“I’LL BECOME A bit of stardust, that’s what’s going to happen men. I’ll be winking down at all you guys running around making documentaries about people who have mysterious ailments.”
Musician, broadcaster and journalist Shay Healy has spoken to TV3 about his battle with Parkinson’s disease and how the love of music cures him.
Describing the diagnosis in 2004, Healy remembers having difficulty shaving, writing cheques and pulling CDs from the music library in RTÉ.
“So I went to a specialist in Blackrock and he said ‘yes you have Parkinson’s disease’. He was quite brutal actually. There was no sense in lightening the load, in telling me gently,” he recalled.
“I said ‘what do I do?’ He gave me a prescription and said ‘take one of those every day and come back and see me in a year’.
I thought that’s bewildering. The first thing we said was I’d get a second opinion so I got a second opinion and they said ‘yes it’s definitely Parkinson’s’. Then I said I wanted a third opinion, so I dug out an old friend who had retired and he saw me in his house and said ‘yes I’m afraid you have Parkinson’s’.
Healy, who is most famous for penning Eurovision Song Contest winner What’s Another Year?, told TV3′s Michael Ryan that the studio and music “cures” him, making him feel better, but it can also add to his health problems.
“The general unpredictability of how I go about day to day is an extreme frustration in my life. I haven’t been on a plane for about two years now,” he continued.
“I have horrendous pain in the morning and at some stage in the day I’ll have pains around my hips mostly, my upper arms. It depends on where I am, where I land and what chairs I sit on, things like that, but by and large I’ve been lucky.
I haven’t degenerated as fast as other people but the only thing unsavoury about it is that I know that will change. It is degenerative. It will keep going.
“And they keep finding these miracle cures that they’re working on and they all say at the end of it ‘but it won’t be here for ten years and I’m looking at them saying well the odds have shortened considerably here now. It is two-to-one [that] I last long enough for this magic cure they are coming up with.”
The former RTÉ presenter also revealed he suffers with hallucinations and that his greatest fear is that he will develop dementia.
“I went through a very bad month of extreme hallucinations all day. I get flashes all day. It is a combination…I’m looking over the top of my glasses and things are a tiny bit fuzzier than they might be – lamps and coat hangers and footballs – they take on extraordinary faces and personas.
“I might come down to the kitchen at 3 o’clock in the morning and the couch would have three people sitting on it, and there’ll be two more over at the window chatting. Where these people come from I don’t know but they’re all well dressed, ABC1s you know. They’re not giving me any hassle but it’s kind of stupid, I treat them like a cat – I say ‘scat’ and they’re gone.
I’m not scared. I’m Old Man River. Tired of living and scared of dying. I could do without the daily pain. But I’m not scared.
He also said that he hasn’t allowed the diagnosis or disease get him down.
“I haven’t cried. I’m frustrated by it because I really should be performing more,” he added.
“My one concern is that I might eventually arrive at the doorstep of dementia which wouldn’t be nice. We all have memory loss at this stage of our lives anyway – you can’t remember somebodies name or whatever else. I haven’t had any serious touches with it except for one day when everything went haywire for about six hours and I literally didn’t know who was here.
I couldn’t hold on to any thoughts and it was a very scary experience. I thought if that’s what dementia is like I don’t want it. But it’s not a given that I’ll deteriorate that much.
He added jokingly: “There’s no dementia evident on my dad’s or mam’s side of the family so I have my fingers crossed that I won’t get….what was I talking about?”
The full interview will air on TV3′s Midweek at 10pm tomorrow.
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