Former rugby international Donal Canniffe greets me in a Dublin hotel with a handshake and then a snippet of a song.
“I know she likes me, because she says so,” he cheerfully sings from Lily of Laguna, recorded by Bing Crosby and Mary Martin in the 1940s. His blue eyes smile warmly above a fresh abrasion on the bridge of his nose.
A tennis injury, it transpires, from his twice-weekly game a few hours earlier, at the Deerpark club in Mount Merrion. Not that he can remember how it happened.
Life is full of forgotten moments now for Donal, aged 76, as he has been living with dementia for more than 20 years. Even the historic occasion in 1978, when he captained Munster to beat the All Blacks, the first Irish team to do so, has slipped from his mind.
RM Block
That October 31st turned out to be both the best and worst of days for the scrumhalf. He was still basking in post-victory euphoria in the dressingroom at Thomond Park in Limerick, when he was told his father, Dan, had had a heart attack in Cork, after listening to the match on the radio. “They didn’t tell him he was dead at that stage,” says Donal’s wife, Mary Canniffe, who was at the match. The couple were driven straight to Cork.
Donal is one of approximately 64,000 people in Ireland living with dementia, which is an umbrella term for a progressive illness that damages brain cells. The Alzheimer Society of Ireland (ASI) estimates that more than 4,500 have early-onset dementia, meaning they receive a diagnosis before the age of 65. There are many types of dementia, but Alzheimer’s disease is the most common.
The first signs that Mary noticed were her husband’s odd lapses in memory about day-to-day things. It was not long after he had taken early retirement from the Norwich Union insurance company (now Aviva). “Initially, I thought because I’d be rabbiting on talking, he just wasn’t listening to me, that he just switched off in the middle of the conversation. But then I began to think it was more than that.”
The memory issues slowly increased over several years.
Their GP referred Donal to the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (Misa) at St James’s Hospital in 2012. After tests over three years, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Mary had already suspected as much, having seen an aunt develop Alzheimer’s. Donal was put on medication, but they were warned that he would have to stop taking it after five years, and then it would be like going off a cliff.
“It has worked out very much more positive than that,” she says. “We’ve been very lucky because his deterioration has been extremely slow,” and he continues on medication. “We’ve known a number of people who’ve been diagnosed much later than this and who are in nursing homes now.”
There is no way of telling whether Donal’s rugby career contributed to his early dementia, but his was an era when playing on after a head injury was the norm. There was no mandatory head injury assessment, stand-down period or graduated return to play after concussion, in what was an amateur game.
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Mary recalls one incident, when she thinks he was playing for Lansdowne. She was chatting to a friend and was aware the match had been stopped, but didn’t know why. “There was a silence then around where I was standing, because they knew I would realise what was going on.”
It was her friend who said, “Oh God, it’s Donal.”
“He was knocked out,” says Mary. “But literally, he was back on in five minutes. As soon as he came to again, on again.”
However, she sees no point in ruminating on the past. Donal had full open heart surgery for a valve repair in 2001, and that is a possible contributing factor, she points out.
Do old photos of rugby days bring back memories? “A little bit but not much,” replies Donal, who was capped twice for Ireland in 1976. Mary has put his international, Munster and All Black match caps up on the wall at home, which always attract visitors’ attention.
“But you don’t even look at them much really, do you?” she says, turning to her husband.
“They don’t mean much,” he replies.
Does he still enjoy watching international rugby, such as the Six Nations?
“I do enjoy it. I can’t remember it,” he quips.
Stigma persists around dementia, although awareness raising by the ASI over the years has helped to bring it out of the shadows. The number of people in Ireland living with the condition is expected to more than double by 2050, due to the ageing population.
Donal did not want friends, or even his own family, to know about the diagnosis at the start, recalls Mary. “I was very uncomfortable with that. But it was his choice, not mine.”
Their two daughters, Amy and Carla, knew of course; the latter, a doctor, was with them when they were told. “I didn’t see the point in people not knowing because there are behavioural things that would look a bit odd,” says Mary, a former Irish Times business journalist who retired from a job in the Central Bank in 2013, partly because she felt she needed to be around more for Donal. Even after his diagnosis, she was unaware of the various services ASI offers because she did not look for any outside support.
“It’s funny because everyone was saying to me, ‘Oh, you need help.’ And I didn’t feel I did because we were getting on grand. We were both enjoying being retired and being free to do nothing, basically, a lot of the time, or do whatever we wanted.”
But his behaviour gradually became more challenging. Donal went to a weekly group for retired men at the Friendship Club in Mount Merrion, and it was an organiser there who suggested to Mary he might be better off attending a specialised dementia service at the ASI’s Orchard day centre in Blackrock.
Initially she felt guilty dropping him in, but the staff are very welcoming and he always comes out happy. His two days a week there give her a chance to catch up with the to-do list or to meet a friend. “It’s nice for him to be away from me too ...”
He was always a very good adviser and, when I was working, hugely supportive. Now I have to make all the decisions myself
— Mary Canniffe
“Oh no, it’s not,” Donal astutely chips in, and Mary laughs at his “plámásing”. He is still his old self in many ways, for which she is grateful.
It wasn’t love at first sight when they met at a disco in the South County Hotel in Stillorgan, where the Talbot hotel is now, in the early 1970s. She was there with a gang from Trinity College and Donal, who had recently moved to Dublin from Cork, was out with rugby friends. “He had a very strong Cork accent and I couldn’t understand a word he said,” she says. But one thing he had going for him was that he had a car. “I was in college and had nothing, not even a bike.”
They started dating, but, being involved in both the Munster and Ireland training camps, as well as playing for Lansdowne, there were so many nights he was “training”. For a while she suspected he was seeing other women. “I couldn’t understand that someone would be so involved in rugby.”
But they married in 1977 and their enduring love is clear to see, as they walk the shifting sands of dementia together, albeit in different roles. To any spouse in a similar position, she says it’s important to realise that you can’t do everything yourself. “You have to lean on other people.”
The Canniffes are sharing their story to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s Tea Day on May 7th, when communities and individuals around the State host events to raise funds for the ASI. (Registration and free party pack at teaday.ie.) The couple will mark it in Spain, at a place outside Cadiz where they go about twice a year so Donal quickly settles into the familiar surroundings.
The day we talk is their weekly “date day”, when they go out to do something special. In public, Mary endeavours to rein in some of Donal’s quirkier behaviours that have increased over the past year, such as frequent outbursts of song.
“I’m a good singer, but I’m the only one who knows that,” he jokes when I compliment him on his voice. Jovially clapping people on the back is another habit that has Mary holding her breath if a stranger is on the receiving end. But his continuing even-temperedness and good humour is a great relief, when aggression can be a feature of the illness.
She appreciates advice given by her GP not to feel guilty about becoming exasperated, such as when Donal asks her the same question over and over again, because he will quickly forget her annoyance. “It’s true, because he’d be smiling about something else 10 minutes later.”
However, for all the repartee, Mary misses deep conversations and being able to run things by him. “He was always a very good adviser and, when I was working, hugely supportive. Now I have to make all the decisions myself.”
Donal continues to drive a car – with medical clearance – but never alone. “He’s a very good driver, much better than me,” says Mary, who is also very grateful that he sleeps “like a log” each night.
While he lives very much in the moment, some memories still bubble up. For example, he rattles off the address of the Cork house where he was raised by an aunt, after his mother was killed in a cycling accident when he was only two.
His father, a garda, was left with seven children to care for and the family was split. The eldest, a 12-year-old boy about to start secondary school, and the two youngest, Donal and his twin sister, went to live with an aunt and uncle in the city, while their siblings remained at home in Rathcormac with their father, about 30km away.
The unpredictability of life hit Donal early. More than seven decades later, Mary reflects how, as a couple, they take each day as it comes. “There’s no point in overthinking or overplanning. That’s the way life is. I wish I knew that 40 years ago.”
And right on cue, Donal comes in with: “One day at a time, sweet Jesus. That’s all I am asking of you ...”
The ASI’s national helpline, 1800 341 341, is open Monday to Friday, 10am-5pm, and Saturdays, 10am-4pm.
