MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE: LIAM RYAN:A massive tumour was followed by other serious illnesses
EARLIER THIS summer I did a 10km run in Liverpool. Not bad for any 48-year-old man, but there’s a twist in my case.
I did the run with Simon Rogers, the surgeon who operated on me eight years ago, the man who, before the 12-hour operation to remove a massive brain tumour, told me I had a 5 per cent chance of survival – and who recently told me he was exaggerating because he wanted to give me something to hang on to.
It’s hard to get across how good it feels to be back running and enjoying so many of the good things in life. And why I am now planning to raise €1 million for cancer charities.
I was 40 and working as an architect in Ballina on the Tipperary-Clare border with my wife Pam in 2002 when I started to get headaches. We had three small sons, the youngest a year old. I had always been fit. I had run six marathons.
I was not at all worried when I went into Limerick Regional Hospital for what I thought was a sinus wash, a routine 10-minute procedure. Recently I met someone who was in the theatre that day who told me how the mood changed, how three of the staff nearly got sick when the consultant, John Fenton, used a syringe to extract what he described as a “cheese-like substance” from my head. He had pierced a little hole in my cheek and removed an alien.
The next day a scan confirmed a massive tumour. John Fenton told me that mine was the second worst case he had ever seen. The worst had died within a month. I suppose the only really bad day I had was that first day.
I did not know at the time what they meant when they told me it was stage-four cancer – the most advanced. One consultant said that in my case they could call it stage 44. It was the size of a squashed handball, squeezed into what should have been a vacuum running from my cheek around my eye and back to my brain. It was obvious from the start that there would be huge risks attached to surgery.
I had a decision to make, but really I had no decision. I could do nothing and have maybe six months of reasonable health ahead of me. But months were no good to me. I had three small boys who depended on me to teach them to hurl and to bring them to football matches.
I had studied in Liverpool. I met my wife Pam there, and I returned to the Liverpool Head & Neck Cancer Centre for the surgery.
It was to involve the removal of almost all of my cheekbone and possibly my right eye, and the removal of half of both the roof of my mouth and my top set of teeth. Replacement bone was taken from my hip to rebuild the cheek, and lining was removed from my stomach to hopefully reseal the roof of my mouth.
At the time I did not think about anything except surviving. I did not focus on possible disfigurement, loss of speech or sight or mobility.
The great news was that they managed to save my eye, although after a month of blurred vision I lost the sight in it completely.
Remarkably that is the only thing I lost, and I tell my friends that all this means is that I see twice as much out of my good eye. I can only open my mouth half an inch but I can speak and I can eat almost anything.
The first week after surgery was probably the worst period. I was not in severe pain but I was in what I would describe as 24-hour discomfort. I was unable to eat, drink or talk for that week, as I was breathing through a tracheostomy and I was fed by a peg tube directly into my stomach. I really detested the tracheostomy. I needed it to stay alive, because my mouth was out of action, but it felt like a noose around my neck. Every cough was painful.
But I was in awe of what the surgeons had just done. I felt embarrassed by what I do myself as Simon Rogers explained that they had removed all of the tumour they could see and how close they were to things they didn’t want to be near, like brain and spine. These incredible people had spent 12 hours working inside my head, and I felt bad that I had so little awareness of their work until now.
My progress after surgery was initially remarkable, but then disaster struck when I got meningitis. It was a major setback, but I recovered and braced myself for radiotherapy.
As my strength recovered I woke up one morning and noticed a swelling in my right calf. Unbelievably, I was then diagnosed with deep-vein thrombosis.
Now I am the man who survived three life-threatening illnesses in one year – perhaps those who say life begins at 40 know what they are talking about.
I suppose all I can say to other people who are going through something like this is don’t waste time asking ‘why me?’.
When you get up in the morning you don’t know what will happen before you get to bed that evening. If you get it, it does not matter why. People can lose a couple of months if they get depressed, but life starts at point zero.
Running helped me when I found out, not just because it kept me fit but because it gave me head space. In the beginning I honestly did not care about disability or blindness – I just wanted to stay alive. I did acknowledge that risk, but then you have to park that and be positive.
I wear an eye patch now, and I have a small hole in my cheek. I am not self-conscious at all. If kids stare at me in the supermarket their mothers get embarrassed, but I tell them I am a pirate and ask them did they see my ship outside. If I was 18 or 19, or a woman, I might consider getting something done, but I want my scars. I know where they came from.
My life has moved on. I have a new job now that I love, as construction manager at the ecovillage in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary. I suppose it is a pity that it takes a crisis to make you appreciate the simple things in life, such as a burst of sunshine or swallows flying into the trees.
I am so grateful now for what I have, and I believe that if I run a high-profile marathon – maybe New York or London – that I could raise €1 million. Jane Tomlinson raised £1.8 million before her death in 2007.
Poor Jane was terminal, but doctors have told me I got off on the last stop. Doing the run this summer was just the beginning, as far as I am concerned. I feel I have a duty now to raise funds and to raise awareness.
In conversation with Marese McDonagh
