Join Pádraig in Marie’s house for the legendary annual gathering!

Invite your family, friends and neighbours to drop by!

The coffee morning organised every year by Marie since Pádraig’s accident is legend. This year Pádraig will be able to meet all his friends and supporters for the first time in person. Please pass this invitation on to friends and family. Marie expects to have a full house and garden!

The proceeds from this coffee morning have made it possible for Pádraig to avail of equipment, therapy and rehabilitation that he would otherwise not have had access to. The fact that he has recovered as much as he has is in a big way due to the tremendous support channeled through this annual gathering and the incredible effort Marie and her family have made.

This is one of these occasions that could make you terribly sad, or it could make you really happy. I know it made Pádraig really happy. He spent the evening at a going-away party of one of his best friends, in the middle of a crowd of people who he loves and who love him.

I was happy. Unambiguously.

Today, I was also happy because Pádraig managed to show us just another example of what he is capable of.

And if you think about it. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a professional who could develop and encourage and support him in developing and recovering even more? Putting it the other way around. Is the fact that there is no pro to help him recover even more an absolute scandal? If he can do this on his own (and a little bit of our help) – where would he be with the right kind of support?

Finally, here is the poster for this coming Sunday’s coffee morning. Please feel free to pass it on to anybody you know and who might be interested to join us!

We’ve had a really nice, quiet afternoon and evening. Relaxed, good-humoured, assisted by one of Pádraig’s carers and the regular ‘Monday evening with Pádraig’ visitor, back from holidays.

It was almost beautiful. Something not to be disturbed.

Of course, we know, I know and you know too, that life is not like that, not like that at all. But this afternoon, this evening, we enjoyed the moment.,

Someone I talked to today asked me three times whether I was positive about the future of care for survivors of brain injury. I am, I answered, in situations where you and I, people who truly care, are in charge. Because we will not tolerate mediocrity.

Large systems, large institutions, develop a dynamics of their own and are difficult, if not impossible, to control. And while I care about these, I am not so optimistic or positive about them. And I wonder whether they can be changed at all.

But about what we do, I am a Dreamboater. Not just optimistic, but convinced that, no doubt, no doubt at all, we will succeed in what we believe in: Compassion, justice, transparency.

We will not allow people with a severe acquired brain injury to be left behind and to just rot away or being treated badly, just because they cannot defend themselves. No way José:) Load and clearly and unambiguously.

Honestly? I’m jealous:) A 1.9km swim, a 90.1km cycle, and a 21.1km run – and all of it in a super time!

It was Pádraig’s older sister who, today, became our family’s first iron(wo)man. And she did so well, it was just fantastic. And inspiring. Really.

We thought all day that today was Sunday. That’s because yesterday, Friday, was like Saturday. We took off in the early afternoon, had a nice few hours together, and then had that dinner. Late breakfast today, followed be a long walk along the sea, and a snack and a drink in what could be one of the nicest restaurants in the country, with some adjustments.

It turned out that the restaurant served Indian food with some of the most amazing Indian yoghourt drinks, Lassi Mango. And it turned out that Padraig had his first true Indian dish  – and he really did enjoy the experience.

Trying to get a few hours sleep before bringing one of Padraig’s sister to Dun Laoghaire at 5:30 for the challenge of her life. The Dublin Ironman.

We’re on a family night out. And where else would you go but up North?

Being away together, even for a night, is just magic. The idea and the reality. There were many times when we were not just in sheer terror and fear and shock and awe thinking that we might loose Pádraig, we were also split up between Dublin and Hamburg because there was not adequate treatment for Pádraig available in Dublin.

Back then, we were not sure how much of his life, how much of our life would continue, could go on.

Today, I am pretty worn out, weather-beaten, raw inside from wounds that will never heal, but determined and focused and hopeful that Pádraig will continue to have a life worth living and that he will show us the way we need to go to support him and those like him.

Today we are all together, the whole family, in a nice hotel and lovely surroundings, enjoying ‘a night out’.

I’d never had thought I’d be so happy to be up North!

For some odd reason, I’m still really excited about this place I looked at for the first time yesterday. I brought out an engineer and a rehab equipment and centre specialist with me who both shared my feeling that this is a really special place. More visitors tomorrow and then, I think, we will get in an architect and fire safety expert.

There’ll be another meeting with the HSE tomorrow morning which will bring us, hopefully, closer to signing the contract and starting the project.

It is incredible to see all this happening – initiated really by Pádraig, with the support of his friends. That none of this would have happened with that terrible accident. What is the answer to all those questions around the ‘why’? Why Pádraig? Why such a devastating blow? Why at this stage of his life?

For a change, I felt on top of the world! Hey, we all need days like these! Look at this view.

It just gives away a hint of the idea. From here, you can see most of North Dublin and, actually, across up to the Dublin Mountains. For those of us not from Dublin: these are more hills than mountains, but it’s all a matter of perspective, so it is. You wouldn’t notice them in the Alps. Here, they are huge.

The rooftop is part of premises I looked at today. Even the fact that something like this  is available made my heart jump. It might not work out at all, but today it felt like many things started to come together.

And here is the lesson I learnt today. Stuff that seems huge, almost unsurmountable, can turn out tiny if looked at from a different perspective. And even when you really think you’re about to loose your head because a situation, or even life itself, seems to be so unbelievably complex, complicated, unresolvable, and plain hard – the skies can open, the sun can shine, and you can find yourself on top of a building looking out onto the horizon, thinking: well, things might work out after all.

Even it is just for a moment.

The newswires are buzzing with activity. One father says he’s had enough and adds: “we need a campaign” (mmhhhh…); another writes on Facebook about how much he could do for his son would the HSE only give him the money they are wasting on agencies; and even the New York Times publishes a comment made by another father (me) on Lu Spinney’s summary of her Beyond the High Blue Air book.

I already mentioned the article in The Journal by Tom Clonan from last week, which was followed up by another interview with him on this afternoon’s RTE’s Ray d’Arcy show with Katherine Thomas. Tom “has had enough” and calls on the LGBTI Equality Movement to rejuvenate their highly successful campaign for Marriage Equality, but this time focusing on Ability Equality. Mmmmhhh… He also says no politician is interested in the topic. I don’t know how much Tom has tried to make contact with politicians – my own experience has been a bit mixed but I have found many of them if not always helpful but at least listening, some of them very supportive and understanding.

A father of a young man with an acquired brain injury wrote on Facebook about his frustration with the health system and the scandal of the abandonment of young people in nursing homes – echoing the issues raised on the RTÉ’s News At One about young people (more than 1,200 apparently) in nursing homes. He is saying that if his family had access to the enormous amount of money paid to nursing homes and agencies for his son, he could look after his son at home, which would provide him with much better care and would cost considerably less.

A bit more on that account in the New York Times and The Guardian (Protecting My Son Meant Wishing for His Death by Lu Spinney on 11 August 2017 in the New York Time). Lu Spinney is the author of the memoir “Beyond the High Blue Air,” from which the essay is adapted. Without sharing many details (and in this case ‘details’ make all the difference) she heavily complaints about the fact that people are allowed to live, or rather: not allowed to die, with a severe acquired brain injury. She is convinced her nonverbal minimally conscious son ‘told’ her daughter that he wanted her to help him die – but the doctors wouldn’t allow it. I found that story so disturbing and the more than 150 (other) comments supporting her view really hard to understand. This is why a shared a bit of Pádraig’s story on the New York Times website, here. (You can click on ‘recommend’ if you like what I wrote.)

Pádraig and us went to have a look at two potential sites for An Saol this afternoon and just made it back home in time for his carers. Two friends called in later, one of them jetting off to Northern India tomorrow morning on a secret mission filmed for TG4. We hope he won’t forget to bring back tea and incense.

It was a huge field. Which means they had choices. But they sat right in front and underneath this digger. – We witnessed this rather unusual cow solidarity movement this morning on our walk to Cloone in lovely Leitrim.They had decided, they were not going to move, they would not allow this digger to destroy their lovely field. They probably knew they wouldn’t stand a chance, really. But they did it anyway. Nobody was watching, there were no witnesses (apart from us), they couldn’t mobilise other cow friends in other fields, the fences were too high. – Cows with principles.

I received an email from a friend in New York asking me whether I had heard of the story by a mother who had lost her son who had suffered a severe acquired brain injury. He had been in a coma and then in a minimally conscious state (MCS). She describes the helplessness of here son. She says he suffered and that he wanted to die. They tried to ‘help’ him but eventually he died from a secondary illness. She advocates that he should have died quickly, at the accident, or that he should have been allowed to die when it became clear that he wouldn’t get better.

In her case she meant that she and her family should have been allowed to end her son’s live because it was too miserable and they felt that he had ‘communicated’ to them that he didn’t want to live. I suppose the fact that he then died from an infection could be interpreted in such a way that he really had given up. (But, there are, of course, other interpretations possible too.)

I found that story deeply disturbing. There are few people in the world who understand as well as I what that family went through. But I find her reasoning hard to follow.

The article in the New York Times: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/well/family/protecting-my-son-meant-wishing-for-his-death.html

The article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/30/assisted-dying-mcs-minimally-conscious-state-lu-spinney-beyond-high-blue-air-son-snowboarding