2008 MANY STORIES ONE VOICE ONLINE COLLECTION

John Rynn, Age 53, Australia

Click HERE to download the story in Microsoft Word

MY RIDE WITH AAC

I live in Australia, I am an artist, a sailor, a trainer, a poet/writer, I am even a published writer.

Right now I am on a train to Bowen, the train is taking ages, but I am enjoying myself, I can look back at my life, and I see how similar this trip is to my life with AAC, both are slow and take ages.

In 1966 I got my first AAC talking board, I could talk to anyone at any time, but I had no idea where it would take me, in 1970 I started to write poetry, I self published a book of my poems, people enjoy reading my poems, so I keep writing them.

In 1995, I co-write a paper with my Speech Patholagist, she asked me if I would like to present a paper overseas, I accepted, since she was so good looking, how could i refuse, when the time came for our paper to be picked, I was over the moon when our paper was finally picked. With my liberator, I could do the presentation all by myself, I even give talks at Universities, and TAFE's.

In 2002, I had to get a PEG, my Speech Pathologist asked me to talk to poeple, that had already had PEG's or were thinking of getting one, I also wrote two papers about it.

In 2004 I wrote a paper called "On The Rocky Road From Oral To Non Oral Feeding",  this paper was published in the GISS newsletter (newsletter for Gastronomy Information and Support Society). I also presentated this papper with my speech patholgist at the 26th world congress of the international association of logopedics and phoniatrics, in brisbane

My speech pathologist and I are co-writing a paper about our training, our training involves talking to people who are about to get a PEG, and what is involved in living with one, come August we are both heading over to Canada, to give a presentation about what we do.

In my free time, which at the moment is very limited, I am writing a book about my early life in Bowen and Brisbane

my writing has taken me far, I never knew how far it would take me, if you love writing you never know just how far it will take it you

the train will stop in Bowen soon, so i need to finish up my story, before i go id just like to say that without AAC none of what I have done or been asked to do would of been possible, I am gratful that AAC is a part of my life, every single day.