At this point the neurosurgeons were talking to me about switching off the life-support machine because there was no response from him. I didn’t entertain that at all. I told them that in the world where I was brought up, we believed that where there is life there is hope. I begged them to do everything in their power to resuscitate Ian.
The hospital staff were very good. I would go in at 8 a.m. every day and stay until 11 p.m. I refused to give up on Ian without a fight. While I was sitting in the unit day in and day out I would continually talk to Ian because I believed that he could hear me even though there was no response from him.
And I prayed and prayed.
My prayers to the Sacred Heart were answered when, after a couple of weeks, Ian suddenly opened his eyes one day. No one could believe it. It was like a little miracle – but I had never given up hope. I was sitting by his bed at the time, and as he came around I could see that after some time he recognised me.
However, the heart attack had done a lot of damage. Ian was now paralysed and unable to speak. I was told that he would never walk again.
Now that Ian had recovered consciousness, I was under no illusion about the future. I knew that we now faced a long road to get Ian a decent quality of life again. I was going to be spending months in Hollywood at St Joseph’s Hospital. Unicorn Entertainment, the company Michael set up to run Lord of the Dance, was very supportive. They organised an apartment for me to live in while I was in Hollywood.
Leaving the hotel and all the horrible memories that it brought up again and again was such a relief.
In times of need and trouble, as I knew by then after losing my mother, the Irish dancing community rally round you.
Doireann Ní Mhaoiléidigh and her husband John lived at least two hours away from the hospital. But they came to be with me every day, only leaving to do their dance classes, and then coming back to me. Their support was way beyond the call of duty.
Margaret Cleary, another dance teacher in Los Angeles, was a tremendous friend who made regular visits. Katie, her daughter, was only a child at the time, and she would bring her on the visits. As time went on, Katie struck up a bond with Ian.
Later, Margaret introduced me to Mary Fox, whom she knew through her class. Mary became my guardian angel, visiting me day and night.
* * *
Ian’s therapy was a torture for the poor man, and my heart was torn as we put him through his hell. Trying to teach him to read and speak again wasn’t easy because he was a very proud man and I’m sure he felt that he was being tutored like a child. In effect, that’s exactly how he was being treated because he was learning how to speak all over again.
But, as painful as it was for all of us, we never gave up. We knew it was worth trying as we saw some good signs in Ian.
If you asked Ian, ‘Where is the glass?’, he would point to it.
So, we knew that his brain was functioning to a degree.
However, if you asked him, ‘What is it called?’, he couldn’t find the word for it.
Then he would get very frustrated with himself, and with us.
The occupational therapists were very good and very patient. I watched intently and learnt from them so that I could continue what they were doing.
I did learn a lot from them.
One day I overheard a neurosurgeon saying to staff, ‘Watch the way she handles him, you can learn from her.’
But it broke my heart to see the pain in Ian’s face as he struggled to express himself. It wasn’t the state that Ian, or any of us, would want in life.
There were times when I got very cross with God. I would ask over and over why, after waiting a lifetime for Ian to come into my life, had I only been given five years with him. But then I would reflect and accept that we’d had five lovely years before his heart attack. You look at some people who are a lifetime together and they don’t even have five good years. They have years of hell. We’d had a fantastic five years, so that was a gift.
It was no hardship for me to spend all day, every day looking after Ian. I would help to get him in and out of bed, wash and dress him. I cut his hair, washed and dried it. I kept him as smart as he always liked to be before his devastating heart attack. I wanted to look after his every need, his every want. And it wasn’t a burden as I didn’t want to be anywhere else. It was a work of love for me. I would have spent my life doing it if need be. And I could see the progress, so that encouraged me to go on.
My friends from the dancing world in America continued to be a rock of support and my guardian angels. Doireann Ní Mhaoiléidigh, and her twin Eimir, who flew in from Texas, would often drive four or five highways to get to me after her class, and many nights Doireann would stay with me in the apartment. Peter Smith and Patsy McLoughlin came over from New Jersey and spent weekends with me. My great friend, Laverne Showalter, flew over from Chicago to help me. Laverne, who had been a shoulder to cry on when I left Inis Ealga, was a great character and a tonic to have around in times of trouble.
Ian’s friend, Paul Meyn, also came in from Kansas to spend a week with us. I remember two of my American-based friends, Terry Gillan and Philip Owens, were away in Europe, but they kept in constant contact by phone. On one occasion they said they were calling from a phone box on a street in Amsterdam, where they were visiting at the time. I was keeping a vigil at Ian’s bedside at the time and little calls like that out of the blue kept me going.
And, of course, Barry came back to see his father, but it was very difficult for him as he had his own family to look after back in Scotland.
Ian continued having heart attack after heart attack in the hospital, but he was in the care of very good doctors. He’d had a defibrillator inserted and the alarms would go off when the numbers went up higher than they should; then there’d be an emergency situation. I remember one particular time they put me outside the room, but I could hear them trying to revive Ian with electric shocks. I couldn’t bear it, so I walked way down the corridor, but I could still hear the shocks and Ian’s shouts and screaming. I just didn’t seem to be able to walk far enough away.
At this stage I was having lots of arguments with the Sacred Heart. Ian was having attacks more frequently, and they would go through that whole procedure with electric shocks. It was just awful what he was going through, despite all my prayers to the Sacred Heart. All those sounds stay in your head for a long time.
* * *
The weeks turned into months. I would go in early in the morning, take a break around 11 a.m. and go for a little walk, followed by a cup of coffee and a bun. Then I’d go back and stay with Ian until Doireann came in late at night.
Fortunately, Ian and myself had taken out very good insurance before our trip to America, so his medicals bills were covered. But coming up to three months, the insurance company was putting on pressure to have Ian moved back to the UK. However, the medical staff at St Joseph’s were adamant that Ian couldn’t be discharged until he had reached a certain level of fitness.
By now, Ian was also receiving physiotherapy in an effort to get him out of the chair and on to crutches. As soon as the physiotherapist was gone, I would continue working with Ian. This was my mission every day. I was going to have him walking.
I’d say to Ian, ‘Okay, let’s get up again and get going.’
Ian wasn’t a lightweight, even though he was skin and bone at that stage. But a body isn’t flexible, so it was quite an effort for me to get him up on sticks and teach him to put one foot in front of the other. We did that every day, as much and as often as we could.
Any programme that the occupational therapists or physiotherapists did became my programme for the day.
And it paid off.
The doctors were amazed by Ian’s progress.
One day the neurosurgeon said to me, ‘I never thought he would get to this point, but we are ready to let Ian go home.’
I was absolutely thrilled with that news. All along I had prayed to get Ian back home to England.
I knew it was going to take a miracle, but the Sacred Heart had finally come up trumps … with lots of help from all of us.
The Final Journey
Now that Ian had been given the green light to return home to England, there was another major problem to surmount: finding an airline that would take him.
We searched around with little success. The main issue was having to remove three seats on a plane for the stretcher carrying Ian.
Some airlines were unwilling to make this adjustment to accommodate a stretcher, even though we had gold cover insurance.
I was very upset. We had been through so much heartache during the previous three months and I wasn’t expecting this problem on top of everything else.
Thank you so much Canadian Airlines!
Finally, after an exhaustive search and much pleading with several airline companies, we were successful. Canadian Airlines had been really sympathetic to our plight and had no problem making the necessary alterations on the aircraft.
For the journey home, I was accompanied by my American guardian angel, Mary Cox, and a lovely nurse. This gave me great comfort as I had no illusions about the difficulties I was going to face on the trip.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a direct flight to London from LA. As we were travelling with Canadian Airlines, the first leg was to Toronto, where we had a stopover for ten hours. This would be an ordeal for people in the best of health, so you can imagine how torturous it was for poor Ian.
To make matters worse, the only place ground staff in Toronto could find to accommodate us with Ian on a stretcher was the airport chapel.
I flatly refused to spend ten hours in a chapel, despite being a religious person.
‘Ian is not in a box, I’m not taking him to a chapel!’ I told them in the middle of an argument.
Eventually, staff emptied out a store room and Ian was carried there on his stretcher. A wheelchair was also provided in case we needed it. Then the three of us did two-hour shifts watching Ian before going for little breaks to stretch our legs and clear our heads.
After what seemed like days, finally it was time to board the plane for the last leg of the journey home.
Ian’s stretcher was manoeuvred into place on board, and the three of us took our seats across the aisle from him. Shortly after we took off Ian became restless, then agitated. Because of the height of the stretcher, he was very close to the overhead buttons for the airconditioning and service. When he became agitated he started pulling at the buttons and trying to take them apart. We had a constant battle to keep him from creating havoc.
It was like minding a troublesome little child.
At one stage the air hostess came down to me with a glass of champagne.
‘You’ll need a couple of these to get you through the flight,’ she said.
And she wasn’t wrong.
It was a horrific trip home, but poor Ian had no idea what he was doing. I had never been so relieved to hear the words ‘prepare for landing’ as we arrived at Heathrow Airport.
All three of us breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
Michael Flatley and his company had organised a room for me at Berners Hotel on London’s Oxford Street, and Ian was taken to the Devonshire Hospital off Harley Street to be assessed. It was only supposed to take a couple of days, but the consultant said that after the long journey Ian would need more time to recover.
I then spent my days at the hospital helping the nurses with Ian. By now I knew the routine, and it was second nature to me. And now the nurses were following my lead.
It was a very hot summer that year, and there was a lovely male nurse in the hospital who used to help me to take Ian out into the fresh air and sunshine in his wheelchair. We’d walk him up to Regent’s Park and he was as happy as Larry. Ian loved Magnum ice cream bars, so every day we’d stop at an ice cream van and have a Magnum each. We’d spend a couple of hours out in the sunshine and it did Ian the world of good.
When his time was up at the Devonshire Hospital, Ian was then moved to an NHS hospital down by Canary Wharf, and then to London’s Homerton Hospital, where he received fantastic therapy. They specialised in brain damage, so we were very lucky to get Ian in there.
There were a lot of young people in Ian’s ward who had been in motorbike and other road accidents, and it was awful to see the terrible injuries that had destroyed those young lives. The aim of the staff in that hospital was to get the patient into a fit condition to go home.
Ian would spend the next five months in Homerton.
At this stage the Irish dance teachers in London, Richard Griffin and Aaron Crosbie, were rallying around Ian and myself. Aaron introduced a mother in his school of dancing to me, a lady called Maggie Stapleton. Maggie is a very strong Catholic who believes in all the beliefs that we have. She was a good Christian at a time when I needed her in my life.
Maggie and her husband, Pierce, became good buddies with Ian. They would take him out of the hospital and wheel him around the streets of London to give me a break. And Maggie couldn’t do enough for me. During that time we built a close and enduring friendship.
* * *
Michael Flatley then decided to form a second Lord of the Dance troupe to tour America. The company organised an apartment for me in London, so that I could work with Troupe 2, as it was called, while also being close to Ian.
My plan was to take Ian out of the hospital at weekends, so the apartment would have to be wheelchair-friendly. The company eventually located a suitable one in Kensington. It was a very nice, spacious, two-bed apartment, and it had a lift that could take the wheelchair up and down, so we would have easy access with Ian.
After months away from Lord of the Dance, I was now back working with a new troupe in London. Kelly Breen, the dancer from the Cathie Cosgriff school in Melbourne, Australia, who was with Ian and I when we went to see Riverdance in London, was now in Troupe 2. Kelly would regularly come and stay with me in the apartment for company. She was a wonderful young woman who was like a devoted daughter to me at that time.
Every day I would go in to see Ian and spend time with him. Then I’d leave for dance rehearsals with the troupe and set out work for them to do. I felt guilty when I was away from Ian, but in truth it was a break for me and I needed the interaction with other people. The dancers were a great comfort to me. They kept me sane: people like John Carey, Damien O’Kane, Jimmy Murrihy, Cian Nolan, Fiona Harold and, of course, Kelly Breen.
Kelly would leave rehearsals and go to the hospital to cover for me with Ian. I’m sure that wasn’t necessary at all because the staff there were excellent, but I didn’t want him to be on his own. Barry and Kim came down from Scotland and spent time with him as well.
When rehearsals finished at six in the evening, I’d take a bus back to the hospital. It was a very intense time for me. The dance troupe were amazed at how I could juggle my two lives: going to the hospital and burying myself in work with Ian, then going to dance rehearsals and burying myself in work with the dancers. And then returning to the hospital.
Ian’s goal was to go home. Whether he knew where home really was I don’t know. But he was always saying, ‘I want to go home.’
His speech was very limited, but he would always get that sentence out.
Ian would also say, ‘My wife!’ in recognition when I’d walk into the room.
There were a couple of times when I walked in that he looked up and called me ‘Iris’.
It never upset me because he would look at me with such love in his eyes.
On one occasion when he called me Iris, he actually said, ‘I’m sorry.’
He knew he had made the mistake and that was good. It showed that his brain was finding its roots again, and the more I saw that the more I worked on it.
Eventually I felt that Ian was strong enough to spend weekends at the apartment. So I had my car brought down from Northumberland and I took on the crazy traffic in central London.
I’m s
ure I gave Kelly, Maggie and Pierce some scary moments as I weaved my way through the city, dodging cars shooting here and there.
My thoughts went back to my dear old Aunt Em and I cracked a smile as I remembered how she was terrified behind the wheel on empty Dublin streets in the early days. She’d never have survived the type of traffic I had to plough through in London.
Every Friday evening I’d drive to the hospital and we’d bundle Ian into the car with a wheelchair. I hired a nurse that I got to know at the hospital. She liked Ian and he liked her, so she would come out to the apartment every weekend and look after his medicines. If I had rehearsals at the weekend she would take care of him until I got back in the late afternoon. She’d dress Ian and take him out in the wheelchair.
Maggie and Pierce also came to stay at weekends with us. Ian and I shared the large bedroom, and Maggie and Pierce had the other one. Kelly would stay with the dancers. Maggie and Pierce found a little Catholic church in Kensington and they used to take Ian to Mass in the wheelchair on Sunday mornings to give me a lie-in.
One Sunday they returned from Mass with the shocking news that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in France. So I’ll never forget where I was when I was told that Princess Diana had died. Like everyone else, I found that awful tragedy so hard to take in. It was a huge shock as I was a big fan of Diana. She was such a beautiful young woman, and her leaving her two boys behind was heartbreaking to think about.
It was a terribly sad time in London.
When Ian was back in hospital during the week, he was like a little child going to bed at night. For a while, if he wasn’t asleep by the time I was leaving the hospital I would put up the side rails to stop him falling out of the bed. But as he improved, Ian would take down the rails.
Then I decided to get in beside him for an hour to relax him and get him off to sleep before I left at night. It worked, and soon the wives, partners and mothers of the other patients were doing the same, and we were all giggling.
Lady of the Dance Page 14
