By Alex Condon
As Deputy Leader of Western Australia’s smallest opposition to date, Colin de Grussa knows the uphill battle they face if they are to be a force at the next election – but that battle pales in comparison to the degenerative spinal condition he endured in his youth.
“I was told at the age of 28 that my back was like someone in their 60s,” the Nationals upper-house member said.
De Grussa was diagnosed spondylolisthesis at the age of 17 and it reached its most chronic point when he was 28.
He had spent years grappling with excruciating back pain as he worked on his family’s farm in Esperance before an incident revealed the grim extent of his condition.
“Being a farmer bouncing around on tractors and lifting heavy things didn’t help,” he said.
“I had a lot of sciatica and back pain to the point that I couldn’t even walk more than 100 metres without being in agony.
“One day, I was driving home from the farm and my back went into a really painful spasm. I had to stop and curled up in the back of the ute for 15 or 20 minutes before I got the courage up to drive the next two kilometres home.
“Scans showed the nerves had been squashed coming out of the vertebrae, which caused sciatica. It was classed as a Grade 3 spondylosis, with Grade 4 being most severe, so there was no other real option but spinal fusion.”
In 2001, after receiving the sobering comparison to a sexagenarian’s spine, de Grussa underwent surgery, where an anonymous bone donor helped him reclaim his life and mobility.
The 10-hour operation involved inserting screws and rods in his back, as well as bone grafts from his pelvis and donor allograft from PlusLife.
“At the time, I didn’t know much about donor bone and tissue,” he said.
“I didn’t even realise what a donor bone graft was and didn’t really give it a second thought until recently when I learnt about the important work of PlusLife through my involvement in the parliamentary inquiry into organ and tissue donation in WA.
“We put calls out for people to make submissions to the inquiry and when I was reading the submission from PlusLife it quickly became apparent to me that this is where my donor allograft came from all those years ago.”
Now 50, De Grussa said he hasn’t looked back since the operation.
“That surgery was transformational,” he said.
“Once the initial pain after surgery subsided, I had no back pain and I had never felt that before. I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have back pain.
“The change was truly incredible. I can walk and run now. I did my first half-marathon this year in the HBF Run for a Reason, something I could never have done before my surgery.”
He said he was extremely thankful for the donation and called on others to consider becoming tissue donors this DonateLife Week.
PlusLife chief executive Hal Boronovskis said the non-profit organisation had helped improve thousands of lives through generous donations of Australian tissue.
“For more than 30 years, PlusLife has been dedicated to producing quality allograft from Australian donations of bone and tissue, and helping to achieve life-changing benefits for thousands of people,” he said.
“What many people don’t realise is that the impacts can be far-reaching.
“One living donor donation can help up to five patients, while one donation from the deceased program can improve the lives of up to 20 recipients.”
Since starting operations in 1992, PlusLife has created 33,100 individual allografts from more than 16,700 donors.
More than 25,000 allografts have been implanted to help more than 15,150 patients, including children.
DonateLife Week, the national tissue and organ donation awareness campaign, runs from July 23-30.
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