AT the age of 66, Peter Barrett has been through enough hardships for several lifetimes.
Yet this amazingly upbeat individual is currently planning ways to increase his involvement in helping the Swan Hill branch of Red Cross get “a little more with it in the digital world”.
Not bad for someone who suffered a debilitating stroke which left him crippled down his righthand side and who describes his NDIS support workers as “critical” for his future.
“My stroke was a major setback and through a lot of hard work with my support team, I have restored function to my arm and leg,” Peter said.
“On a good day I need a walking stick, and often a wheelie walker, or I will fall.
“The stroke has also affected my short-term memory.”
Part of the assistance he receives includes daily tasks such as showering and monitoring his lower legs and feet, because he is also an insulin-dependent diabetic – a condition induced by the amount of steroids he must take every day to avoid the rejection of a double lung transplant he received in 2016.
“By the time I had that transplant my lung capacity had collapsed to 20 per cent,” Peter explained.
Peter receives movement training, works on his balance, and has made great strides with his handwriting, which was illegible earlier in his recovery.
Peter has been able to join the Red Cross and has recently started taking photographs of the branch meetings and fundraising raffle draws.
“I am going to discuss setting up a Facebook page where we can post some of my pictures and news about the things the branch is doing,” he said.
“It is so good to feel you are going in the right direction and by having a worker come in each morning makes such a difference for me.”
Despite all that has happened, Peter remains, very much, a glass half-full kind of guy.
“With support, I feel I can still contribute something,” he said.
When his late aunt in England forwarded him a large collection of World War I letters written by his great grandfather, Peter embarked upon a new project.
“He had enlisted quite early in the war and served in northern France and in that time he must have seen some horrendous things, and just days before the war was to end, he was gassed during a German attack.
“The army repatriated him to England, but the damage was too severe and sadly he died just months later.
“But the letters I now have will provide an insight of his life on the Western Front and I am looking forward to working through them and getting a better understanding of him and of what he went through.
“I am planning to catalogue and digitise them and add them to the family tree which my relatives and I have on ancestry.com.”
