Gary Guifoyle celebrating with the cup. Natasha Barton/INPHO
Interview
'Basically we think you have a brain tumour' - Illness scare to Clare hurling glory
Twenty-nine weeks after Feakle’s Gary Guilfoyle suffered a stroke and collapsed, he is in contention to feature in the Munster club hurling semi-finals.
WITH TWENTY MINUTES left on the clock, everyone could see that the famine was about to end. Underdogs Feakle were drawing a close to 36 years without a Clare championship by beating a proper championship team in Sixmilebridge.
It’s hard to put into context what this meant for the players. No fewer than 12 of them had fathers who had hurled on the last successful team in 1988.
Gary Guilfoyle knew what it meant. A son of former Clare hurler Tommy, his father was just 22 years old when he won the ’88 title. Tommy played for the very last time for Feakle just months shy of his 50th birthday.
Gary made his own championship debut for Feakle in 2008. From that beginning against Cratloe, he had never missed a game through injury or suspension. He played in every single championship game with the deep love of the sport his father had.
Only here he was. On the sideline. In a pair of tracksuit bottoms. An unused sub. Something of a taboo in Gaelic games.
For 30 seconds, his head was spinning and he didn’t know what to feel.
“My dream had come true. We had won the county championship. But I wasn’t a part of it,” he says.
“It was a weird feeling. But then I got a hold of myself and remembered that a few months ago, I had a stroke.”
***
Take it back to 6 April of this year.
That morning, Guilfoyle played a Clare Cup game for the club against Clonlara.
The day was poxy and a storm was brewing up, but he was pleased with his own personal contribution. Over the winter, he vowed to get properly trimmed down and hit the roads for jogging, to fit gym sessions about his teaching job and life in Limerick with his partner, Sinead.
A bit of a ruck developed towards the end and while he wasn’t in it, he felt he might have been as his neck began to get stiff. He was walking off the pitch and Clonlara manager Donal Madden came over and asked, ‘Are you alright?’
In the dressing room, he was rooted to his spot on the benches. Some team mates had already showered and dressed while he sat there. They thought it strange that this veteran was taking a defeat like this so personally.
Eventually he came round and hit the shower. Home then for the dinner, a couple of biscuits with a cup of tea, and two Panadol as a precaution.
Clare were playing Kilkenny in the league final in Thurles and he made the arrangements with his father to travel down some of the way. After all, he hadn’t a chance to see the Banner all year.
He took his spot in the new stand among family, settled in to watch the drama. And then.
“At the very end of the match, Adam Hogan came out with the ball and won a free and I looked left to right, and once I did that, my vision just completely went. I was sitting in the new stand and the far stand, it was twisted. My vision went into a vortex. Everything was distorted and warped, couldn’t see straight.
“I was sitting on the seat, clinging onto it like I was going to fall off it, although I was sitting up straight. My balance left me.”
Despite this, he made his way onto the pitch and congratulated his clubmate, the goalkeeper Eibhear Quilligan. He went to sit down in the stand again and his balance deserted him.
His aunt Maureen noticed some Order of Malta medics and brought them over. Probably a bit of concussion, they half-apologised to the medics.
They thought they might walk across the pitch to the treatment room, Maureen and one of the medics helping him.
“I just felt everything stopped working. I said, ‘Lads, I am going to go here.’ All the strength of my limbs went, balance gone, vomiting uncontrollably and I went to the grass, getting sick everywhere,” he says.
Aoibheann Donnellan, a neighbour from back home and nurse, spotted the situation developing and made her way over.
“There was a blockage in my brain and there wasn’t any oxygen getting to my brain. I wanted to go to sleep and I was drifting, my head dropping and eyes closing,” he recalls.
“And Aoibheann was there beside me saying, ‘Stay with me Gary. Just answer me.’ Only for Aoibheann there, keeping me awake, I would have been a lot worse.”
Tommy went to get Michelle McNamara, the Clare doctor. They stabilised him, got him onto a stretcher, and into the treatment room.
“I was lying on the table, my body was rattling. My hands and feet were ice cold and I was still vomiting, couldn’t speak, Aoibheann staying with me, keeping me responsive, telling me not to fall asleep.”
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A phonecall to the ambulance service proved frustrating. The person on the end of the line kept insisting on speaking with Guilfoyle, who simply could not keep his eyes open let alone speak.
A half hour later, they made another call; again, can we speak to the patient? Some unparliamentary language advised them to get as soon as they could to Semple Stadium.
***
After 11, the only people left in the ground were caring for Guilfoyle. The ambulance took him to St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny.
They ran a series of tests, still believing the cause of his upset to be concussion. At 4am, the results of a CT test came back and nothing was showing up. He sat in a corridor on a drip, no power in his arms or legs, and Tommy growing ever more frustrated because there clearly was something badly wrong. Reluctantly, they made for home at 8am.
He slept all though Sunday and most of Monday. Trips to the toilet were perilous. Tommy booked an appointment with the local GP. After a brief chat, he recommended they go up to the private clinic in Galway. They were booked in by the Wednesday.
After a second CT scan, a nurse asked in her innocence where his overnight bag was. Then Guilfoyle began to get worried.
Some time later, a doctor appeared in the room with news. He had a two-centimetre lesion. A brain tumour, if you wanted to call it that.
Sitting beside him, his mother Jackie bust into tears. But Gary had steeled himself after the nurse’s indiscretion and thought some bad news was coming.
He had to make a call to his partner Sinead. Both teachers, she was in the middle of a parent-teacher meeting. When he told her the news, she dropped the phone and made it to Galway as fast as the car would allow.
Bit by bit, this family unit they stepped their way through it. Was it cancerous or benign? As the hours rolled on, more consultants and doctors came by with the results of a latest scan or some news.
Good news came; it wasn’t cancerous. Bad news came; it would still have to be taken out.
And then, a twist: it wasn’t a lesion at all. He had a stroke.
There had been a dissection of an artery at the top of his neck and the base of his skull. The blood got into a bulge, clotted, and went into his brain, blocking the flow of oxygen.
What they thought was a lesion was a blood clot. Still in his brain.
Next, it was an ambulance to University Hospital Galway where the neurologist was on duty.
“She said, ‘You are remarkable. You had a stroke six days ago and you more or less rehabbed yourself to 95% full functionality, in six days without medication, rehab or knowledge that you had a stroke. She said, ‘Listen, we want you to stay for a few days for observation,” he recalls.
“They put me in the stroke unit from Friday and Tuesday and my God, did I get an eye opener up there? The people gave me perspective. A man beside me had been in ICU for nine weeks on life support and was in the stroke unit for nine weeks after that.
“He couldn’t speak, he had no control over his swallow, he was completely dependent on other people.
“They told me it could take six months for the artery to heal. And he knew that I played sport as I told him how it happened. He said sport was out for the year.”
Before he left hospital, he had to do a physio test to gauge balance and coordination. He reckons he was at 80% for balance but he still jogged up and down the corridor.
The advice was to do nothing for the first six weeks. He thought it might be ok and he couldn’t drive anyway, so the plan was to have a lie-in, get up and potter round the house before hitting the sofa to chill out.
But we’ve mentioned the 17 straight seasons of service to Feakle. How he loves the game and loves Feakle. Lying on his length was going to have a predictable outcome.
“I did nothing. Couldn’t drive, train, couldn’t go to the gym. I got focused on the negative and buried myself into a hole of negativity.
“Sinead came up one day and I just broke down. She brought me to Limerick! Only for her, I was lost. I was so focused on negativity and she gave me a kick up the hole to realise I was alive, no deficiencies, and I would be perfectly healthy again.
“From then on, I changed my attitude.”
By the first week of May, he felt up for going for a short walk, and did 15 minutes. The next day, he added another five onto that, and stepped it up gradually.
Come the end of May, it was a 15-minute jog. A fortnight later, he was getting through 5k runs.
“At that time I was 99% certain I wouldn’t play this year. But that 1%…,” he lets it hang.
Feakle manager Ger Conway and Steven Conway Natasha Barton / INPHO
Natasha Barton / INPHO / INPHO
“So I was heading out to the lads training and instead of running on the road, I would run up and down the pitch. A strong run, and then a break. Do a length and take a break.
“I was due back to see the specialist in Galway at the start of August for a scan. And when I got that, the results went over. I had a feeling… I was always someone who had great healing power. A six-week injury would keep me out for 10 days just. I would never, ever be sick. I am strong that way.
“I went in to meet the doctor, and he said, ‘Yeah, looks good. All clear. Full health.’
“And he said it so nonchalant! I asked him to repeat it and he explained the thickness of the artery, the flow, everything was right with it. A full recovery.
“That was a nice surprise to get. I asked him about a return to play and he was hesitant, but gave it the go-ahead.
“We put a plan together where I would go back into training, no contact stuff, and see how I go for a couple of weeks and we would be in touch.”
***
The first night he was back pucking a few balls, he was like the fresh calf let out into the meadow. Back at it.
Before the group stage games, he would tog out with the players, and then warm up Quilligan in goal. From being immersed in something for 17 years, he now just had an ankle in it. That was all he needed.
It was the quarter-final win over Crusheen that made him think long and hard. Discussions with Sinead followed. It was the best he has ever seen a Feakle team play. Shane McGrath was shooting the lights out and Adam Hogan brought his county form back with him.
He spoke to manager Ger Conway. He told him that if he was needed, he wanted to be considered as a sub they can bring on. He went back into full-contact training.
As it stands, he never got playing.
Yet it had been 36 years since Feakle had last won the Canon Hamilton Cup. And 29 weeks since he was struck by a stroke.
“Almost at my death bed,” he says.
“And I was back to witness this. Not only that, but tog out on county final day with a Feakle jersey on your back and have a chance to play.
“It’s all about the village. There’s maybe 500 people in Feakle and we never thought we would see this day again.”
Last Sunday, he put down the full training session. It’s Cork’s Sarsfields in the salubrious SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh for a Munster championship game with a place in the final at stake.
“I am lucky,” he says.
“I am lucky that I made a decision to go to the league final.
“If I didn’t go to the match I would have been home alone in Limerick and Sinead was away. The stroke would still have happened and I would have been unconscious for hours.”
Guilfoyle has told the management that he is fit and ready to go. If they use him, fine. If they don’t, then that’s fine too.
He’s already won more than anyone could this year.
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'Basically we think you have a brain tumour' - Illness scare to Clare hurling glory
WITH TWENTY MINUTES left on the clock, everyone could see that the famine was about to end. Underdogs Feakle were drawing a close to 36 years without a Clare championship by beating a proper championship team in Sixmilebridge.
It’s hard to put into context what this meant for the players. No fewer than 12 of them had fathers who had hurled on the last successful team in 1988.
Gary Guilfoyle knew what it meant. A son of former Clare hurler Tommy, his father was just 22 years old when he won the ’88 title. Tommy played for the very last time for Feakle just months shy of his 50th birthday.
Gary made his own championship debut for Feakle in 2008. From that beginning against Cratloe, he had never missed a game through injury or suspension. He played in every single championship game with the deep love of the sport his father had.
Only here he was. On the sideline. In a pair of tracksuit bottoms. An unused sub. Something of a taboo in Gaelic games.
For 30 seconds, his head was spinning and he didn’t know what to feel.
“My dream had come true. We had won the county championship. But I wasn’t a part of it,” he says.
“It was a weird feeling. But then I got a hold of myself and remembered that a few months ago, I had a stroke.”
***
Take it back to 6 April of this year.
That morning, Guilfoyle played a Clare Cup game for the club against Clonlara.
The day was poxy and a storm was brewing up, but he was pleased with his own personal contribution. Over the winter, he vowed to get properly trimmed down and hit the roads for jogging, to fit gym sessions about his teaching job and life in Limerick with his partner, Sinead.
A bit of a ruck developed towards the end and while he wasn’t in it, he felt he might have been as his neck began to get stiff. He was walking off the pitch and Clonlara manager Donal Madden came over and asked, ‘Are you alright?’
In the dressing room, he was rooted to his spot on the benches. Some team mates had already showered and dressed while he sat there. They thought it strange that this veteran was taking a defeat like this so personally.
Eventually he came round and hit the shower. Home then for the dinner, a couple of biscuits with a cup of tea, and two Panadol as a precaution.
Clare were playing Kilkenny in the league final in Thurles and he made the arrangements with his father to travel down some of the way. After all, he hadn’t a chance to see the Banner all year.
He took his spot in the new stand among family, settled in to watch the drama. And then.
“I was sitting on the seat, clinging onto it like I was going to fall off it, although I was sitting up straight. My balance left me.”
Despite this, he made his way onto the pitch and congratulated his clubmate, the goalkeeper Eibhear Quilligan. He went to sit down in the stand again and his balance deserted him.
His aunt Maureen noticed some Order of Malta medics and brought them over. Probably a bit of concussion, they half-apologised to the medics.
They thought they might walk across the pitch to the treatment room, Maureen and one of the medics helping him.
“I just felt everything stopped working. I said, ‘Lads, I am going to go here.’ All the strength of my limbs went, balance gone, vomiting uncontrollably and I went to the grass, getting sick everywhere,” he says.
Aoibheann Donnellan, a neighbour from back home and nurse, spotted the situation developing and made her way over.
“There was a blockage in my brain and there wasn’t any oxygen getting to my brain. I wanted to go to sleep and I was drifting, my head dropping and eyes closing,” he recalls.
“And Aoibheann was there beside me saying, ‘Stay with me Gary. Just answer me.’ Only for Aoibheann there, keeping me awake, I would have been a lot worse.”
Tommy went to get Michelle McNamara, the Clare doctor. They stabilised him, got him onto a stretcher, and into the treatment room.
“I was lying on the table, my body was rattling. My hands and feet were ice cold and I was still vomiting, couldn’t speak, Aoibheann staying with me, keeping me responsive, telling me not to fall asleep.”
A phonecall to the ambulance service proved frustrating. The person on the end of the line kept insisting on speaking with Guilfoyle, who simply could not keep his eyes open let alone speak.
A half hour later, they made another call; again, can we speak to the patient? Some unparliamentary language advised them to get as soon as they could to Semple Stadium.
***
After 11, the only people left in the ground were caring for Guilfoyle. The ambulance took him to St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny.
They ran a series of tests, still believing the cause of his upset to be concussion. At 4am, the results of a CT test came back and nothing was showing up. He sat in a corridor on a drip, no power in his arms or legs, and Tommy growing ever more frustrated because there clearly was something badly wrong. Reluctantly, they made for home at 8am.
He slept all though Sunday and most of Monday. Trips to the toilet were perilous. Tommy booked an appointment with the local GP. After a brief chat, he recommended they go up to the private clinic in Galway. They were booked in by the Wednesday.
After a second CT scan, a nurse asked in her innocence where his overnight bag was. Then Guilfoyle began to get worried.
Some time later, a doctor appeared in the room with news. He had a two-centimetre lesion. A brain tumour, if you wanted to call it that.
Sitting beside him, his mother Jackie bust into tears. But Gary had steeled himself after the nurse’s indiscretion and thought some bad news was coming.
He had to make a call to his partner Sinead. Both teachers, she was in the middle of a parent-teacher meeting. When he told her the news, she dropped the phone and made it to Galway as fast as the car would allow.
Bit by bit, this family unit they stepped their way through it. Was it cancerous or benign? As the hours rolled on, more consultants and doctors came by with the results of a latest scan or some news.
Good news came; it wasn’t cancerous. Bad news came; it would still have to be taken out.
And then, a twist: it wasn’t a lesion at all. He had a stroke.
There had been a dissection of an artery at the top of his neck and the base of his skull. The blood got into a bulge, clotted, and went into his brain, blocking the flow of oxygen.
What they thought was a lesion was a blood clot. Still in his brain.
Next, it was an ambulance to University Hospital Galway where the neurologist was on duty.
“She said, ‘You are remarkable. You had a stroke six days ago and you more or less rehabbed yourself to 95% full functionality, in six days without medication, rehab or knowledge that you had a stroke. She said, ‘Listen, we want you to stay for a few days for observation,” he recalls.
“They put me in the stroke unit from Friday and Tuesday and my God, did I get an eye opener up there? The people gave me perspective. A man beside me had been in ICU for nine weeks on life support and was in the stroke unit for nine weeks after that.
“He couldn’t speak, he had no control over his swallow, he was completely dependent on other people.
“They told me it could take six months for the artery to heal. And he knew that I played sport as I told him how it happened. He said sport was out for the year.”
***
He’d show them.
Before he left hospital, he had to do a physio test to gauge balance and coordination. He reckons he was at 80% for balance but he still jogged up and down the corridor.
The advice was to do nothing for the first six weeks. He thought it might be ok and he couldn’t drive anyway, so the plan was to have a lie-in, get up and potter round the house before hitting the sofa to chill out.
But we’ve mentioned the 17 straight seasons of service to Feakle. How he loves the game and loves Feakle. Lying on his length was going to have a predictable outcome.
“I did nothing. Couldn’t drive, train, couldn’t go to the gym. I got focused on the negative and buried myself into a hole of negativity.
“Sinead came up one day and I just broke down. She brought me to Limerick! Only for her, I was lost. I was so focused on negativity and she gave me a kick up the hole to realise I was alive, no deficiencies, and I would be perfectly healthy again.
“From then on, I changed my attitude.”
By the first week of May, he felt up for going for a short walk, and did 15 minutes. The next day, he added another five onto that, and stepped it up gradually.
Come the end of May, it was a 15-minute jog. A fortnight later, he was getting through 5k runs.
“At that time I was 99% certain I wouldn’t play this year. But that 1%…,” he lets it hang.
“So I was heading out to the lads training and instead of running on the road, I would run up and down the pitch. A strong run, and then a break. Do a length and take a break.
“I was due back to see the specialist in Galway at the start of August for a scan. And when I got that, the results went over. I had a feeling… I was always someone who had great healing power. A six-week injury would keep me out for 10 days just. I would never, ever be sick. I am strong that way.
“I went in to meet the doctor, and he said, ‘Yeah, looks good. All clear. Full health.’
“And he said it so nonchalant! I asked him to repeat it and he explained the thickness of the artery, the flow, everything was right with it. A full recovery.
“That was a nice surprise to get. I asked him about a return to play and he was hesitant, but gave it the go-ahead.
“We put a plan together where I would go back into training, no contact stuff, and see how I go for a couple of weeks and we would be in touch.”
***
The first night he was back pucking a few balls, he was like the fresh calf let out into the meadow. Back at it.
Before the group stage games, he would tog out with the players, and then warm up Quilligan in goal. From being immersed in something for 17 years, he now just had an ankle in it. That was all he needed.
It was the quarter-final win over Crusheen that made him think long and hard. Discussions with Sinead followed. It was the best he has ever seen a Feakle team play. Shane McGrath was shooting the lights out and Adam Hogan brought his county form back with him.
He spoke to manager Ger Conway. He told him that if he was needed, he wanted to be considered as a sub they can bring on. He went back into full-contact training.
As it stands, he never got playing.
Yet it had been 36 years since Feakle had last won the Canon Hamilton Cup. And 29 weeks since he was struck by a stroke.
“Almost at my death bed,” he says.
“And I was back to witness this. Not only that, but tog out on county final day with a Feakle jersey on your back and have a chance to play.
“It’s all about the village. There’s maybe 500 people in Feakle and we never thought we would see this day again.”
Last Sunday, he put down the full training session. It’s Cork’s Sarsfields in the salubrious SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh for a Munster championship game with a place in the final at stake.
“I am lucky,” he says.
“I am lucky that I made a decision to go to the league final.
“If I didn’t go to the match I would have been home alone in Limerick and Sinead was away. The stroke would still have happened and I would have been unconscious for hours.”
Guilfoyle has told the management that he is fit and ready to go. If they use him, fine. If they don’t, then that’s fine too.
He’s already won more than anyone could this year.
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