|
Joan and Tom Ryan are Cashel's Persons of the Year for 2010. It's a family affair really as one could include Edel as well.
Eight years ago the lives of the Ryan Family changed utterly in seconds. Joan, who worked as a German and Irish teacher in Rockwell College prior to the accident, was driving her two children Edel (five) and Thomas (two) to visit her parents in Bansha when a dumper truck collided with their car just four miles from their home near Ardmayle.
Joan was left unconscious and fighting for her life for two weeks in Cork University Hospital, Edel was left paralysed from her chest down having spent months at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin and Thomas managed to escape the horror crash with just a broken nose. Meanwhile her husband Tom managed to keep the family farm going while visiting his direct family members in different hospitals in Cork and Dublin through that horrific time.
After months of daily visits to hospitals Tom Ryan managed to get his family back home together again but life would never be the same with Edel and Joan who lost her sight in one eye and was left with only 5% in the other.
1. Getting them back was only the beginning of a journey in search of better medicines and better treatments that would make life for Edel and Joan easier so that they could find a way that would help them begin living not just a new live but a life with hope.
2. That journey of searching took them to specialist and medical centres all over Europe.
The Ryans recognised that our medical facilities here in Ireland are limited and not just that but are restricted also to patients that are termed "In Patients". In their darkest hour the system does not provide all the answers. It's a very lonely space in those circumstances and living each hour each day is a very exceptional challenge
If the story of the accident is one of horror then the Ryan story since has been one of courage, bravery, inspiration and triumph.
After years of taking Edel every month of every year to France for physio they went into the research and procurement of a Lokomat machine to deliver a technology locally that would positively help the medical status of their daughter, Edel, and hundreds of people throughout Munster suffering from a wide range of disabilities, the Ryans took matters into their own hands.
In June 2008 Joan embarked on the mammouth €300,000 fund-raising task to pay for a specialised exercise machine called the Lokomat. It took a lot of effort, including the setting up of Coiscéim Eile (another step), to raise the money. The last step was overcoming the VAT issue of €60,000.
The Lokomat machine is now in situ in Croom and is helping to rehabilitate many people in the Munster area. Recently Coiscéim Eile took a further decision to invest in another piece of technology, Ameo Spring, which will be located in St. Patrick's Hospital, Cashel and will be of immense help to stroke victims.
The vision, experience and effort demonstrated by Joan and Tom Ryan make them fitting recipients of the award, Cashel Persons of the Year.
|
