PAUL KEOGAN, 25, IS a para athlete who has represented Ireland in Athletics at the Rio 2016 Paralympics and the World Para Athletics Championships. He’s currently in training for the European Championships this August, and is also an Irish Heart Foundation ambassador.
Growing up, Paul Keogan loved team sports. He played Gaelic football non-stop, and soccer too. In the summer of 2009 a knock to the side of his head from a rogue elbow during a club football game changed the course of his sporting endeavours – and his life as a whole.
Minutes after the seemingly minor knock, the teen, then 16, collapsed. “The hit to my temple had caused a brain haemorrhage,” he explains.
Despite the trauma, Paul spent just two weeks in hospital before being discharged, assuming life could return to normal. But at his next scan, doctors found a brain aneurysm, which would take a major operation to treat.
Going into the operation, the doctor warned me that there was something like a 2.5 per cent chance of stroke. But with those odds… I just didn’t consider that it was likely to happen. I assumed strokes were something that happened to old people.
Waking up
Paul doesn’t remember much about the days following his operation. “It’s still all very hazy,” he says. ”I could feel all the tubes. My right eye was swollen shut, but I couldn’t open my left eye either, because I was paralysed down my left side.”
As one of the unlucky 2.5 per cent, Paul had suffered a stroke during his operation, leaving him with a “bleak” outlook for recovery. While he would probably regain enough power in his limbs to walk again, he’d most likely never run, doctors said.
The first big milestone was a simple twitch in my left arm and then my left leg. It’s like in the movies, when they’re pressing your toes asking if you can feel it.
By mid-September, Paul had mastered standing up. “I’d been told no walking, no running no Leaving Cert,” he says. Blitzing through those odds, the teen returned to school in mid-November, completed his exams that summer, and by the end of the school year had moved on from walking to jogging.
The road to Rio
It took two more years before thoughts of a future in para athletics entered his head, an outcome that was all the more unexpected given that his experience was in contact sport, not running or sprinting.
I hadn’t been doing any athletics at all, even before the stroke. It wasn’t on my radar. Then I saw London [the 2012 Paralympics] and the idea just popped into my head. ‘I could do that.’
From there, the decision was easy, says Paul. “I dropped everything and thought, ‘Okay, I’ll go for it.’”
Heartbreak
Last year, Paul made the final of both the 200m and 400m finals at the London 2017 Para Athletics World Championships. It was something of a redemption after a heartbreaking disqualification from the 400m start line at the Rio 2016 Paralympics just one year before.
I get twitches every so often as a result of my condition. I got a twitch at the start line and it was deemed a false start. One false start and you’re out of the Games. A lot of people had the same issue, but that didn’t change things.
Since then, his focus has been on getting faster, stronger – and more in control of his condition. ”I’m more than fit enough to sprint 400m, but from 300m the signs of my condition get more severe and it’s harder to run. It’s a work in progress,” he explains.
Staying on form
The athlete trains six times a week in Morton Stadium in Santry or at the Sport Ireland Institute in Abbotstown, and with the European Para Athletics Championships looming this August, he’s doing everything he can to stay on form – including keeping his heart health in check.
For me, the health of my heart is such an obvious indicator of my overall health. At times I’ll monitor my heart rate daily. It’s not a medical thing, it’s just about optimising my energy and fitness. The healthier my heart is, the more blood it can pump to my muscles.
As well as eating healthily and – of course – maintaining his fitness, Paul is also an advocate of taking some time to wind down after a stressful day. “Call it mindfulness or whatever you want, but I know how valuable it is,” he says.
Life has definitely thrown some curve balls at Paul, but his positive outlook seems impossible to quench.
“I have lulls. I’ll have bouts of spasticity in my muscles, for example, and this week has been a bad week for that. But ninety per cent of the time I’m fine,” he says.
“Sometimes it gets the better of me, but really there’s nothing that I can’t do.”
Want to help fight Ireland’s number one killer? The Irish Heart Foundation urgently needs €250k in the battle against heart disease and stroke. #ShowSomeHeart this February with a €2 temporary tattoo, available in any Insomnia Coffee Co, Daybreak store or on irishheart.ie. The #ShowSomeHeart campaign is supported by RTÉ 2FM.
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