With power gone for over a week in northeast Galway, vulnerable people such as Rory Comer have been left suffering the worst impacts of Storm Éowyn.
Since October, the 28-year-old has been receiving palliative care for brain cancer. He lives with his mother, Joan Comer, and his partner Danielle Devlin in Dunmore.
“The big thing was last weekend,” Joan says. “He was really sick. We couldn’t ring anybody – we had no coverage. We lost two days with him where he was so sick. Time is vital at this stage and any time that he’s in fairly good form, he loves to get up and sit in the sittingroom.”
Nurses come to the house to administer controlled drugs and check on the two pumps that deliver Rory’s medication. It is a process that requires accuracy, and it was made very difficult in the dark without electricity.
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One night, they had to send for Westdoc, an out-of-hours GP service in Galway. At 2am, the doctor that was sent out couldn’t spot the Comers’ house.
“There was two days where I had to drive towards Tuam to ring [the nurses],” Joan says. “It takes two of us most of the time. It’s usually me who goes because I know the roads better, being more familiar with things. Another incident last Sunday – he fell getting out of the bed. He just slipped. We couldn’t lift him, and I couldn’t get through to anybody because the phones were down.
“It just barely rang my neighbour. Not enough for her to answer but she saw the missed call. Her husband came over and he lifted him. That couple of minutes while we were there, with him on the ground and the two of us trying to stop him from falling any further. I don’t know what would have happened.”
A skilled musician, Rory takes his name from guitarist and songwriter Rory Gallagher. He studied at Mary Immaculate College and had been working as a primary schoolteacher in Wicklow, balancing it alongside his passion.
“He bought his first guitar with his first communion money,” Joan says. “He got lessons after school, and he got a Stratocaster. He went for weekly lessons to a local guy up the road and eventually the teacher said: you know, Rory’s actually teaching me.
“When he went to teach in Hackettstown, somebody told him about these music sessions in The Dying Cow, completely alien to what he was used to. Traditional stuff and rebel songs – that kind of thing. He took to it like a duck to water."
In December 2019, Rory got sick. Three days after being told something was wrong by Galway Clinic, he had around 95 per cent of a tumour removed in Beaumont Hospital. He returned home for Christmas but right after that, he was told it was a grade three tumour.
Rory has been receiving treatment since then. A couple of years in, he was declared in remission and went back to teaching for three or four months, before the cancer returned.
“We went and did half the Camino in September. In October, I went to Hamburg with him to meet a friend,” Joan says. “I knew he wasn’t well there. His speech had gone. He went in for a scan in October and they said: sorry, it’s back now and it’s not reacting to any of the treatment. They sent him home then.
“Danielle took a career break to move up to Dunmore. We decided Dunmore would be the best place. We were near services, near enough to the hospital and the palliative care team. The pharmacy is in walking distance.
“Then the storm hit. We suddenly had no power, no phone coverage. Everything was closed locally. The pharmacy was closed. The doctor had to relocate to Ballindine where she had coverage. It was bad before this, but it just became really, really difficult then.
“It just felt like we were adrift in an ocean, and nobody was going to come and help us. We weren’t looking for handouts – we were just looking for a bit of communication really and support.”
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