news-engine

ONE step at a time. On Sundays Lisa McKeever walked the dog. But she was born to run and she ran six days a week, three times with her husband Paul and three more with like-minded friends. She clocked up 50 miles a week on the roads. Running was her safe place so it was the cruellest irony that on the morning of November 27 last year Lisa’s world, and with it her family’s, was sent crashing into chaos when she was knocked down by a car that left the Monaghan Road in Armagh. Despite running on the inside of the footpath and being lit up like a Christmas tree in high-viz gear, Lisa suffered life-threatening injuries but, happily, this is the story of the mother of three’s battle back from the very brink. THE morning of November 27 was like many another in the McKeever house. Lisa and Paul had been out running the night before and, typically, Lisa was organised with military-precision when she woke for another gallop bright and early the following morning. In her 27th year as a teacher and Head of RE at Abbey CBS in Newry, Lisa was up at 5.30am and with her work clothes and books in the car she left her home at 5.45 to meet a friend and begin their run. Afterwards she planned to go to Armagh Swimming Pool for a sauna and a shower and then go on to work in Newry. Unfortunately, she never made it. At 6.45am, Lisa and her friend reached the Monaghan Road just outside Armagh City. A car came from behind them and Lisa was mown down when the vehicle left the road. Her husband’s phone rang at 7.20am. “They told me Lisa had been involved in a wee accident and had hurt her leg,” Paul recalls. “It was all sanitized so I didn’t panic too much. “I arrived at the scene as quickly as I could. I got as far up the road as I could and there were flashing lights everywhere. “By that stage Lisa was already in the ambulance and the driver said: ‘We’re going straight to the Royal’. I knew then it was no leg injury. “It was one of the things that you read about, something that happens to somebody else. You never expect it will come to your door.” On the way to hospital, Lisa was transferred to the air ambulance and Paul, shocked and in no state to drive, was taken to the Royal by police. With the world plunging into chaos, grief and worry, he waited and prayed while his wife went through six hours in theatre undergoing a life-saving operation. She’d suffered catastrophic injuries. Lisa came through the operation but spent four weeks in intensive care and doctors repeatedly warned the family that her life was hanging by a thread. “Me and the three kids - Luke (22), Holly (20) and Ryan (17) - sat with three different doctors on three separate occasions and were told to prepare for the worst,” Paul recalls. “The phrase they used was: ‘We’re going to give Lisa a wee bit more time.’ I remember they told me on a Thursday: ‘We’ll give Lisa the weekend and have a look at it again on Tuesday.’” So stark and chilling... Perhaps there is no easy way to deliver such devastating news? “All we could do was listen to the advice the experts were giving us. It was based solely on what they’d seen in theatre,” says Paul. “When you hear all that, much as you try to hold on to your faith and Lisa’s determination… You have to give some thought that it may not go the way we want it to go. “We have good faith and people were praying very hard and we clung to that and we were told that her very high levels of fitness would stand to her but in ICU (the intensive care unit) we met a lot of other families who were dealing with similar things and in some cases they got the worst possible news that their loved ones didn’t make it.” Lisa was one of the lucky ones and she has a fighting heart. She was heavily sedated to allow her brain time to rest and recover and six days into intensive care the sedation was removed and she remained in a coma for two weeks. Her family waited hopefully for signs that, as Paul puts it, “Lisa was still there”. “She remained fast asleep and we didn’t know whether she was going to wake up,” he says. A couple of weeks in, Lisa started to move her left leg, then her left arm. The doctors cautioned them that they might be just reflex movements. But the movement spread. Her right foot moved, her fingers began to move and one of her eyes opened slightly. Silent progress continued until the day Paul bent to kiss Lisa’s cheek and whisper in her ear that he loved her. “I love you too,” she answered. Yes, Lisa was still there. After four weeks in ICU she was able to move to a neuro ward in Musgrave Hospital, the regional brain injury unit, where she had physical, occupational and speech therapy every day. When she reached the stage where she was able to get on her feet with assistance and get in and out of the car she was allowed to go home for weekends. “It was amazing to have her home,” says Paul. “Things started to come back to her, she remembered the dog… Some of her memory was a bit hazy but, as time goes by, it is recovering. Getting her home was a massive thing because we never thought we’d see the day. But it was very hard on all of us when the time came that she had to go back to hospital.” After five months in hospital, Lisa went home for good and that’s when the real work started in terms of the rehab and getting used to a new life, a ‘new normal’. “It has been difficult,” says Paul. “Adjusting and trying to come to terms with some of the things you used to be able to do that you aren’t any more. “But Lisa is made of tough stuff, she has it in her DNA and she always had that personality. She’s always been a hard grafter, a very determined person and thankfully she has been able to hold on to those traits because the experts had warned us than when someone suffers a brain injury their personality can completely change to the extent that they’re a different person. “Lisa was always very placid and laughy and smiley and we were told she could be very angry all the time. Thankfully her personality has been retained.” LIKE his father Mickey before him, Paul had a long career playing for St Colmcille’s in Grange. He is very grateful to the “sporting network” that reached out to help him and his shellshocked family when news came through of Lisa’s plight. “You hear about the GAA and what they do in times of crisis and we’ve found that,” he says. “The Grange, where I played and my da played – my da is a Hall of Famer - have been very good to me. “There’s a lot of good people in the club. One of the first people who arrived at my gate was Noel Mallon, a club legend, and he gave me an envelope with a note inside that said: ‘That’ll throw a drop of diesel in the car’. I went out to meet him, I wasn’t even fit to speak to the man but he said: ‘Say no more, we’re all thinking about you’.” Armagh Harps, where his sons Luke (an Armagh star at minor and U20 level) and Ryan play their football, reached out quickly as well as so did Armagh Rugby Club and Armagh Athletic Club where Lisa is a member. “It has been a great help,” said Paul. “That sporting network gets in behind you and our families and friends like Aidan McGeown and my brother Martin were at the hospital every single day, bringing food and propping me up. It got to the stage where I had to tell them they needed to take a break. “Gina Savage, Lisa’s principal at the Abbey, has been really good and my boss, namesake Paul McKeever at McKeever’s Chemist, has been very good. “But it was still a lonely place to be. People ask: ‘How did you feel back then?’ “Much as you’re surrounded by really good friends and family, it’s a desperately lonely time because you’re dealing with losing the first and last person you share every day with. “I wasn’t able to chat to Lisa, I didn’t know if she was going to make it… So it was lonely but we’re hoping for the best and Lisa will make a full recovery, that’s what we’re aiming for.” A brain issue is not like an ACL or a broken leg and because of the complex nature of the injury doctors are unable to put a timeline on Lisa’s recovery. They can’t say how long the process will take or the extent of it but nine months since the accident Lisa is making steady progress and there are many encouraging signs. “We’ve been told that recovery can go on for up to 24 months, maybe even longer because the brain is re-wiring,” says Paul. “Nobody is able to say: ‘At this point you’ll be able to do this or that’. So we just don’t know. We’re hopeful that the recovery will continue but nobody is able to definitively say at this point. “We’re positive and Lisa is working incredibly hard. There’s never an off-day as far as rehab goes, we do something every single day and we try to stay positive because there’s a lot of stuff we can’t do anything about. “We can’t do anything about what happened. What happened has happened and we still do struggle with it, we talk about it every single day. “Lisa has good days when the sky’s the limit and then there are other days when she’s low and seeing very little in the way of results and she says: ‘This shouldn’t have happened to me… I can’t keep doing this every day...’ “But she’s amazing. Her friend Annette from the Abbey said when it happened: ‘Lisa McKeever is a tough cookie’. People know that about her and they know that if anybody can beat this it’s Lisa. “She is angry, that’s part of the process, of course she’s going to be angry. It’s unfair that she is in this position when there are lots of bad people in the world who seem to coast through life unscathed but we have good faith as a family and that has stood to us on days I didn’t think we would get through. “It has happened and there’s not a thing we can do about it, the only thing we can do is work at it, keep on working hard at the rehab and even on the difficult dark days we try and keep it as positive as we can.” Goals have been set. Four days after the incident on the Monaghan Road Lisa turned 50. She and Paul planned to go to Tenerife with Paul’s brother Martin, who turned 50 in January, and his wife to celebrate the milestone. They missed that and they missed Christmas last year but they’ve set a goal that they’ll enjoy this Christmas and hopefully next summer they’ll go on their family holiday again. For the first time in 28 years, Lisa wasn’t in the Abbey CBS this week to congratulate or commiserate with her GCSE students. She misses teaching and she’s determined to get back to work in at some stage. Gradually she’s regaining the fitness and confidence to do the things that were once second nature and simple. She is working constantly at rehab with an NHS physio and a private physio and herself and Paul do their own exercise routine too. She’s able to go out for walks again, to go to Mass, to meet friends for a coffee. Some day, she hopes, she’ll be running again. She misses it desperately. One step at a time. GRANGE GAC in county Armagh will host an event in aid of Lisa McKeever’s recovery and the Air Ambulance on Saturday, September 5. The event, which has been promoted by sporting figures from Armagh managers Joe Kernan and Kieran McGeeney to Ireland rugby legend Rory Best, will run from 10am to 2pm and includes a walk and talk, music and a prize draw. Anyone who would like to go along to show their support to a family will be made very welcome. “Lisa has a long road ahead of her and people are all keen to help,” said Colm McGeary, a member of the Friends of Lisa organising committee. “The reason I’m involved is because, if it was the other way around, they would do the same for me. We’re just privileged to be able to get together and show them that everybody cares and is concerned and we’re all glad to see Lisa on the road to recovery. “We want to give them some financial backing so they can do whatever needs to be done to keep going.” To contribute to the Friends of Lisa appeal, go to: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/friendsoflisawalkandtalk