Until recently a Gellibrand client, Louise was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1998 and she remembered her then eight-year-old son having to give her daily injections.
“Getting him to focus for thirty seconds was hard,” she laughed, adding that he had to grow up fast.
Louise’s life journey has seen her live in four states. Supported by Gellibrand in Melbourne for 18 months until September this year, she was seven hours’ drive away from her son, now 32 and living in Loxton, South Australia.
“It was okay when I lived in Mildura. That was only an hour-and-a-half’s drive for him to come and see me,” Louise said, adding that he wasn’t a ‘mummy’s boy’ anyway. “But he’s still my little boy!”
Louise’s mother and sisters struggled to deal with Louise’s diagnosis and she saw little of them for 25 years. When she had a kidney stone operation a few months ago, her family visited and got a first-hand look at the challenges life can present for Louise, including needing daily care and a wheelchair for mobility.
Louise has lived with several support providers, but, until family made new arrangements for her, she said Gellibrand had “ticked all the right boxes”. She was especially glad about Gellibrand’s regular outings, which included trips to the Werribee Zoo and the Lightscape Exhibition in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. She even got to go on a week’s holiday to Mildura in March 2023.
“We flew there, and my support workers had money for each day and taxi fare and the accommodation was unbelievable. I was like, Woo hoo! Living it up! It was great.”
Being part of Gellibrand also meant she had a chance to indulge her passion for art.
“I got to paint at Mary Burbidge Hub – and left all the mess there,” she laughed, showing a photo of one of her works on canvas that featured multi-media. Louise has sold her work, had pieces featured in exhibitions, and many can be viewed on Facebook.
“I’ve got 30 pieces and, in my two-bedroom unit, I had them down the passage, in the bedroom, in the lounge room, and there was still more to hang…”
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