Suzanne Deroles completes the Antarctica Marathon.
Suzanne Deroles completes the Antarctica Marathon.
Suzanne Deroles doesn’t like to muck around. There is far too much life to be lived to sit there with a woe-is-me hat on.
Deroles, now living in Taupō, was diagnosed with the repetitive remitting type of multiple sclerosis when she was a 19-year-old university student.
She was at the Picton Youth Hostel when she woke up in the night and realised she had lost all movement on her right side. Attempting to get out of bed, she fell flat on her face. Managing to walk with great difficulty, with uncontrolled movement and with slurred speech, she thought, “this is weird”.
Diagnosis back then was no simple process. This was 1977. There were no MRIs. A local doctor was baffled. Specialists in Nelson and Christchurch figured it out through a process of elimination. A lumbar puncture three years later confirmed the diagnosis.
She has been living with MS for 41 years now. Her mother was told she would be in a wheelchair by the time she was 45. Fat chance!
While she didn’t take a lot of notice about that foreboding prognosis, she couldn’t write and she couldn’t think with the level of analysis required for learning.
Suzanne Deroles enjoys the great outdoors in Kahurangi National Park.
She quit university and with her then partner she joined a shearing gang and, along with other farm work, saved enough to buy a hobby farm in Tākaka. Physically active and a keen tramper, she was able to keep up with the rigours of a demanding work environment. She is quite proud of her wool classing certification for fine wool.
When Deroles and her partner decided on separate paths, she packed her bags and went travelling. Her four years of travel would provide enough material and excitement for a book.
Across the US and the UK she worked her way, picking peas, grading potatoes, berries, beans, chickens, you name it.
She also spent time as a “granny nanny” in the UK and visited other countries like Iceland, Spain and Turkey: a life full with adventure, excitement and exploration.
In London, working to live and looking for something different, she answered an advertisement in a magazine to join in the delivery of trucks and equipment to Uganda, a year-long expedition. This led to her travelling the length and breadth of that continent, visiting 22 countries, contracting malaria and at one point being involved in a serious bus crash in South Africa.
Joining Phoenix Overland as a courier, she dragged her MS along with her and didn’t seriously consider anything going wrong. She didn’t even have travel insurance. She will be the first to admit to a little recklessness and a good dose of luck. Apart from a few minor episodes and a fair bit of tripping over, she emerged unscathed.
Suzanne Deroles competes in the Great Wall Marathon.
By 1994, Deroles was back in New Zealand. She had previously purchased a section on a beach in Collingwood as she didn’t want to come back to nothing after her travels.
She did have plans to build there but also wanted to be around family and was aiming for Taupō but ended up a block back from the beach at Mt Maunganui. She looked after her mother at her Mount house for the last three years of her life.
At the Mount her life took off on another tangent. Through the cajoling of friends and associates she re-established her love of exercise and found enjoyment in competitive endurance events. She joined the local triathlon club and tramping clubs which led to the challenges of off-road running, something that has stayed with her to this day.
She found the more she trained and exercised the better she felt, the less the MS seemed to impact on her and the more she could do: 48km has been her longest distance. While she enters competitive events, it’s not about the winning, it’s about the challenge, the finishing and the camaraderie.
There have been events and walks across New Zealand and around the world as budgets permit; Antarctica, the Great Wall of China.
Tri Club friend Leslie has a goal of seven marathons on seven continents and invariably Deroles has been a companion on a couple of those. She is hoping to be in Athens for a 10km event in November.
In 2017 Deroles moved to her bach on a flat section in a quiet street in Taupō to start another chapter of her eventful life. While things might be slowing down just a little bit, they’re not stopping and at 66 she still gives little heed to her MS.
Over the past few years she has been undertaking voluntary work clearing wilding pines on the Molesworth Station. She reckons she has been at it 13 or 14 times now and her team has cleared 32 square kilometres using axes, handsaws, slashers and machetes. It is the outdoors, the quiet and the clean air that Deroles loves.
All her life Deroles has been inquisitive by nature. The physical activity is only part of it. Apart from the running, walking, swimming, kayaking and gardening, there is the reading, sewing, applique and, importantly, the art.
Suzanne Deroles' painting of a castle.
She has a double garage, doubling as an art studio and dedicated to her artistic endeavours. Most people chronicle their lives and their journeys with photography. Deroles does it with her art. She uses whatever medium is at hand, charcoal around a campfire for example, and generally each artwork is totally different, including in style.
She doesn’t have a computer. Her mobile is the most basic available and even then she’s going to be hard to pin down: A “Suzie here, I’m out doing stuff” message will be the invariable result of a call. Such has been her life of experiences and adventure you feel that if she had any time left in her full days she would actually be writing that book.
She does not drive, so walks everywhere. Until recently she even had a part-time role clearing overgrowth from a reserve in Tūrangi. She hitchhiked there when needed.
For Suzie Deroles it has never been about fighting MS. It’s been about living, about being someone who just happens to have MS. When correction is needed, you do your rehab and you come right. MS doesn’t influence her decisions and has never been a reason for taking any particular direction.
When MS News caught up with Suzie she had just returned from Golden Bay where she had been clearing still more wildings, helping a friend on his land, catching up with mates at the dog trials and marvelling at the light playing on the snow on the tops after a recent cold snap.
When people tell her, “You’ve done so well”, she doesn’t argue.
This story originally appeared in MS News and has been republished with permission.
