Being a fish out of water is tough, but that’s how you evolve.
Kumail Ali Nanjiani

Some people spend a lot of time with doctors in the hope that whatever aches or hurts can be fixed, or even exchanged. Many doctors see it as their job to fix people’s injuries or illnesses.

When they can’t do that they move on and leave their patients with their conditions. There are times, when doctors continue with treatments which, they know, will most likely not save their patients. They continue with their treatment anyways as long as they get paid.

Those with a severe Acquired Brain Injury are like fish out of the water. The solution to their survival is not to be ‘fixed’, perhaps to have a part such as a hip, a liver, or a heart, exchanged.

They and their families need help to adapt to their new circumstances. Life changes and evolves. There is no going back. No ‘fix’.

The only solution to their and their families’ survival is to change, adapt, and evolve with their changed circumstances.

And it is about survival. Those who aren’t agile and remain rigidly attached to the past, trying desperately to get back from where they started, will eventually break.

Around 15 years ago, Pádraig and a friend went all the way up to Norway to see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. When we went to Iceland, we spent hours in a bus until finally we stopped and were able to see some faint lights on the horizon. On Friday night, this was the sky over North Dublin: Whatever the Universe had managed to do, it worked fantastically. The Northern Light on the Dublin Sky!

Last Friday, Michael Poschmann and Thomas Bayer came to visit the An Saol Centre and reviewed some of our clients. Both are orthopaedic consultants, Michael is the leading physician in the Neuro Orthopaedic Department of the Schön-Klinik München-Harlaching and Thomas is a consultant at the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore. It was their fourth annual visit, the third in person. Michael specialises in myofasciotomy, a minimally invasive procedure aimed at releasing contractures which helped Pádraig in 2020 when he was completely abandoned by the Irish Health system. You might remember that we brought him to an A&E Department in 2019/2020 where they discharged and referred him to an orthopaedic consultant. Following a number of deferrals, Pádraig finally had the appointment 2 1/2 years later. Luckily, we had managed to get help in Germany in the meantime. Otherwise, Pádraig might not have lived to take up that appointment with the Irish-based consultant.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, veteran broadcaster Michael Glynn’s interview with me with went out on Dublin City FM. The idea was to share how the An Saol Foundation came about and who was behind all of it – a young man called Pádraig.

Life goes on and there is no way back.

This is why Bertholt Brecht’s Herr Keuner, Herr K., turned pale when an old friend he met on the street greeted him saying “You haven’t changed at all.”

If you don’t change you will become redundant. If you constantly try to go back from where you came, you will never progress.

Feeling like a fish out of the water is tough, but that’s how you evolve. Trying to fix the situation by focusing all your efforts on finding your way back into the water will kill you. Instead focus on breathing and evolve.

The end is only the end if you allow it to be the end.

Otherwise, it’s a new beginning.