Peters Story... First his sight, then his hearing...

I'll never forget the year. It was 2004 and I had been on chemotherapy for 9 years battling Leishsmans disease. It's a disease that attacks the immune system and I had contracted it doing my life times dream: being at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 with the Canadian Equestrian Team.

I was their trainer and had been out for an early morning stroll enjoying the glorious Spanish dawn when a little dog came up to greet me. I bent down and patted the little guy before carrying on back to the Olympic village and embarking on the days events.

Unbeknown to me, that simple innocent act had left me the victim of Lieshmans disease. Dogs in Spain can often carry a parasite which can be potentially lethal to humans. A bit like a mosquito that carries malaria, the parasite carries Leishmans, which can cause anything from serious skin lesions resembling leprosy, to severe damage of the liver, spleen and bone marrow.

I first noticed something was wrong soon after I came back from the Olympics, but I simply put it down to fatigue. So I got on with re establishing myself as a restaurateur, but as the months progressed my health was progressively getting worse, then one day, my abdomen started to swell.

I was admitted to the hospital and the doctors were initially unsure what was wrong with me.

They ran tests and discovered I had Leishmans disease, though nothing could have prepared me for the blow they delivered next:

I had a maximum of 9 months to live, IF I was put on an aggressive chemotherapy regime.

To everyone's surprise, I did survive and I'm here today telling the story!

The treatment did take a serious toll on my body though. Since no one had expected me to survive, the serious side effects of being on such strong chemotherapy agents for so long were not really considered.

Until the day I woke up and could not see.

The visual pleasures I had once enjoyed: sunrise at Piha; galloping horses; smiles alighting my nephews face; none of these would I be blessed with again...this world was not what I once envisaged it to be and I struggled to come to terms with what was happening to my sight.

Somewhere from inside myself, I found the strength to overcome this hurdle too, and life carried on again. The doctors changed the chemotherapy agents I was on, with a view to minimise any more damage to my system and preserve my quality of life.

Then came 2004 and the final blow!

I had begun to notice it was getting harder for me to hear what people were saying to me, and my ability to communicate was becoming more challenging, especially since I could not pick up on the visual cues either.

The more hearing I lost, the more reclusive I became.

Losing the visual gifts that sight gives you is one thing, but to lose the gift of sound and the basic human instinct to communicate and connect with others was so utterly devastating to me.

Yes, I was alive. But I was not living.

I wanted the gift of living back. I wanted to connect with my love ones; to talk about philosophy, debate politics, discuss the arts, absorb myself in the theatre. All of this was gone, but I wanted it back!

And I found out I could have it... maybe not the gift of sight... but the thing that connects us to other humans and what makes us human...the ability to communicate. If I could hear, I could
communicate.

A cochlear Implant would give me that and I knew it.

So like a determined terrier I went after what I knew would give me the gift of living again, and in 2010 I was fortunate enough to get my implants.

I'm no longer that isolated, lonely soul. I'm back to being the man I once was, who grasped life's opportunities and believed we should never postpone the joys in life.