Music man glad to move on

Nelson musician Glenn Common is looking forward to a good year, after finding a way to walk again. TRACY NEAL reports.

Glenn Common is not a man prone to counting his blessings, or reflecting on what might have been. He's more the type who prefers to get on with the job.

The former music teacher, who forms half the team running the annual Rockquest secondary schools rock band contest, will say, though, that he's looking forward to a better year than ever.

This time last year he was on the downward slope of coping with the symptoms of a relatively rare autoimmune condition that struck out of the blue. It left him hospitalised and barely able to move.

Mr Common was one of the unlucky targets of CIDP – chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy – a nerve condition where a person's immune system destroys the coating of the peripheral nerves. It's a chronic form of Guillain-Barre syndrome, and strikes at random.

"Effectively, you're paralysed," says Mr Common – who, despite his insistence not to think about it too much, agreed to talk because he realised how much he had benefited from other sufferers who spoke to him throughout last year.

Mr Common was a frail shadow of himself when he arrived at last year's classic and antique boat show at Lake Rotoiti in a wheelchair in the back of an ambulance. The annual event has always been a highlight on the calendar of shows he and business partner Pete Rainey put on for the masses.

He wasn't about to miss it, despite the fact that the illness was worsening.

Mr Common, a professional musician and former secondary school music teacher who has a degree in music and English literature, went one of two ways open to him back in the mid-1980s. It was either teacher training or going to London.

His fate was sealed when he was accepted for teacher training, and he managed to support himself through university by working as a musician. He is a trained cellist, but swapped to bass guitar.

"I found there was an awful lot of work around Christchurch as a bass guitarist, playing in jazz bands in restaurant bars."

He also found that there were a lot of students wanting to play bass guitar, so he went out as an itinerant teacher – a role which, by luck and changes to education legislation, morphed into a recognised position.

Music and teaching led to Mr Common's path crossing with that of fellow music teacher Pete Rainey. They hit it off, and that was the beginning of Rockquest.

"Pete and I performed together as early as 1983-84. We go back a long way.

"We saw an opportunity to revive a concept of Rockquest which had been trialled a year earlier as a radio station promotion. I found that the students I was working with, it gave them an outlet."

Mr Common combined Rockquest with fulltime teaching and performing, until life took over and children came along.

He and wife Katrina York's first daughter was born in 1995, and Mr Common took six months off and stayed at home with the baby.

A decision to retire from teaching coincided with a decision to go fulltime with Rockquest, a move north to Nelson, where his wife is from, and changes in education. "I was proud of what I achieved as a teacher but the whole ethos of education was changing."

Mr Common proudly lists some top names in the Kiwi music scene who were tutored by him, including Julia Deans (Fur Patrol), Jason Kerrison (Opshop), Bic and Boh Runga, Nathan King and Ben Campbell (Zed and Atlas), Devin Abrams (Shapeshifter), Mike Carpinter (Autozamm) and Anika Moa.

Everything was humming along nicely until a niggling, tingling sensation struck in January last year.

"The first symptoms struck on January 19 last year – my first day back at work. There was a tingling in my finger, and my wedding ring annoyed me so much I had to take it off."

Ten days later, the symptoms became worse. "I had to go to Christchurch to help a friend move. I could walk downhill but couldn't walk uphill – I had to walk up backwards. It didn't hurt, I just couldn't do it."

He still wasn't unduly concerned – until he was walking across the road and tried to run to avoid a truck, and his legs just wouldn't work. "I thought it was odd, so I went to the doctor, who sent me for X-rays, which showed up fine – but by then, I could barely walk.

"The doctor tested my reflexes and I had none. I was sent for an MRI scan to rule out any nasties. My brain was fine and my spinal cord was fine, but they diagnosed CIDP.

"The faster it hits, the worse it gets and the quicker you recover."

While it's unclear what causes the condition, there are a number of known triggers, such as campylobacter (food poisoning) and various toxins.

He was two-thirds of the way down during the boat show last March.

"I lost all use of my left hand, both legs and my right arm. I had some movement in my right hand, but that was starting to go." He was hospitalised for five months.

"They did say it was unlikely it would kill me, but they didn't know how long it would take me to recover. I was told I shouldn't expect to walk until Christmas, but I was stubborn, and I was hobbling around by the end of June."

Mr Common was treated with a very high dose of steroids. He says learning to walk again was unusual. "I had to learn to stand up, and I had no idea you do that with your head, not your legs. Your head balances you and gives you momentum to stand up. The mechanics of walking are a wonderful thing, especially when you can't quite organise it."

Mr Common is now mobile, but can't move much faster than an "ungainly jog".

"I try not to think about it too much now. It may happen to me again, and I'm not scared if it does. There are worse things."

- © Fairfax NZ News