Families lifting weights and hopes
Losing two children to a mystery disease with no cure is Temira Hetherington and Tai Mataroa’s reality. In 2009, their daughter Rio died at 22 months. In 2014, son Taison died at age three.
Both were suspected to have died from a mitochondrial disease – their symptoms and the results of muscle biopsies revealed problems with the mitochondria.
Hetherington and Mataroa have both had blood tests, but no abnormalities were revealed. Doctors suspect they both have a mutated gene being passed down.
‘‘We didn’t actually get a diagnosis until we had our son – he was one when our daughter was diagnosed,’’ said Hetherington, who was in Hamilton to help support a fundraiser for mitochondrial disease.
On Saturday, the couple and their healthy teenage daughter Paris were among the crowd that turned out to cheer on power-lifters at the annual Bench Wars competition at Waikato University.
Held for the second time this year, the power-lifting competition is part of the Million Dollars for Mito mission – an effort designed to raise money and awareness of the plight of children suffering from any of the rare but devastating ailments grouped under the mitochondrial disease label.
Funds raised are channelled through Starship Hospital’s Everyday Hero fund.
At the Million Dollars helm is Hamilton firefighter John Parker, who lost his 23-month-old son Maddox to mitochondrial disease in November 2015.
Maddox was five months old when he was diagnosed with Leigh’s Syndrome, which causes progressive loss of mental and movement ability.
In the wake of his death, Parker and wife Becky have not stopped fighting for the cause, running events to chip away at their long-term $1 million target.
‘‘If we can raise money to help specialist staff to get that information and equipment for better diagnosis . . . that’s the driver, we want to make it easier.’’
So far the couple have helped raise $167,263 of their short-term target of $300,000.
Funds have gone towards setting up a grant for families dealing with the loss of a child, funding overseas education for a specialist and employing a registrar to gather data on how many children in New Zealand have been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease since 2000.
Twenty-one lifters took part on Saturday, with Tommy Taylor taking the men’s lift with a bench press of 175kg and dead lift of 257.5kg.
The top women’s spot went to Kate Nicholson who, weighing in at 51kg, bench pressed 52kg and lifted 110kg, and Jojo Walsh, who dead lifted 130kg.