Kevin talks the language of his passengers

WHEN Kevin Shalloo talks to the cancer patients he drives to Limerick for treatment, he speaks their language.

 

The former O’Curry’s footballer, who is an active triathlete, leaves Kilkee for the radiotherapy unit in Limerick five days a week.

 

He knows the route well and not merely because of his day job driving the West Clare Mini Marathon mini bus. Just last Monday, Kevin underwent a five-year check-up, having been diagnosed with cancer himself in June 2007.

“It was a bit of a shock but I was very lucky, the prognosis was good. It’s very easy to be positive when the oncologist sat across from me and said ‘we’ll get you out of this one,’” he reflected.

Kevin had an interesting chat with his wife, Johanna, back in 2007. “Johanna was pregnant at the time and she was like, ‘there’s no time to be lying down. You’ve go get on with it. The doctor said you’d be fine and you’ll be fine.’ That’s what I needed because I’d wallow,” he laughed.

Kevin remembers one particular afternoon when he was feeling a bit sorry for himself. His sympathy-seeking plan imploded though.

“I remember one Sunday Johanna was lying in the bed reading the paper and she was maybe seven months pregnant. I was all upset and making noise around the house because no one was listening to me. ‘Are you crying?’ she said. I said ‘I might be.’ I was getting no attention. She said ‘will you go out and clean the car because if you think I’m going to Limerick tomorrow with the car in that state, you’ve another thing coming.’ I went out to clean the car and that’s the tone it took for the next three or four months,” he smiled.

Kevin has been driving cancer patients for their treatment in Limerick for almost three years. The other drivers include Andrea Kenny and Matt Keating.

“All you can do is try and lighten it for the patients and maybe tell them a little bit about your own experience,” he told The Clare Champion. “Radiotherapy is a very easy treatment to have. The hardest part is it’s five days a week and between 25 and maybe 40 sessions.

“It’s the travel and the getting there is the problem. Some patients don’t know how easy a treatment it is. They’ve read all the theory. They’re talking to you and you’re saying ‘you’re going to be lying down for two to three minutes, you’re not going to feel anything and if you feel like having a snooze on the way home, have it.’ They might say ‘how do you know?’ Some people want to talk and some people don’t,” Kevin has found.

He has also noticed that most of his passengers are nearly always in good form. “People often say to me it must get depressing sometimes but people going for radiotherapy are generally very upbeat because they’re being treated. It’s the people that are not being treated or have been told they can’t be treated who are in a worse position.
“I see the good side of the illness. Anybody who is going down there really has a good outlook,” he maintains.

“They have dealt with all of the diagnosis and the pressure of everything. By the time we get to pick them up, they’re now thinking about their recovery,” he added.

The radiotherapy unit in Limerick is run by the Mater Private Hospital. On one occasion recently, Kevin arrived in Limerick with four patients at 9.20am and they were heading home by 10.40am, all having received their respective treatments.

Sometimes friendships develop on board the bus from Kilkee to Limerick. “I brought a man who has had 37 treatments for prostate cancer. He’s in his mid-70s but generally a healthy guy. I called to see him one morning lately and he said ‘I’m very down. I really miss it. I miss not going every morning,’” Kevin recounted.

“He was meeting two or three people his own age on the bus. They were having a conversation the whole way to Limerick. He was minding them all and checking their seat belts. All of a sudden, seven weeks had gone by, Monday to Friday and then he had nothing to get up for on Monday morning,” he said, which suggests the patients’ recovery isn’t simply down to radiotherapy treatment.