‘I defied docs & brain injury to achieve dreams’
A LOVING father who suffered a brain injury when he was a teenager says that when he was told by medics he would never “be normal”, he vowed to do more than his ‘normal’ self could ever achieve.
Philip Quinlan’s dreams and his whole world were shattered when, at just 15 years of age, a near-fatal blow during a soccer game collision led to a brain injury and a lifetime prognosis of being told he wasn’t ‘normal’.
A life-saving operation to remove a blood clot from his brain left the then Meath teen paralysed down his right side but thankfully he has regained 80 per cent power to his right arm as well as full power of speech.
But not only did he ‘wobble’ around the world and work on the Olympics site in Sydney, he did manage to realise his ultimate dreams when he fell in love and became a father of two.
Hospital
The Navan author of the bestselling autobiography And A Bang On The Ear is now urging people to never give up on their dreams and never accept a diagnosis of not normal.
“I remember going into a hospital appointment in 1992, having just turned 18 years old and expecting to be told that if I put my all into it, I’d eventually be able to run the Dublin marathon and run with the bulls in Pamplona,” said the 50-year-old.
“I came across a letter the other day from the surgeon to my GP back then who said; “from an orthopaedic point of view, there is really nothing that can be done. Trying to explain this to him is impossible as he wants to be normal, which he cannot be.’
“I began travelling. That was my drug, my cocaine, my alcohol, my tramadol. I learned so much about what I was capable of and what I could do.
“I eventually came home and fell in love with an Oldcastle girl. Helena. I became what I never thought I’d ever become. A dad.”