Mito Sufferers and their stories:

Tate’s Story

In the early hours of 18th July 2009 our second child Tate , entered the world. Jason and I felt complete. It was already a special day, it was Tate’s older sister Sienna’s 2nd Birthday, a very special bond they will share forever.

Tate was such a beautiful, happy baby. He had the ‘Old Soul’ look about him and seemed so content. Around 4mths of age we noticed Tate wasn’t gaining a lot of weight and fussing a lot at feeding times. I didn’t really think much of it, changed his formula and that seemed to fix the problem. Read more

Jacinta’s Story

Our beautiful daughter, Jacinta, is 32 years old. From a few months of age, we realized her milestones were a little slow, but she suffered from ‘Glue Ears’ so we thought this was the reason for the delay in sitting, crawling, walking, etc. At eleven months of age, she had a grommets operation and had to be resuscitated. This should have been the first warning of Mitochondrial Disorder, but, of course, we had never heard of it.

Kara’s Story

Kara, our 11-year-old daughter, is the eldest of 3 children, and was born into pretty boring family histories of good health. We had no idea that I had the mitochondrial defective gene that was to lay our future on such an uncertain path!

I am a doctor (GP) myself and 20 years ago at Uni, mitochondrial diseases were very much an unknown entity and we were told never to worry about such a rare problem!!

Peter's Story

Our brother Peter was one of five siblings, all of whom have been diagnosed as having MELAS* - a form of mitochondrial disease.

He was 34 years old when he had his first ‘strokelike episode’ in 1998 which was a great shock to us all, as he was relatively fit and healthy prior to this.

Will’s and Thomas’s Story

My husband Steven and I have four special, fantastic, gorgeous, much loved children – William, Georgia, Dimity and Thomas.

Our two gorgeous girls - Georgia who is nine and Dimity who is six - are both such good fun, full of life, great at sport and love their friends and school.

Rose’s Story

My name is Rose and I was first diagnosed with mitochondrial disease at the age of 20. I had not heard of this disease until after I had experienced an intense eight months in hospital.

I always used to get the occasional stomach ache and vomit, but every doctor had told me that it was just growing pains or that I had a slow digestive system.

Tom’s Story

Our third child, Tom, is an extremely cheerful and loving seven-year-old full of laughter and smiles, yet he has had a complicated medical history and has undergone over 26 general anaesthetics and medical procedures to keep him healthy.

From birth, Tom was different from his two older siblings. He had a poor suck and swallow and little interest in feeding.

Harrison’s and Noah’s Story

On the 12th March 2005 our twin boys Harrison and Noah came into our lives.

I had a wonderful pregnancy, of course there where some anxiety's about a twin delivery and the sleepless nights with what we thought were two future AFL players practising their kicking skills inside of me at night, but other than that it was as easy as a walk in the park.

Pippa's Story

Life was originally pretty normal for the Beard family with the usual ups and downs. Pippa appeared as a healthy happy 19 year old - working hard at uni and having 2 part time jobs.

One morning after enjoying a party with her boyfriend and friends, Pippa woke in severe pain, not able to walk and could literally hardly move.

Judy's Story

Judy was born in 1933. There was no indication of any medical problems then or until she was well into her adult years, although she lacked hand-eye coordination and was not physically robust.