Aaron on the road to recovery

AARON Considine cannot remember anything about August 1 last. He feels it is just as well, although he has plenty of evidence to remind him that something not so good happened that night. The 20-year-old Clarecastle hurler and Waterford IT business student spent much of last August and September either in hospital, in a wheelchair or at home in bed for six weeks.
“I remember waking up in Limerick hospital. The accident happened at one in the morning and I’d say it was around 7am and I just remember waking up with a lot of nurses and doctors around me,” Aaron recollects.
Briefly he didn’t grasp the magnitude of his injuries.
“I tried to move but they were saying ‘no Aaron, you can’t move. You’ve to stay in bed. You’re in serious trouble.’ I was saying I felt fine but I was dosed up on medication and it was maybe a few hours later I realised I was in trouble,” he recalls, before detailing the injuries his body has since started recovering from.
“I broke my pelvis in two places, nine ribs and my shoulder. I had to get plates inserted just below my stomach and two in the left side of my back. I had a lot of cuts on my back and that was giving me the most trouble at the time. There was no real pain from the pelvis because of the medication. The cuts were the main problem,” Aaron remembers.
He is relieved he can’t remember the details of what happened. “To this day I can’t remember what happened. It’s like it never happened but I have the scars. That’s good in one way though because I don’t have nightmares or any of that.”
Aaron was moved to Tallaght Hospital in Dublin after three days at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick. While in Tallaght for eight days, he was operated upon twice. Sadly, his grandfather, Johnny Pender, passed away on the same date as his grandson’s second operation.
“He died on August 4 and I was in Dublin at the time. That was tough on my mother because she was trying to come down for the funeral and be up in Dublin.”
Following his operations, during which Aaron had the plates inserted, he spent six weeks at home in bed.
“I was on my back for six weeks and then I was in a wheelchair for two. But once I got up on the crutches everything started to fly. I asked them in Limerick one day and they said it would be about 18 weeks before I’d be back doing anything. That was great news for me because I was expecting it would take a year or two. They said my fitness was a big thing and that if I wasn’t as fit as I was, I mightn’t have survived it. Believe it or not, they said if you don’t smoke, it’s a big thing. It brings your healing on. I don’t smoke anyway,” he laughs.
Aaron isn’t certain if or when the plates will be removed.
“I’ve a choice whether to leave them there or not. I’m hoping to leave them there fully. But maybe a few months down the line, when I get back up and running, if they’re giving me trouble I can take them out. But that would set me back a few more weeks so I’m hoping to leave them in for good,” he explains.
Those weeks at home in bed were trying, although an influx of visitors helped to shorten the days for him.
“It was rough. The cuts on my back were catching the blankets and they were ripping. The blood was teeming out. That was the worst, to be honest. Those cuts broke my heart. But I was fairly ok with the sleeping. At first when I came home, we’d hundreds of people coming to the house so the days were flying. I’d sleep from 11 at night until 10 in the morning. I got into a routine from the hospital so I just kept that. The days I found hard were the days I was on my own when my parents weren’t in the house. They were the days I found really hard, thinking of everything,” Aaron reflects.
As for playing hurling or football again, the Clarecastle man cannot say for sure if that’s a realistic proposition in 2012.
“At the moment it’s very unsure. My main aim is the senior championship with Clarecastle in the summer, which hopefully I’ll be ok for but at the moment it’s not looking too good. I’m able to do a small bit of swimming and a bit of walking on the treadmill in the gym. That passes a bit of time for me too. The incentive is to get back playing sport and that drives me on.”
Aaron couldn’t sit some of his exams at WIT last autumn but is planning to take them next summer and return to Waterford this autumn.
“I’ve a few of them to repeat next summer and hopefully pass them and go into second year next September,” the scholarship student says.
His immediate priority is to fully recover from his injuries. A recent chat with his GP, Dr Bugler, perked up Aaron and even boosted his ego.
“He said he couldn’t believe how fit I was looking. He said people my age that this happened to, often put on an awful lot of weight. He said people often go mad eating and drinking and put on stones in weight,” he smiles, proudly patting his stomach.