Natalia and Mel Rossiter were best friends before they became husband and wife.
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Although the couple both worked difficult jobs, she for an insurance company and him at a bank, theirs was a love story enviable by many.
"We enjoyed our lives and had some great times together," Mrs Rossiter said.
But not all love stories have a perfect ending as they would both come to realise.
The year was 2010 when Mr Rossiter first started to display "odd behaviours".
He would drop things out of nowhere and began to move in a "strange" way.
At first, they simply ignored the signs and hoped that whatever was causing the issues went away.
However, this did not happen and soon after the couple started to seek a diagnosis.
Eighteen months went by and still no answers in sight. That was until they saw a neurologist who wanted to run a test for Huntington's Disease "just to exclude it". The test came back positive.
"Until Mel got the positive diagnosis, we never even dreamed it could possibly be Huntington's Disease," Mrs Rossiter said.
A condition in which nerve cells in the brain break down over time, the disease typically starts in a person's 30s or 40s and is passed down from a parent.
No cure exists.
Although Mr Rossiter had no known family history of the brain disease, the couple quickly came to the realisation his grandmother and mother's Parkinson's was in fact Huntington's.
Although the pair were "determined" to live their lives "as normally as possible", Mr Rossiter's symptoms became worse.
He lost his job and was unable to secure a new one.
"At that stage, I was paying a mortgage for two people and money was extremely tight," Mrs Rossiter said.
"All the shares, all the savings we had went into paying for the mortgage and making ends meet."
Change of scenery
After some discussion, the couple decided to sell their home in Sydney and move to Orange in 2018.
That same year, Mrs Rossiter became her husband's full-time carer.
"I look after Mel, that's all I do. I live and breath Huntington's Disease 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There's no respite," she said.
Watching the man she loves turn into a shell of himself has been just as gruelling as one could imagine.
"The brain grows holes in it and the wiring is broken. All the things you would normally expect of an adult is no longer there," Mrs Rossiter said.
"Sometimes Mel behaves like a three-year-old and sometimes he has small moments when he's almost normal. You cannot fathom the constant issues that it creates on a daily basis."
Mrs Rossiter believes the biggest issue for families impacted by Huntington's is the lack of support.
So when she met HD Awareness Central West founder Rachael Brooking at the markets one day, it came as welcome relief. She finally found a "level of connection between people" within the community that her life had been lacking up to that point.
Mrs Rossiter then offered up her services to the not-for-profit organisation.
This now includes helping organise the annual Mother's Day High Tea for Huntington's Disease which raises money for Huntington's Australia.
"HD families have very little time or money to spend lobbying governments because they're exhausted," Mrs Rossiter added.
"Huntington's Australia need a lot of time and funding so they can lobby the government properly to get support workers, not only in the Central West but the whole of the country."
The 2024 event will take place on Sunday, May 12 and features special guest speaker, CEO of Huntington's Australia Lenni Duffield.
You can purchase tickets to the event by clicking here or by searching huntingtonsaustralia.grassrootz.com and following the link to High Tea 4 HD.