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| Category: Autobiography | |
| About the Book | |
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"I
have some good news for you and some bad news." The words, delivered with gentle compassion but professional intensity by the then Sir John Walton (now the Lord Walton of Detchant) echoed hollowly around the over spacious Victorian consulting room. "The good news is that you haven't got Motor Neuron disease, but the bad news is that you are suffering from Muscular Dystrophy, a genetically inherited, progressive muscle degenerating disease." So, at the age of nearly fifty, Stan Kearey learnt the reason why he was experiencing those alarming, high speed and unpredictable falls which pitched him into an untidy, embarrassing and sometimes painful sprawl on the floor. There had been no inkling in his active and often headstrong youth, that a genetically inherited time bomb was waiting to be unleashed. Later, when married to his first wife who had borne their five sons, he has pursued a successful career in the motor industry and had played his fair share of active sports with the same vigour as he pursued his life. Eighteen months after his wife walked away from him and their family for greener pastures, he met his much loved Pauline who he later married and who bore him another son, Tim. After his disenchantment with the motor trade, following its steep decline in the early eighties, he sought unsuccessfully to embark on a new private business venture. It was at this time that the manifestation of his MD became very evident and his new high pressure job became too difficult to continue. As the financial pressures, combined with the cold English weather sapped his spirit, the decision to embark on the "Spanish Adventure" was hatched. After facing many obstacles and decisions, he and Pauline bought a plot of land on the fringe of the ancient village of Polop de la Marina. He designed their future home sitting at the kitchen table of their last home in the UK, a "chalet" which later was built without any of the problems that popular scare stories would have you believe. The corner of Spain that they found is, in their eyes, a paradise. Beautiful mountainous countryside surrounding a village with a vibrant heart, built on a small, once fortified hill just ten kilometres inland from Altea and Benidorm on the Costa Blanca. The local people have made them welcome, their hospitality unbounded in generosity and warmth. Truly wonderful, friendly and happy go lucky souls who consider the quality of life still to be the aim of their existence. Stan Kearey tells, in a factual, humorous and anecdotal way, of his fight to conquer the racing effect of the disease on his mobility. He pursues his life with the same verve and determination as before, teaching Spanish children the vagaries of the English language, painting pictures on his overworked computer and talking to his friends across the world on his "ham" radio. This book was written over two years using finger and thumb, to encourage others, with or without a disability, to seek for themselves a life of quality and, as a bonus, extend both their physical well-being and peace of mind away from the stress of modern day living. He shares many of the humorous experiences that have been part of his life in Spain and ends his story with a final comment on his life as he finds it now. "What more could a man (or woman) want?"
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| About the Author | |
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Stan Kearey was born in 1934 in the London suburb of North Harrow. After leaving school at 14 he persued a successful career in the auto engineering industry. He is dad to six sons and now, after the onset Muscular Dystrophy, lives in Spain with his much loved wife Pauline and their son Tim. |