Centre offering services for brain-injured opens

LEITRIM MAN Peter Connolly says his life came to a “full stop” when he acquired a brain injury just over four years ago.

The 43-year-old former garda fell ill one afternoon and went home sick from his workplace in Clontarf, Dublin. It was Monday afternoon, he recalled. “I watched a bit of Prime Time that night and went up to my room to bed.”

Sitting in Acquired Brain Injury Ireland’s (ABII) newly located resource centre – which was opened in Dún Laoghaire yesterday – Mr Connolly told of how his flatmate came home from work the following day to find him, in a coma. That was November 2004 and he awoke in February 2005. He had had meningitis and the impact has been devastating.

“My mother was there when I woke and I didn’t recognise her. I couldn’t walk and had to be in a wheelchair. It was like a paralysis throughout.” Acquired Brain Injuries Ireland is the new name of the Peter Bradley Foundation since yesterday, and Mr Connolly has been resident at one of its Dublin city houses since 2005.

“I’m doing computer work, physiotherapy, the gym, swimming – that’s it. Since the injury my life has stopped . . . There’s this border and I can’t get across it,” says Mr Connolly. Asked if he thinks he ever will, he smiles. “Yes. I’m very determined. And the service here is very good.”

Opening the new resource centre yesterday, Minister of State for Equality, Disability and Mental Health John Moloney said he was “absolutely committed to working very closely” with the charity “on a quarterly basis at least” to ensure its agreement with the Health Service Executive was maintained.

He said his own father had acquired a mild brain injury following brain surgery many years ago and became very forgetful about things such as people’s names.

Donnchadh Whelan, a regional manager with ABII, said the original foundation had been set up because a man named Peter Bradley, still a service user with the organisation, had acquired a brain injury at the age of 42 and had been “placed” in a locked dementia care unit.