Accessing healthcare can look very different depending on where you live. For Nicki Anne Antonio, living in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region has meant navigating additional barriers while adapting to life after a diagnosis of transverse myelitis.
In this episode of One in Five, our series produced in collaboration with Spinal Cord Injuries Australia and NeuroMoves, Nicki shares her experience of acquiring her disability later in life and the journey of accessing support in a regional area. She also reflects on how her experience working with the NeuroMoves Fremantle team has transformed her relationship with movement and supported her independence.
Thank you to Nicki for sharing her story with such openness and kindness.
One in Five: Episode Two with Poonam Shah
Transcript
The wheelchair, I can’t walk unassisted, but for me it’s like it’s just a tool to use. It’s like using the car to go from the farm into town. It’s my independence once I get there, I suppose.
Hi, my name is Nicki. I’m a mum, I guess probably first and foremost, and I used to be a nurse before I had transverse myelitis, which meant that I now have a disability.
I am a uni trained nurse and worked for nearly 30 years in country hospitals around the state of WA and mostly in the area, doing more community-work more than in hospital. I did some in hospital and at the end of my career, I guess you could call it, because I had to medically retire. I was a palliative care clinical nurse, and I used to travel the Wheatbelt to see people for end-of-life care in their own homes.
I just had a bit of an achy back and no strength in my legs. I had never heard of transverse myelitis before, as have most people that I’ve ever met. Nobody’s ever heard of transverse myelitis. And yeah, so it happened in a matter of hours, basically. And they’ve been in 24 hours. I was paralysed completely from the waist down.
Basically, it means inflammation of the spinal cord. And when that cord is inflamed, inflammation causes swelling. And where it can’t swell any further, it gets squashed. And that kills off the myelin, which means if you think of it like a power cord that’s got all the insulation on the outside, all the wires that run through, think of your spinal cord like that, where the plastic covering or the myelin sheath comes off.
The messages can’t get through that section. So therefore, like in my case, it was paralyzed from the waist down. I had no movement, no sensation, nothing. Since then I’ve become what’s now class I suppose is an incomplete paraplegic. So whilst I had some movement and some sensation in my legs and feet. It’s not normal I suppose. But you can keep your walking but give me back my bladder and maybe I’ll be lovely.
Yeah, it was Covid times because it happened in May of 2020. It was. We still had roadblock type things. You could only couldn’t go from one area to the other. And because we live in the wheat belt in the country on a farm, having to come to the city, you had to get through all the roadblocks and things.
You had to have letters from specialists and all that kind of stuff to be able to get through the roadblocks. And my husband to be able to come visit me, for example, had to get all the paperwork in order to be able to come into the hospital and really limited hospital visiting hours and all that kind of stuff.
So we are on a property east of Perth where we farm cereal grains and sheep for meat and for wool. So if we were shifting sheep between, I’d be the one, you know, walking along behind or driving along behind to make sure the dogs didn’t run off anywhere or there wasn’t any sheep left behind, or to let everybody else know behind that there might be sheep on the road.
I can still do that, but I have to do it in my car. Of course. So if I’m on my electric scooter, which I’ve got for on the farm, most things, I guess I can still do. The one thing I can’t do is highland dancing. But I couldn’t do that before, so I don’t know why I’m worried about it now.
So I’m really blessed. I think is the right I’ve got definitely got the right keeper fella in in my life. My husband of 32 years now and I said for the first 26 years, that was how we’d been, how long we’d been married. By the time this happened, I said for the first 26 years, I did pretty much the majority of it because that’s what the mum does.
So even though I worked as a nurse throughout anyway. But I said when this happened and I was in hospital for three months and he had no choice, he had to pick it all up and which he’s very good at. And now that we’re six years down the track of the six years in May, I think we communicate a lot better.
My husband and I are much better communicators. Not that we were bad before, but we’re much better. We’re a much better team. I used to think I was quite patient, but I’ve really learned patience. I’m pretty sure I used all my patience up actually raising my children, but I’m much more patient now than I used to be before. I’d get frustrated and think, oh, I can’t do that, and I’ll just push it aside and off I go. Where now I go, just have another go, try it again another way.
The physios that I see in Northam, we wanted to know where my physical limit was or how hard could I push myself. And I happen to see the [NeuroMoves] ad on Facebook, I think, and I contacted them and said, look, you know, or did the online registration thing to find out about walking on a treadmill, essentially in a harness. Within two weeks, I was in the trial. So then I was doing sessions three times a week for 12 weeks for the trial, and it was amazing. And it just has made me more upright. So when I stand, I’m I don’t know that I’m physically stronger as a result, but I’m more confident, that’s for sure. And I know where the limits of my body is, because I know the signs that I’ll get now before I am completely spent where I didn’t know that before.
So I think the first week I could do 250m or something, I think on the treadmill to over two kilometers at the end of it. I still come fortnightly. That’s why I’d still come back down to NeuroMoves, even though I’ve got to travel all that way to come to it. I didn’t want to lose what I’d gained from the from that three months of being on the treadmill.
So yeah, just because I’m in the chair doesn’t mean I don’t need cardiovascular fitness. I still need muscle strength for my arms to be able to propel myself, and cardiovascular fitness to be able to go any distance. Like for me, my mental health, being able to go and get my medications that you know I need now as a result of being in the chair, this stuff, I can still do that on my own mental health, I think, as well as just good for your body, really.
So yeah, I mean, I still use it or lose it. Before I would have just, you know, if I’d gone for a walk around the farm once and once a month, it would have been a miracle, really. But it’s important to me get out in the fresh air to. You know, I might be able if I’m going up and down the street, I might be with my husband, perhaps.
All good for your mental health as well, and my coming grandchild. I’m looking forward to that ability to be able to bend over and lift them up, or lift them out of a cot, or put them in a pram or whatever. It’s going to happen. So yeah, all that fun to look forward to that very steep learning curve, you know.
Want to learn more about NeuroMoves?
NeuroMoves is a specialised exercise physiology and physiotherapy service for people with disability and neurological conditions. Find out more about how they can help you, or a loved one, by visiting the NeuroMoves website.
One in Five: Episode Three with Nicki Anne Antonio
SpinalCordInjuriesAustralia September 4, 2026 9:15 am