At times, the difference between life and death comes down to a single day, as Declan Cashin discovered when he spoke to three remarkable patients

Anyone whose life has ever been affected by illness will attest that every day you have your health is a special day. This was the starting point behind a poignant campaign running in Dublin’s Mater hospital, where patients or their loved ones sponsor a date on the calendar that has a personal significance to them. For the 138 people currently signed up to the Mater Special Days Appeal, the date they have picked to sponsor could be a day when they received good news about their own health, or it could be in memory of a family member or friend who was treated in the hospital at some point. Sponsoring a day costs €120 for individuals and €400 for companies and organisations (payments can be spread over 12 months).

“The campaign is a simple way of saying thank you,” says Mary Moorhead, CEO of the Mater Foundation (pictured below). “I’ve picked my own day — February 2 — in memory of my dad, Pat, who died 11 years ago. He was a patient here. The cardiologist had his work cut out with him though. My dad was a veterinary surgeon, so he would be treating a horse and get kicked, which would knock out his pacemaker.

“That happened a few times. I’d say the staff dreaded seeing him! The treatment gifted him an extra 15 years and we were so grateful.

“The purpose of the calender is to raise funds for projects across the hospital that the HSE won’t fund; those extras that make a difference to patients.”

Ciara Ebbs has picked May 10 — her birthday — as her Special Day because, just a few years ago, she was so dangerously ill that her parents were told she wouldn’t survive until her next birthday.

Needless to say, every birthday since that dark time has had extra meaning for this chatty, bubbly 25- year-old Dunboyne lady. “I don’t take anything for granted,” she says.

In May 2004, Ciara, then 21, hurt her neck while messing around with friends in her garden. It was intermittently painful, but she thought nothing of it. She didn’t realise that her neck was broken. “I was so blessed that I didn’t fall or hurt myself during that period, because I could have ended up paralysed,” Ciara explains. “Once the doctors realised the extent of my injury, they put me in a brace for three months. But the pain in my neck was getting worse, and that’s when they found a cyst on my vertebrae that was causing the bone to collapse.”

Ciara was diagnosed with an aggressive and extremely rare (literally affecting one in a million) tumour on her spine called Giant Cell, which was pathologically benign yet acted as if it was cancerous. Soon afterwards, she lost the mobility in her arms and, despite several surgeries and treatments in the Mater and elsewhere, the tumour spread to her lungs. “That was February 2007 and it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me,” Ciara recalls. “My consultant, Ashley Poynton, told me that he didn’t think there was anything they could do. I didn’t know at the time that the doctors had told my mam and dad that it was unlikely I’d live to see my next birthday in May.”

This was Ciara’s lowest point: she was losing feeling in her legs and was totally dependent on her ‘ parents and the hospital staff to do everything for her. “Some of those nurses are still my best friends today,” Ciara says. Despite these almost insurmountable problems, Ciara has had a recovery that is, frankly, miraculous. “It took a long time, but I’m in remission,” Ciara says. “In addition to my medical treatment and physio, I started seeing a herbalist and undergoing Amatsu (which realigns the body organs).

“I don’t know why, but that combination of treatment works for me. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to shake your hand. I still have some stiffness in my right arm, but I think that will pass. “It’s great to be able to tell people that you can come out the other side of these illnesses. What happened to Jade Goody really frightened me. I was watching her TV programme thinking, ‘That was the situation I was in, I was living that’. It brought back very bad memories, but also reminded me how blessed I really am.”

My daughter urgently needs a heart transplant

Dublin mum-of-three Avril has chosen to sponsor June 23 — the birthday of her beloved daughter Kiva Humphries (16), who is in the Mater awaiting a heart transplant.

Time is of the essence for Kiva, who has been in an isolated room in the hospital’s Cardio-Thoracic High Dependency Unit since February 2, 2008. The Blackrock girl has been dependent on an LVAD (a kind of mechanical heart) since the end of last April, and as a measure of the brave schoolgirl’s sheer determination to survive, this is the longest that any Irish person has survived on the heart machine (the previous record was 311 days).

“All we can do now is wait for a donor,” Avril explains. “We’re waiting by the phone. Every time the mobile rings and it’s a private number my own heart leaps, thinking, ‘This is going to be the day our luck changes’.”

Kiva’s own luck seemed to desert her in January 2008. She had never been a sickly girl, but out of nowhere she began to complain of shortness of breath and not being able to sleep. Doctors initially treated her for cold and flu, but when she wasn’t getting any better, Avril took her to the A&E at St Vincent’s. After a day and a half of tests, doctors discovered that Kiva was suffering from heart failure.

“It was just a virus that caused it,” Avril says. “It was gone before they even knew she had it. She was transferred to the ICU in the Mater, where she went on several heart-pump machines with the hope that the heart would rest and recover itself.

“In April 2008 she had the operation to hook her up to the LVAD system, but she suffered two strokes. They left her unable to speak and paralysed on her right side. I haven’t heard my daughter’s voice since then.”

Luckily, Kiva doesn’t seem to have suffered any brain damage as she clearly understands everything that’s said to her. Doctors say her vocal cords are perfect, so there is hope her voice will return: her body could simply have shut down due to shock.

It’s been a devastating year for Kiva, Avril, dad Joe, brother Robert (18) and youngest sister Alexandra (12). “We’re kind of on a plateau at the moment,” Avril says. “In an awful way, I suppose we’ve gotten used to the situation. The other kids put on a brave face, but it has affected them an awful lot.”

Kiva herself, however, remains positive. “She’s so strong,” Avril says. “She always was a very calm, relaxed individual and I think that’s stood to her. She was never really a worrier. That gives us the strength to keep looking forward.”

I was Ireland's first lung transplant patient

May 12, 2005 was a defining date in the life of Limerick woman Veronica Doyle — as well as marking an epoch in the annals of Irish medicine, that was the day that Veronica underwent a lifesaving lung transplant.

“It goes without saying that May 12 is my Special Day,” Veronica says, smiling. “Every year I like to thank the wonderful team at the Mater who took care of me, as well as remembering the most important person: my donor. I hope that their families know how much they changed my life.”

Almost 18 years ago, Veronica, now a sprightly 60-year-old, started to display symptoms of what she thought to be asthma. However, blood tests showed that she was suffering from Alpha 1-antitrypsin Deficiency, a hereditary illness that left her with chronic emphysema.

“Over the years, my health continued to get very, very bad,” Veronica recalls. “I went on 24-hour oxygen and I wasn’t able to do anything. I had two carers as I couldn’t do the basic jobs around the house. I couldn’t walk out to my own gate — I couldn’t even dress or wash myself.”

Veronica was eventually put in the care of her team of “three wise men” — Jim Egan, Freddie Wood and Jim McCarthy. “Mr Wood, my surgeon in the Mater, told me I had 18 months to live if I didn’t get a transplant.

“They put me on the list, and I was very lucky because I only had to wait six days. I remember clearly the day I found out. I was here in the kitchen. The coordinator Barbara rang,” Veronica recalls. “She talked away to me casually then said at the end, ‘Oh, by the way Veronica, we have a lung’.

“I really didn’t think it would happen for me. My first reaction was, ‘I can’t go, I haven’t had a shower or anything’. I had no time to think — an ambulance came and I was rushed up to Dublin. Veronica says she wasn’t at all scared about being the first person in the country to undergo the procedure. As she points out, the alternative was much scarier.

“At that point, I would have done anything to live and to survive,” she states. “When I was told I had 18 months to live, I looked at my children, Geoffrey, Jeremy and Emma, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to part with them yet. I’m not ready’.”

Some 13 days after the operation, Veronica was well enough to walk out of the hospital. “I was one of the lucky ones,” she says. “At the time, everybody kept asking me what I was going to do with my new lease of life, assuming I was about to go on a big adventurous holiday. I only ever wanted to be able to walk down my road and do normal things.

“I can do my shopping, and I can tend to my garden. I’ve joined a class. My other lung is bad, but they have it under control.

“I just take one day at a time,” says Veronica. “I get up every day and the first thing I think is, ‘Today is great’.”

- Declan Cashin