Three silver medals - for the 3,000 metres road walk, and 1,500 and 800 metres track running events. That was the impressive tally for La Trobe graduate Christine Griffith at the recent World Transplant Games in Manchester, UK.
Ms Griffith has been living with leukemia since her diagnosis in 1988. She underwent a succesful bone marrow transplant in 1989, but the years since have been fraught with much illness.
She was part of a fifty-strong Australian team at Manchester that competed against 800 people from more than thirty-five countries. An appeal by the La Trobe University Credit Union raised $5,000 to send her to the Games.
Well-known on the Bundoora campus for her spirited determination, Ms Griffith, a resident tutor and nurse at Glenn College, trains for sporting achievement whenever she can. At last year’s Australian Transplant Games she won five gold medals.
Illness during games
Ms Griffith has a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences and a Diploma and Bachelor degree in education from La Trobe, as well as a Master of Nursing degree from RMIT. Despite being ill during the games and suffering from a painful hamstring injury, she went on post-game bus tours of the UK and Europe.
Thanking those who donated to the appeal to send her to Manchester, she said: ‘These were possibly my last games and I may never again have the opportunity to travel and catch up with many of the people I met. I’m glad I did it and made the best of it at the time.
‘However, seeing the next World Transplant Games will be in Australia, I might get my old determination back and compete again.’
Having a transplant improves the quality of your life, she said. ‘But it doesn’t mean you live a life like most people. I often still spend long periods unwell and in hospital.’
Ms Griffiths is now ‘looking desperately’ for a regular part-time job. Her College post reduces her rent, but does not pay. ‘I have done so many things in my life that I never dreamed I would be doing since the transplant,’ she concluded, ‘but now I would just love to get a regular job.’
Mr Doug Andrews, Manager of the La Trobe University Credit Union - which arranged for the Bone Marrow Donor Institute to visit the University recently to encourage people to join the Bone Marrow Registry - said the Transplant Games highlight the need for organ donation, the quality of life of organ recipients, and show gratitude to the families of organ donors.
Details about bone marrow donations from the Bone Marrow Institute, (03)
9342 7286.
NOVEMBER 1995 BULLETIN 16 LA TROBE UNIVERSITY
