The father of a 22-year-old woman who was hit by a car last October while she was out for a run in Sicily has paid tribute to his “fighter” of a daughter who was on two occasions expected not to survive her severe injuries.
Law graduate Hannah Leonard from Bray, Co Wicklow, moved to Sicily last May to be with her boyfriend, Cathal, and to take up a summer job at a resort.
On October 6th she was completing a training run for the Dublin Marathon when she was struck by a car. She was sent 15ft across the road, landing on her head.
Hannah required emergency “one shot” surgery which involved removing part of her skull – an operation which she may not have survived. She was in an induced coma for a week and has since undergone a number of further surgeries.
Her father Kevin says that he will never forget the day he got the call from his daughter’s boyfriend about the life changing crash.
“I heard this shriek from downstairs and I came down and my wife was just screaming ‘Hannah has been in an crash. Hannah has been in an crash’,” Kevin recalls.
“I booked flights for the next morning and then lay in bed trying to get a little bit of sleep.
“I didn’t really find out the extent of the injuries until I went into the hospital and they were wheeling her past to go to the operating theatre in her bed. I got to see her for the first time, all bandages and bruised with two black eyes.
“One of the ICU doctors brought me into the office to tell me exactly the extent of her injuries. He kept saying ‘it is bad. It is very, very bad.’
“The doctor said ‘you need to get your wife here now’. My wife Vanessa and our children Dylan and Lily got there the following day.”
An 18-year-old man was arrested and charged in relation to the incident, Kevin says. The man’s car has been impounded and police in Sicily have taken his licence.
Kevin says that they were twice informed that Hannah was unlikely to make it.
“Once was just before Vanessa arrived. And I had to go and deliver that news to Vanessa at the airport,” he says.
“Another time after an MRI we were told she wasn’t going to make it. Her surgeon has said if she wasn’t so fit and mentally strong and determined she wouldn’t be where she is. She is fighting.
“Even when they were doing the first life-saving operation, the neurosurgeon referred to [it] as a ‘one shot surgery’ in that if it didn’t work, she was gone. He said every time her blood pressure dropped they didn’t need to intervene, Hannah brought her own blood pressure back up again.”
Hannah returned to Ireland on Wednesday in an air ambulance which brought her to Beaumont Hospital. The plan is for her to go for intensive rehabilitation at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire.
Kevin is hugely appreciative of the kindness shown by the hospital staff in Sicily.
“We were restricted in that it was only meant to be two people that got to visit her [in the ICU] each evening for the hour but they waived that rule,” he says.
“There was a huge amount of empathy from them. A couple of weeks before Christmas all the doctors and nurses started congregating and they presented us with a pistachio cake. They took us in to their hearts.”
Kevin says he and his wife Vanessa were amazed when one of the ICU doctors invited them to Christmas dinner. “To have the distraction of going to their house for Christmas dinner was amazing. The family were so lovely. It restored your faith in human kindness.”
Kevin says that Hannah is an “extraordinary human being”.
“Whatever she puts her mind to she does. She puts her vision boards up on her bedroom wall as to what she is going to achieve. When I am talking to her in the evening in the hospital I say ‘Hannah you have to have your own mental vision board now for how you are going to get through this’.
“She was a sailing instructor. She came sixth in her year in DCU in Law. She volunteered with Spun Out a Youth Mental Health charity on the crisis text line for a number of years where she would be sitting up at 2am answering texts from teens in trouble.”
Getting Hannah home has been the focus for the family over the last three months. Kevin says when he first went to Dublin Airport to fly to Sicily he paid for parking for a week not expecting to be overseas for so long.
“But then when we realised how severe her injuries were the aim was to let her neurosurgeon finish what he needed to do. We wanted him to do the cranioplasty to replace the piece of skull because he had been there from the start. He has been fantastic,” Kevin says.
“The whole aim was to get her home. We need her to start rehab as it is the rehabilitation process which will really show the extent of her injuries long-term and where she may get to in her recovery. The aim has been to get her to the National Rehabilitation Hospital.”
Kevin says that at times it has been shocking to see the extent of the injuries sustained by Hannah.
“We got idea of how much of her skull they had to remove as when they were doing the draining of the cerebral spinal fluid to get rid of the infection her skull would dip in. It was quite jarring. They decided to get the prosthetic made but there was a 2.5 per cent chance of it being rejected.
“It had to manufactured in the US. It is a perfect jigsaw piece to fit in to where the piece of skull had to be removed. At one point she had external catheters sticking out of her head as excess cerebral spinal fluid had to be drained.”
Kevin was beside Hannah for the three and a half-hour air ambulance home.
“Her stretcher was on one side. My seat was on the other. So I sat beside her for the whole flight. Hannah and I would have done a lot of things together over the years. This was the longest period of time I have had with her in months,” he says.
The family are hugely grateful for the fundraising which has been carried out for Hannah’s care and recovery.
“We get a lot of messages from parents saying ‘you have made me rethink my approach to my own kids. I am hugging my kids tight here every evening’,” Kevin says.
“The response – we couldn’t have expected it – every penny will go towards Hannah and what we need to do for her in the future.”
Donations can be made to the Go Fund Me here.
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