'I am a different person': Living with life-changing injuries as a result of road crashes
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"There are days I would have thought would it have been easier had I not survived,” says John Phelan.
Mr Phelan is one of the 812 people seriously injured on Irish roads in 2022.
Some 15 months on from a life-changing collision, he still ruminates about that day, left wondering if he had finished his cup of tea, would things have turned out differently.
These what-ifs result in a “vicious cycle” of anger, frustration, anxiety and guilt.
“What was intended to be a quick 5km walk around the village ended up being 22 days later, coming home from the hospital,” he says.
Before his injury, he was full of enthusiasm, an avid walker and a motivated planner.
He had planned a six-week walk along the Camino de Santiago, with flights and hotels booked.
“All of that is gone, I’m not enthusiastic about doing anything,” he says.
In February last year, Mr Phelan was out walking when he was hit by a car, and he has no memory of that day due to traumatic amnesia.
He usually went walking with a group of friends, but that day he decided not to as he was going on a holiday with his wife the following day.
“My wife tells me we were sitting having a cup of tea and the next minute I was up to go for a quick walk. She got a knock on the door about an hour later to be told that I had been hit.”
He remained in Tallaght University Hospital for 22 days, where he suffered three bleeds in his brain, one of which was near his pituitary gland, which makes, stores and releases hormones.
He was told by doctors he was “very lucky” to have broken his face, as it allowed his skull to expand as his brain swelled.
Fifteen months on, he is still grappling with an acquired brain injury, which has resulted in changes in his personality and cognitive ability.
“My wife told me one day: ‘I’m not saying this in any bad way, or to upset you, but you’re a different person',” he says.
He says his processing is slower and his train of thought is scrambled, while he is no longer the social person he was before being hit.
He finds large groups and loud noises difficult to deal with now.
Mr Phelan says he would have described himself as “manic” before his injury, walking 70km “on a bad week”.
“That’s all changed, I think in the last month, I’ve done 10km, which would have been a day’s walk before.”
Mr Phelan carries a lot of guilt as the relationships within his family are no longer the same.
The roles have reversed, with his family now minding him, he says, adding: “Things won’t be the same and that is quite difficult at times.” Since his injury, he says he has become much more conscious of dangerous driving.
“The speed of some people on the road is just frightening.”
He is often shocked by the speed at which some motorists drive, while pedestrians walk on country roads without wearing high-vis jackets.
“People aren’t learning, they’re becoming more complacent. In a split second, you can change someone’s life.”
Geraldine Lavelle recalls being airlifted while slipping in and out of consciousness before later lying “frozen” on a table, feeling nothing, with weights applied to her head to elongate her spine back into place.
The day she suffered her injuries is a “heartbreaking” day that does not get any easier to recall, regardless of how much time has passed, she says.
In 2013, a lorry collided with the avid cyclist, leaving her paralysed from the chest down due to a fractured spine.
While the injury and subsequent learning to live a completely different life through rehabilitation was a difficult battle, Ms Lavelle says the toughest challenge has been battling a system that “forgets you” ever since.
Author of a book called , she is currently working on her second.
Ms Lavelle currently lives in a small studio apartment within a residential centre and respite facility in Sligo.
The 36-year-old has lived there for over nine years — initially believing it would be for just three months.
Living there for nine years has been “mentally exhausting” she says,
“In the beginning, I stayed positive, telling myself that it would only be three months and then I would have a home in the community.”
Initially, she used her time at the centre to learn and adapt to her injury but as time has gone on she has encountered “so many challenges and barriers” that she did not expect.
“Learning to live with the spinal cord injury and not being able to get up in the morning or being able to do my normal routine that I would have done for 27 years hasn’t been as mentally exhausting, as living in a system that literally forgets you once you become disabled.”
Since moving into the centre, Ms Lavelle says she has been fighting ever since to get out.
“It’s just up to yourself to try and battle your way back.”
Originally on a waiting list for a house with her local authority, she looked at several properties, all of which were inaccessible and unsafe.
“One of them was a fourth-floor apartment in Sligo town and the only access to it for me was an elevator that had a big sign saying: ‘Do not use in the event of a fire’.”
After getting on the Mayo County Council waiting list, a house was identified in 2017 with necessary adjustments beginning soon after.
However, construction was impacted by pandemic restrictions, meaning the house was not ready until 2023.
During that time, Ms Lavelle battled with the HSE to secure a sufficient homecare package to enable her to live in the community.
After 42 hours of care were suggested by the HSE, she filed petitions, and sought the assistance of politicians and advocates, and the support of her consultant who wrote a series of letters.
One of those letters warned that if Ms Lavelle was to live in the community with just 42 hours of homecare, she would end up back in acute care.
“It’s mentally draining and exhausting, every single day. My friends and my partner can’t understand how I have to spend every day emailing and ringing or organising meetings just to get the care I need to move forward with my life.”
Ms Lavelle describes her 10-year battle as “unjust and unfair” and she says she is left imagining what she could have done with all the time wasted fighting for what she deserves.
“There’s a limit to someone’s mental resilience, like how long can I do this for without breaking,” she says.
Ms Lavelle thought there was at last an end in sight in May when she received approval from the HSE for 56 homecare hours, with everything finally coming together.
However, at the end of last month, she received an email on a Friday evening that advised her the care provider was no longer able to deliver the care as a staff member had resigned.
She is now left in limbo “yet again” with “no end in sight.” “I’ve tried very very hard to get out, but it doesn’t look like that’s a possibility.
"That’s not going to happen to me."
In August 2015, Gemma Willis from Tullow in Carlow was just 21 when she was being driven home by her mother from Naas hospital after having extreme eye pain.
She was a pastry chef in training and just one year out from completing her qualification.
Being unable to work professionally in a kitchen is one of the most difficult aspects of her injuries.
Ms Willis, who is now 29, was asleep in the back seat when they were involved in a head-on collision. While her mother received minor injuries, Ms Willis said her life changed completely.
“Thankfully, neither of us remembers anything of the accident, it’s amazing what your brain shields you from,” she says.
She was put into an induced coma, and after some time, her parents were told she might not make it, with doctors advising them to say goodbye.
One day, her father noticed her eyes twitching, which hospital staff put down to her body “shutting down”, but after spending six weeks in a coma, she awoke.
Her first memory after the accident was Halloween. She knows it was Halloween because she was watching in the spinal unit in the Mater Hospital, where she remained for nine months.
She required 14 operations in just 16 months, many of which were carried out while she was in a coma.
"I’m injured from head to toe, I have an acquired brain injury, I broke my spinal cord and I’m paralysed from the waist down, I have rods in my back and I’m an amputee.”
She suffered a perforated bowel, a burst artery in her leg requiring amputation, as well as severe swelling of her brain.
She could not believe or understand the extent of her injuries, saying the loss of her leg was the hardest part.
“It’s changed my life completely.”
However it has spurred her to raise awareness of trauma, and accessibility issues for people living with disabilities.
Although she does not believe she will see major changes for people living with disabilities in her lifetime, she hopes things will change for the next generation.
She says the lack of accessibility for people living with disabilities is “shocking”.
“I have to plan everything; I can’t just suddenly decide to go to Belfast for the day. I have to give the train 24 hours’ notice as a wheelchair user.”
She says too many, including her, have had to fight for medical cards and although receiving one, she often has to reapply, saying “they make it hard”.
“My injuries are not going to change,” she says, adding the costs of her prescriptions alone were €1,200 every month before she got her medical card.
After her time in hospital, she spent another seven months in the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire where she learned to live as a wheelchair user before returning to her family home.
“In some ways, that was all of the easy stuff because I was in the system and in the safety of it all."
She currently lives at home with her parents and is thankful their farm has a plot of land for her fully accessible “Barbie dream house”, which can be designed for her needs.
It will include an accessible kitchen, where she can continue her love of cooking and baking.