MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE:Macdara Ó Graham, a 23-year-old Armagh climber, has recovered after breaking his back in a fall. He spoke to LORNA SIGGINS
I STARTED climbing when I was about 16 or 17 years old. I’d been watching mountaineer and writer Dermot Somers on TG4 and he was up in the hills somewhere. I told my mother – singer Padraigín Ní Úallacháin – that he looked like a very interesting character, and she mentioned that she knew him through music, and would contact him to see if I he could introduce me to climbing.
He did, and I really took to it. I continued climbing when I had finished school and was studying (anthropology and Irish) in Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB). The university has a very active mountaineering club, so I climbed all around Ireland, in Britain and abroad. It was my life.
I had graduated in the summer of 2008 and flew directly to the Alps where the Mountaineering Council of Ireland (MCI) was holding its annual meet on the Swiss-Italian border. A group of us left to try some sport climbing – as in technical climbing on limestone rock – down near the coast on the Italian Riviera.
We planned to spend a week there, so we set up camp at Finale Ligure, and it was the next morning that it happened.
It was the first climb of the day, and I was leading the route. The ascent was a little over 30m high. There was a miscommunication with my climbing partner, as I thought I was completing one route and then abseiling down, but he thought that we were doing a multi-pitch climb – in other words, that I would secure myself after the first pitch and he would then follow me up, and we would continue.
So when I was at the top and I gave him the signal to lower me down, I leaned back, expecting the rope to be taut. It wasn’t, as he was preparing to follow me. Next bit took seconds, but it seemed longer – as I started to fall, I tried to take control of it.
I glanced off rock twice and pulled at a branch to twist myself around, so that I would land feet first. I felt I had the choice to live or die, and my only chance of survival was in how I landed.
I suppose I had a bit of background in this as I spent a lot of time with horses when I was younger and had many many falls – as you do. You learn how to relax, to go with the fall, and to land. I’d had a couple of small falls during climbing but nothing like this.
I think also in climbing that you learn how to overcome fear through the difficult situations you find yourself in, and that probably helps. So I didn’t tense up and I was totally conscious when I landed on my feet – in fact, I stood up. But then I knew I was in serious difficulty and had to be helped onto the ground by the climbers who were with me.
I knew also that I had broken my back and that I had internal bleeding. Very fortunately, some of the climbers with and around us were very experienced – there was a fireman who was a trained paramedic, and several with language skills.
So these people kept me stable until the rescue services came – firstly the mountain rescue after about 30 or 40 minutes, who put my neck in a brace and hooked me up to a morphine drip on a stretcher.
I was able to talk and to give my mother’s phone number. I knew I could move my toes, so if I could cope with the pain from the waist down I’d be okay. And I’d broken my wrist.
I was flown to the local hospital, Santa Corona in Pietra Ligure. I had broken 14 bones, including eight vertebrae, my pelvis, two ribs, my left wrist, and had internal bleeding due to spleen and artery damage. The first surgery involved putting a temporary cast on my wrist, and then there was surgery to stabilise the internal bleeding. Two arteries were ruptured, but thankfully not the actual spleen or I would not have survived at all.
That round of surgery was keyhole, through the femur artery, so I was awake for it. I had to be as they needed to track the bleeding. It took about three hours and it was painful. Then there was another four hours of keyhole surgery the next day, again through the femur artery. I think that must have been the worst part of the whole experience.
“I was in intensive care for a week and the care was fantastic. Somehow I was able to communicate with the medical staff, and one nurse was a climber. He had heard about the accident and was very supportive.
My mother had arrived out at that stage, and there was enormous pressure from the insurance company to fly me home when my spleen was stable, but I knew I was in no condition to move. She was having to deal with all that, but the Irish Ambassador to Italy, Seán Ó hUigínn, was very helpful.
I spent two weeks then in the recovery ward, and was then flown back home. The Royal Victoria Hospital’s orthopaedic surgeon Mr Alistair Hamilton recommended surgery, using titanium rods to stabilise the most severe fracture in my spine. I was the one who had to make the choice, but it proved to be the right decision. This time I wasn’t awake!
For a day after the surgery, I did not move a muscle. However, they want you to walk as soon as you can, so I had to start moving. Even sitting up made me nauseous and dizzy. I started with a zimmer frame and then had to learn to walk again. I set myself a target, and as a result I was discharged from hospital three or four days earlier than expected.
I had a body brace for two months, and spent a lot of time at home reading and sitting in the garden. I then took on a programme of healing, which I felt was essential if I was to recover. I had physiotherapy, but at one point a physio told me I wouldn’t be able to touch my toes again – and I decided that I would.
So, I began swimming, strengthening my core muscles, took up yoga which I had done before, and I was cycling by October – though I did feel quite weak and vulnerable on the bike. I had counselling for post-traumatic stress, and also had acupuncture with a Chinese doctor, Dr Chen, who has a clinic on the Ormeau Road in Belfast. It was terrific in unblocking the fears – because there is a great fear and a sense of loss after something like this. I had lost a part of myself.
I’ve done a marathon run over the Mournes, and recently took part in a world record attempt for continual relay open water swimming – on Camlough Lake. I’ve just started post-graduate studies in marketing at the University of Ulster, and I’ve even been climbing again – twice – at a crag near our house in Armagh.
I didn’t feel any sense of fear out on the crag, and am very glad I did it, but the passion for climbing is gone. I’ve a new motivation now. I’m very keen to be involved in community events, in helping people and in taking part in charity events.
Climbing is terrific, it has a great sense of adventure, but there’s an escapist dimension to it as well. I feel I don’t need to go back to that. I suppose I feel a much greater sense of contentment about simple things.
I am very lucky to have had the support of the mountaineering community through all this. Dermot Somers drove down to visit me in hospital in Italy, and has been a tremendous support, as had Dawson Stelfox (the first Irishman to climb Everest). Ambassador Ó hUiginn kept in touch to see how I was getting on.
I think if I was to advise anyone in the same situation, it would be to stay positive. That sounds very simple, but it is paramount. Healing is a slow process, it takes time. It has taken me a full 14 months to where I am now and it is ongoing.
And it is also very important that the people close to you stay with you, even when you are angry. I never knew that so many people had such love for me. I feel much more patient now, I’ve no guilt or sadness, and feel privileged to have learned one of life’s greatest lessons.
- If you have had a health experience, good or bad, that you would like to share, contact health supplement@irishtimes.com
