SWITCH OLLIE. PHOTO: MOREY
BOURKE STREET MALL, MELBOURNE – 2:34pm
Where are you right now and what are you up to?
At work waiting to finish, but not actually at work, I’m down at the mall. I’m waiting for 4 o’clock.
What are you doing there? Bludging?
Exactly (laughs). Nah, I had a really busy morning and finished all my work and I’m not supposed to clock any more hours otherwise I’ll go over. Each job I’m assigned to gets quoted a time frame and if I do it faster than quoted then I’m pretty much just hanging out at the mall. I work at the big ANZ heritage building in the city. I’m a handy-man here, I fix things. I work for a company who is contracted to that building.
So you’re not bludging, you’re just too quick.
That’s right (laughs), I’m too damn good at my job!
Someone mentioned the other day that you found yourself in a sticky situation at work? Something about a graveyard?
On level 4 in the heritage part of our building there’s this area they call ‘The Graveyard’ where all the spare and broken office chairs from the entire building live. The lights are off and it’s an entire floor. I was really sick the other day with a chest infection, so I went down to that area to find somewhere to lay down and have a little sleep. I went all the way to the back in this area and laid down on the carpet and tried to sleep. I couldn’t because the city’s noisy so I sat up to check my phone and see if any jobs had come through and I heard some people enter the room. It was two random bankers and they left the lights off and started talking all this shit about millions and millions of dollar deals and swearing and all this really crude gnarly stuff which I don’t think I should have been hearing.
Sketchy!!
I was sitting there unsure whether to let them know I was there or to keep hiding and wait until they left. After a few minutes I was in too deep and heard too much so ended up sitting there, hiding behind a cupboard for like 25minutes. I was so uncomfortable trying not to cough or move because I had my keys on me and knew they would jiggle. My leg eventually died and I put my phone on flight mode because I was afraid they would hear the vibrations if I got a call or message. Eventually they just stood up and walked out and I made a run for it down the hall.
I thought they were either gonna catch me snoozing on the job and get me fired or they might have said something real corrupt I shouldn’t be hearing. God knows what they would’ve done. It was pretty scary.
Maybe lose a finger or two?
Yeah they probably would’ve buried me in that graveyard, with all the chairs (laughs).
How’s the shoulder going? What exactly happened to it?
It’s coming really good. I popped it out six times… A couple times skating, another time playing tennis and the final time I was in bed and reaching for my phone and my arm just popped out. That’s when I knew something was pretty wrong with it so I went to a surgeon and they booked me in and I had the surgery in July.
Only took 6 tries huh?
Yep, they put you under and it’s an overnight operation where they reattach the torn/stretched ligaments to the bone. Then of course I had a resting period and then started physio and now it’s back to normal.
Tell us about your physio sponno.
Sam Giles, in Wollongong had surgery on his spine and he approached a physio for sponsorship to cover his rehab/physio and they did it. So I just stole the idea from him (laughs). I emailed a physio down the road from my house and just put it to them that I was after some help and in return I’d post progress-photos on my social media and that was it, and they were like ‘no worries’. So all the physio is just for free, it’s great.
Since that injury you’ve developed your own shoulder strap support band. A Corey Leso business venture?
My shoulder would always pop out whenever my arm would go higher than my head and I couldn’t find any braces on the market that would stop my arm from going to that position. I looked into making my own and I found this cut of elastic and strapped it around my torso and sewed it up myself. It works perfectly and I still use it for support. Really simple and just a bit of elastic that holds my arm in place within reasonable range from my body.
I showed my physio and my surgeon and they were both super psyched on it and they suggested I do it as a business. I looked into patents and stuff like that and started getting friends to look into packaging and all the marketing stuff. The project is just kinda sitting there at the moment but hopefully I find some time to push it a bit further.
It’s probably not that most chill time to be starting a new business with a baby on the way, right? Congratulations. How soon are you expecting?
Thanks mate, I’m all grown up now (laughs). We’re expecting a baby girl and she’s due May 2nd 2018.
That’s pretty soon!
Definitely, it’s been a crazy ride getting here. We’ve had two ectopic pregnancies, where the baby got stuck in Danielle’s fallopian tube where it would start growing. It’s really dangerous because if the tube ruptures it will cause internal bleeding and she could die. When that happened once we went to the hospital and the surgeon said, “We have to cut that tube out straight away.” There was no other option so that’s what we did. They said the chances of it happening again were pretty high so next time, when you miss your period come straight in and we’ll check it just in case because there’s a drug you can take which will dissolve it and push it through the tube instead of cutting her remaining tube out. Anyway, it happened again. We went in and they said, “It’s got a heart beat and it’s stuck in the second tube and we’ve got to cut it out”. We had this crazy argument and we eventually convinced the surgeon’s we wanted to try the drug first and attempt to save her last tube. It’s a really heavy chemo drug for cancer patients that attacks fast growing cells. For two weeks we did that and had the highest safe dosage and eventually it stopped the heartbeat of the baby in the tube, but it didn’t dissolve it through… So the surgeons ended up having to cut it out anyway.
That sounds like a nightmare.
It was. So we then started the IVF process and the second round was successful. So here we are. It’s been a crazy ride getting here but pretty awesome to get here.
Amazing. You’ll have to bring her out skating.
Definitely, I can’t wait. I won’t push it on her but I’ll definitely take her skating. We’ll put her in all sorts of different sports and see what she she’s into.
Do you have a list of life lessons ready for her? Anything that comes to mind?
I reckon the biggest thing my parents ever told me was, “get a good job and do something that’s going to get you lots of money” and all that sort of shit. I hated that advice, it’s such bad advice. When we have our baby girl I’m gonna just tell her to do whatever makes her happy. Don’t think about money, or careers, just do what makes you happy. That sort of stuff’s good to keep in the back of your mind but I just want her to be happy and live, doing something that she wants to do. I wish my parents told me that when I was younger.
Solid advice. I think that’s all we need to chat about?
Yep that’s pretty much my 2017 in a nutshell… Shoulder surgery, pregnant and… bludging at my new job (laughs).
