6PR talkback host Howard Sattler has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Source: News Limited
RADIO veteran Howard Sattler isn't the type of person to do anything quietly, let alone die quietly.
So the 6PR talkback host has vowed to fight tooth and nail to stay on air despite being recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
In an effort to spread awareness and support research for Parkinson's, Sattler has opened up about how he is battling the condition and what keeps him fighting.
Howard Sattler wakes suddenly. It is dark and he is terrified - a feeling he has become familiar with over the past few months. The fog of dreams and nightmares clears and he remembers where he is. He's in a situation he does not want to be in, doing things he does not want to do.
It's hard, it's frightening and it's a battle he can only fight on his own. There is one thing keeping him going - fear. Fear of the alternative. Fear of what will happen to him if he gives up.
"Get up," Sattler urges himself. "If I don't get through this I'm going to get shot dead in the middle of a jungle."
It is 1969. Sattler is a 23-year-old cadet journalist and he is one of thousands of young men who have been conscripted for military service in the Vietnam War.
Sattler knows his best chance of avoiding a bullet to the head in the middle of a Vietnamese jungle is to avoid being sent to the middle of a Vietnamese jungle.
So after he finishes basic training as a soldier, he signs up for six months of intensive testing to become an officer. If he can pass the gruelling course through unforgiving terrain in a remote area of New South Wales, he will land a cushy job in Perth working in public relations for the army. If he fails the course, he will find himself scouting for enemy guerrilla fighters intent on sending a bullet through his brain.
And this is why, despite the exhaustion and biting cold, he wrenches himself up, pulls on the drenched clothes in his leaking hutchie and begins to wake the other trainees for a simulated war mission.
It was raining, Sattler remembers. "We did these role-play exercises. I was the platoon sergeant and I had to get everyone up and ready.
"One bloke says: `That's it. I'm not going. I can't take this anymore.' I say: `Mate, you've got to or they'll kick you off the course. You'll finish up a forward scout in Vietnam if you don't come with me now.'
"But he wouldn't come with me. A truck came and took him away. He was disappeared - that's what they called it.
"I just thought: `Jeez, if I don't get through this I'm going to be out in the jungle somewhere watching out for people in trees to shoot me -- and sadly a lot of poor bastards were.
"It was six months of intense non-stop training. It was the hardest six months of my entire life. It changed my life completely. I just kept saying: `I'm going to do this. I'm going to get through it.'
"I'm no coward, but I think walking around a jungle somewhere with a rifle in my hand, waiting to get shot, is a waste of time.''
The six-month course was Sattler's school of hard knocks, which became part of his transition from a self-professed lazy bastard of a kid to a petrified digger-in-training to the stubborn, feisty character familiar to thousands of radio listeners today. He believes this sink-or-swim test of guts helped prepare him for the daily battle his life has now become.
Sattler's alarm blares. It is 2013. Every ounce of his being wants to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but one thing forces him to rip the sheets off his bed and get up – fear. Fear of the alternative. Fear of what will happen to him if he gives up.
Sattler is 68 years old, but retirement never crosses his mind - it's as good as giving up the ghost, he reckons.
He now realises though, that he may not have a choice in the matter.
The Parkinson's condition he was diagnosed with last year has been gradually getting worse - coiling a tightening hand around his throat, stifling and slurring his once forceful voice. The symptoms are a constant reminder of his own mortality -- weakening his movements and stiffening his limbs as if rigor mortis is already trying to set in.
But Howard Sattler isnt the kind of person who will do anything quietly, let alone die quietly.
And this is why, despite the weariness and the early hour, Sattler wrenches himself up just as he did when he was a 23-year-old desperately trying to avoid a bullet to the head, and prepares for his daily exercise sessions.
"It'd be that easy to lie down, throw a doona over my head and give up and just die,'' Sattler says. "It crosses my mind that this is just all too hard, but I've got to do it. If I don't do it, I'm going to go downhill really quickly.
"I can go back to sleep, seize up and become atrophied or I can give it a shot. I want to hold the line and probably, hope for a miracle, I want to beat this thing."
So, he gets out of bed and asks "How bad is it today?". Sattler's wife, Despene, listens to his slurring, nearly incomprehensible voice and tells him: "You're a bit off," so he gets to work.
Before his morning exercise session at the pool with a personal trainer, he must first limber up. He grasps his bottom lip and tongue and starts yanking his mouth around wildly, stretching his mouth open, up, down and to each side.
"I've got to keep pliable," Sattler explains. "I've got to be like a rubber man."
He stretches his legs, arms, back and neck flailing his limbs around like an out-of-control windmill. If he doesn't look strange enough yet, now come the voice exercises. Sattler breathes in deeply, holds it, and suddenly forces the air out of his lungs all at once like an over-zealous accordion-player. He screws up his face into flamboyant expressions and shouts out long vowels as if casting a demon out of his body. In many ways, he is. Besides medication, the best way to manage Parkinson's is constant exercise.
The routine is repeated several times every day, especially during his radio segments. After talking the audience to each ad break, Sattler jumps out from behind the microphone and begins stretching and whirling around. He takes his mouth and tongue in forefinger and thumb and contorts his jaw into various positions, then starts spitting out nonsensical sounds in the middle of the studio. Thankfully the microphone is off.
Sattler is not taking a single second on-air for granted. He's come a long way in the past year by doggedly sticking to his exercise routines and special therapies, which include acupuncture and physiotherapy sessions, gym workouts, massages, long walks, fun runs and golf excursions.
When he first started displaying symptoms in 2011, irate radio listeners rang up accusing him of being drunk on air.
No one knew what was wrong and his condition deteriorated to the point that 6PR management was forced to take him off air for his own good, while he figured out what was going on.
"I was talking Swahili,'' Sattler says. "It got to the stage where no one could understand me.''
It became difficult to walk and he began limping, dragging his body around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
His symptoms were quickly getting worse as he was passed from doctor to doctor. His movements became more and more restricted and his voice became less and less coherent. Time was running out as the radio talk-back host was robbed of his defining identity his voice.
"Compared to some other people's conditions, it's nothing, but for me it was everything because this is my career,'' Sattler says. "If I can't speak properly, I'm gone. I want to do radio until I die. I've always said there's only one thing that would take me off the air - my voice.
"They can wheel me in, I could be paralysed, but if I can speak, I'll be OK. And the one bloody thing that has been attacked is my voice.''
Finally in June last year, after two wrong diagnoses, a specialist confirmed Sattler had a form of Parkinson's.
"I asked him: `Is this career-ending?' He said: `No, between all of us, we can keep you going if you do all the treatment and take the medicine and do the exercises.' "I said: `I'll be in that.'
"So every ad break I'm up doing something and I find that I improve out of sight. If I don't do it, I just go off. I must keep moving, I can't stop. That's what it's all about.
"It's the biggest challenge of my life. Every day I wake up and think: I've got a challenge. I don't wake up complacent.
"Parkinson's is like a mob boss - it doesn't kill people directly, but once it comes into your life, you are held hostage to its whims.''
The condition strikes without warning and slowly robs sufferers of many of the joys in life, until eventually leading to myriad other problems that can cause premature death.
Parkinson's nurse specialist Janet McLeod said a growing number of Australians were affected by the condition partly due to our ageing population, with more than 6000 currently diagnosed in WA.
"Parkinson's affects people differently," Ms McLeod says. There is no cure, but there are treatment options.
"One of the biggest issues is that people get frustrated they aren't able to express themselves properly, because their voice may become quieter or they're unable to use facial expressions.
"When a smile breaks through on a person with Parkinson's face, it's just so beautiful because it's in such stark contrast to the stiff mask expression that is usually there.
"The communication difficulties can be very frustrating for people's partners, so it's really important for loved ones to be patient.''
Sattler's wife Despene is ever supportive, but the radio veteran says she is his biggest concern.
"I'm scared for my wife, because it wouldn't be fair to her,'' Sattler says. "Despene is the most important thing to me.
"I want to have a good life with her. I want to travel with her. I want to take her to Italy. I just want to be well for her. I don't want her to have a cot case. I don't want her to ever be pushing some bloke around in a wheelchair.
"She lost her mother and her father in the past 10 years and it shattered her. I thought to myself then: `The one thing I'm never going to do is be a liability to you', and now the prospect looms that I could be. I don't want to be and I don't intend to be''.
The other woman central to Sattler's life is his radio show producer Kate Cuthbert. Under directions from his wife, she tells Sattler the brutal truth when Despene is not there to give him the kick-start he needs.
Some people close to Sattler worry about his changed, sometimes faltering, appearance, describing him as gaunt, terrible, but Ms Cuthbert says he is managing OK.
"He hasn't stopped doing a million and one things,'' Ms Cuthbert says. "It was really hard, watching him when he was at his worst, but since he was diagnosed properly and started treatment, he's got his fire back.''
The severity of Sattler's symptoms change from hour to hour, depending on how well he is keeping up with his exercises.
And it goes up and down depending on how tired he is, Kate explains. "He's just very cautious and takes a lot of time to rest to make sure he's physically able to perform well on air."
If Sattler is in denial about how bad his symptoms have become, perhaps it's a good thing. As with some of his arguments on air, a blind faith in his ability to overcome his opponent may be helping him stick to his constant exercise regime, even as others fear the worst.
Sattler certainly believes that getting through the intense army officer training ordeal helped spawn the relentless, single-minded doggedness that first made him popular with radio listeners and is now helping him beat Parkinson's.
In fact, he thinks that unleashing his aggressive attack-dog radio persona helps him fight the disease, which is thought to be caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain.
"When I do the go-for-the-jugular type interviews and nasty things are said, and I savage them unashamedly, I find that the adrenalin flows and somehow it helps the dopamine (levels). So when I go for it, I still go for it.
"It's good to have one of those interviews early in the program. It seems to keep me going through the program.''
Cuthbert also notices an improvement in his performance after an aggressive encounter on air: "If he has a nice big fight with a politician, I know it's going to be a good program."
Sattler's belligerent nature and sometimes divisive commentary has spawned countless critics and even enemies during his decades in the media industry, so when news spread of his current plight, the reaction surprised him.
"I always had the impression that everybody hated me because I'm aggressive and have a go at people, but it appears not,'' Sattler says. "People were ringing into the station to pass on their sympathy and wish me well.
"I'm not the type of person who tries to conjure up love of me. I just thought most people would say: `Too bad, mate. You're in a rough and tumble world and you're pretty nasty at times, disrespectful, it serves you right.'
"But people didn't say that at all. There's some nice people out there. It brought a few tears to my eyes.''
Howard Sattler's words are still slightly slurred, despite his regular exercises, but clearly brimming with hatred, frustration and fear of the degenerative disorder trying to suck the life out of him and thousands of other Australians.
"There are a lot of people suffering out there with much more serious conditions that I could ever imagine,' Sattler says. "I want to try and help them by raising funds or encouraging people to really tackle it head on. Don't just lay there and take the pill that won't do it.''
If Sattler had never faced death as a terrified youngster, would he have the same dogged hunger for life?
"The (army training) taught me that there's nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it,'' Sattler muses. "I've kept it with me all my life. All those years have gone by and I think the training has stood me in good stead for this fight with Parkinson's. Now I'm saying: `I'm just going to beat it.'
"My motivation is I think of the alternative. The alternative is too awful to contemplate. If I start doing that -- giving in -- then Goodnight.
For more information or to support people with Parkinson's, go to www.Parkinsonswa.org.au
