We meet three people who are working hard with the National Rehabilitation Hospital to cope with their traumas

WHAT WOULD you do if your life was suddenly turned upside down by illness?

If you or a loved one had a fall, an accident or a stroke, how would you cope and who would be there to help you through it?

Every day, the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dún Laoghaire helps people on their hard road to recovery.

Opened in 1961, its team of medical consultants, therapists and technicians work with children and adults who have suffered irreversible brain and spinal injury as well as limb loss.

It offers no cures, but by maximising a person’s ability as they face the challenges of a life-changing injury, it transforms lives.

With the hospital featuring in an RTÉ documentary, The Road to Rehab, we meet three people taking that journey.

AYEISHA GROGAN, Kilkenny

It happened on October 22nd last year. It was a very wet evening, really torrential rain. I remember teaching my last class and getting in the car, but that was it.

I was in a coma in Beaumont Hospital for 42 days. I don’t really remember waking up, I just remember hearing the Budget on the TV.

I didn’t remember the car accident at all, my brother told me where I was and what had happened.

I used to do some banking for my mother and when I woke, she asked me her PIN and I knew it. They thought that was a really good sign.

What I have is classed as a brain injury; I lost mobility down my left side. There was swelling on my brain too and they had to remove a part of the skull on the right side.

I moved to Kilkenny hospital on Christmas Eve and then to the NRH in February.

I always felt I would walk again, no matter what.

“A long left leg, step with the right” – my physios at the NRH told me that I’d have to train my brain to teach my leg how to walk again.

I couldn’t hold a knife and fork properly and I had to have my food cut up sometimes, and I wasn’t able to stand in the shower. The loss of independence was difficult at the start, but you just get on with it.

Now I’m waiting for a titanium plate to replace the missing part of my skull, it should happen this month.

I’ve never been a moaner and I know from meeting people at the NRH, other people have it worse than me. I’m hoping to go back teaching next year.

You never know the time or the hour, this could have happened to anyone.

TERRY KIRWAN, Carlow

I’m a carpenter and we were doing a roof and basically the roofing ladder slipped. After that, I don’t remember.

The fall was about 17ft. I landed on my back on some timbers on the ground. I woke up with the guys who I work with standing over me. The ambulance brought me to Kilkenny where I had some scans.

They said the back was damaged and I had seven broken ribs. The ribs were rubbing off the spinal cord so they sent me to the Mater the next day and I was operated on that evening.

I just thought, let them operate and get it over with and I’ll be alright maybe in a couple of months. At that stage, I didn’t think I was going to be paralysed for life, as they say.

I was able to move my arms, but I had a loss of feeling from the chest down.

I went to the NRH in December. I just wanted to get started and see whatever parts I could get working again. They told me there was a 99 per cent chance that I wouldn’t get back any feeling, but still you are kind of holding on to that 1 per cent.

All the people there were very good. They are getting your legs moving and building up your muscles, so that you can use the wheelchair yourself.

They show you how to transfer from the bed to the chair, how to dress yourself with different manoeuvres – it’s all a learning process.

I came home in April. We got the house adapted and now I’m waiting to get an adapted car.

Just keep a positive outlook on things is the way I look at it. At least you still have your family around you and you have your mind working all right.

You just have to be thankful for what you have and that you are still alive.

EMMA O’HALLORAN and son GAVIN (6), Cork

Gavin was diagnosed with leukaemia last June. He was in junior infants and had been off school sick. He had a seizure – I was just really worried it would turn out to be something serious, which it did.

He was transferred to Crumlin to start chemotherapy. I explained the disease to him and that he needed to take these drugs to make him better.

About two weeks after we came home, he had a particular chemo drug and six days later he had a stroke. It happened at home.

They did a CT scan at CUH and discovered that he was starting to develop clots on the brain. The clot is like a burn in his head – it won’t repair itself, so he had quite a significant amount of brain damage.

The leukaemia wasn’t even being talked about then, the aim was to get him over the stroke.

He was transferred to Crumlin. He couldn’t move, he could just blink his eyes and was being fed by a tube. They said they didn’t know if he would get any better.

He was there until November and the therapists got him walking again.

Gavin’s memory was completely gone. Some days he’d call for mum though I was sitting right beside him. It was just really hard. When he came home, he didn’t recognise it as his home.

At the NRH, they brought him along quite quickly. He had been in isolation in Crumlin because he caught C.diff so he became really unsociable. At the NRH, they made him aware of the requirement to communicate again.

Physically, he’s really, really good now and the NRH really brought him on socially. He’s a happy child again.

He’s home since June and is starting at a school for children with “mild” learning disabilities on Thursday.

He rates as “moderate”, but there’s a waiting list of two years for the school he needs to go to because they don’t have the SNAs [special needs assistants]. It’s a constant fight for Gavin.

It makes me pretty mad, after everything he has been through.

The Road to Rehabbegins tonight on RTÉ One at 10.15pm