mum, I want a hug." And I walked up and said "You're so tall standing up" and he put his arms around me and he hugged me and that was the first time in his life - and he was eight - that he gave me a hug. That's worth all the money in the world because I'd waited that long because I'd had lots of love and lots of hugs and lots of kisses but for him to spontaneously do it, it was awesome. For him to be actually able to stand up and do it was wonderful.
MELISSA: Almost as good as that hug...Liam's been recruited into Steve Waugh's cricket team.
STEVE: All these kids, they don't want to be alone, they don't want to be unknown. They want someone to be in their corner and fighting with them.
LYNETTE: And that's common between all the diseases. I mean, no matter how different they are, the same message is "I'm the only one but I don't want to be alone."
MELISSA: You guys are coming up to 30 years since you met. You were very young. Can you tell me? It was the school formal, your first date? He was persistent, wasn't he?
STEVE: It's almost too long to remember what happened but it was muck-up day and I just remember this young girl running past me and throwing this tub of spaghetti over my head... and I thought "What's going on there?" and that sort of grabbed my attention for whatever reason and it went from there.
MELISSA: And he asked if you liked cricket and you said no and that's when you said the famous line "You're gone." Luckily, you didn't.
STEVE: Yeah, it's pretty right. The first time I met Lynette's parents, they said "What are you going to do with your life?" I said, "I'm gonna be a professional cricketer" so they probably thought "Geez, we got a real good one on our hands here."
MELISSA: Love letters you wrote to each other when you were travelling - you were away from home a lot. Was that really important, Lynette, did you find?
LYNETTE: Yes, communication - He used to send me little treasures from his trips.
STEVE: Don't give them too much!
LYNETTE: It was so sweet, though, and it was Valentine's Day. Like, he found a little coin in the West Indies and he'd mail it back to me. He found it on the beach.
STEVE: OK, that's enough. Cut!
MELISSA: In 2004, Steve Waugh retired from the Australian team on a high. Then, two years later, hit his deepest low. Lynette suffered a stroke that almost took her life. She's never publicly spoken about what happened.It was August 2, 2006.
LYNETTE: I just had this enormous headache. I thought "This is a killer headache - it's another Panadeine to take that day." I was literally taking six by that stage. I just chose, really, to not
do much about it. My vision became quite distorted and I just had this overwhelming need to go and lie down.
MELISSA: Steve was away in Melbourne on a book tour. Lynette was at home in Sydney with their three young children. She told 5-year-old Austin to ring her parents. They raced over
and the next thing, she was in hospital.
STEVE: They said she had a bleed on the brain the size of a squash ball and having been good mates with Charlie Teo for a long time, I sort of knew what that meant.
DR CHARLIE TEO: he'd had a big haemorrhage, in other words, a bleed into her brain - not around the brain but actually into the brain itself. It was pretty nasty, nasty area. I can remember warning Steve that night that things could be very serious, that she may not last the night.
STEVE: He said, "You've got to prepare yourself for the worst" so it was a pretty daunting experience, getting on a plane and thinking that Lynette was no longer going to be there. I had three young kids at the time and a million things go through your mind.
DR CHARLIE TEO: I couldn't reassure Steve and I shouldn't have reassured Steve because I really didn't know what was going to happen, either.
MELISSA: The next morning, Lynette's condition worsened and Dr Teo rushed her to surgery.
DR TEO: It was definitely life-threatening. In fact, what transpired was that she almost did die.
MELISSA: The emergency operation eased the pressure on her brain and saved her life.
STEVE: It was four days in intensive care where it was sort of touch and go because even after the operation, you're not sure whether it's all gonna be OK. When she came home, she had to be taught how to make a cup of tea - put the power on, how to plug in, put hot water in the kettle, teabag, sugar, milk, so had to start all over again.
MELISSA: For 12 months, Lynette lost all vision on her right side. She needed intensive speech therapy and even today, suffers from short-term memory loss. You clearly admire what she's done.
STEVE: I can't imagine myself going through it and I think the one thing incredible about Lynnette is she's never complained that it happened to her.
LYNETTE: I call it 'my stroke of luck' because it wasn't until after I'd been sick and the time it took to come out of that, I suddenly went - I'd stand next tosome of these children and I'd say "You know, I can actually feel the struggle or the determination to actually recover." You always strive for what can be normal and it's like that with the kids - like Liam playing cricket, or Renee just getting simple oxygen to go out and be a teenager, a young adult, clubbing and getting her nails done - I think that no matter what happens, you try to get back to normality
and it might not be the normality you had before but it's what you've got and you just live that way.
STEVE: So, how many other people like you in Australia? Do you know of anyone else with your condition?
RENEE: I don't think there's anyone wh's as small as me that actually looks like a little girl.
STEVE: I think she teaches us a life lesson. Every time I'm around kids like that I'm learning things. They get on with life, they don't complain. A lot of ways, she is a mentor towards me.
MELISSA: Does he make you go to the cricket?
RENEE: Yes, he does.
MELISSA: How's that working out for you?
RENEE: Oh, I have to find excuses not to go.
MELISSA: Or do a deal - you have to go to the cricket and he can come to the next Zac Efron movie.
RENEE: Oh, yeah.
STEVE: That's pushing it so far, that's pushing it too far.
RENEE: That's great. I like that. It's very hard having a rare disease. You go through a lot but still, I'm like any other teenager.
MELISSA: And now you've got these guys in your corner...
RENEE: Yeah. They help a hell of a lot. They're kind. Very kind, amazing-hearted people. Good hearts.
MELISSA: Good fun? Are you happy?
RENEE: Yes, very happy.
END
