COLUMN: The triumph of the human spirit

The final day of October 2013, was the last day Geraldine Lavelle ever walked. That was twelve years ago. And on that late autumn afternoon, what should have been a short, bracing cycle turned into a nightmare. A tragic accident resulted in a spinal cord injury, and complete paralysis of her body from the chest down.

Then in her mid-twenties, the epitome of youthful good health and optimism, in a highly professional job, the world was her oyster. The following decade would call on all her reserves of determination, fortitude and resilience through many long bleak days and nights of internal grief.

That journey is the central theme of Geraldine Lavelle's second book, 'When the Apple is Ready, it will fall', recently published, the follow up to her first, highly acclaimed, 'Weathering the Storm'. Her new book is a multi-layered chronicle of what that journey, as yet unfinished, has entailed. On the one hand, she examines the emotional roller coaster of living with a disability, an experience in which she neither sugar-coats the grimness of her situation, but at the same time never resorts to self-pity or regret, as surely she would be well entitled to do.

A second layer of the book deals with the daunting practicalities of dealing with the bureaucracy of the health and hospital services, and the yawning gap between what the state promises and what the state actually delivers. Her experience of navigating the complex labyrinth of officialdom and the cold - even if unintentionally so - dismissal of the rights of somebody with a disability, makes for unpleasant reading at a time and in a place where spending on health seems as bottomless as it is ineffectual.

In choosing to live, rather than just survive, Geraldine Lavelle hones in on the resilience of the human spirit, a state of being which she wants to share with others. Her choice was, as she says, to live, to actually experience life in all its shades and colours, and not just to 'occupy space'. For her, living is when you enjoy life, the bitter as well as the sweet, the struggles and the small triumphs.. But she is astute enough too to realise that many others would have given up the battle if they had to endure what she had done to gain independence.

In the early part of 'When the Apple is Ready, it will fall', Geraldine analyses the importance of resilience in coping with the varied menu we call living. For her, there was the emotional numbness in transitioning, almost overnight, from one way of life to another. One moment, she was fine; the next, she was three quarters paralysed, with only 15 percent of her muscle function remaining. It was a grief, she recalls, far beyond mere physical pain - a gaping inner hole of emptiness, so desperately painful and which, contrary to logic, should not hurt at all, by reason of it's not even being there. The resilience which she eventually came to rely on , she says, has its origins in an acceptance of 'the adult facts of life'. Resilience, the real secret to never becoming a victim, is the capacity to bounce back from the inevitable losses that no human can avoid.

Geraldine Lavelle's ten year odyssey has seen her progress from initial hospitalisation to a Cheshire facility and finally to her own purpose adapted house back in her native Castlebar. But it was far from a seamless pilgrimage, and someone less blessed with inner resolve would have easily thrown in the towel. There are several instances in the book of official ineptitude. (On one occasion, it was discovered after twenty nine months, that she was being erroneously treated with double the recommended dosage of Keflex, a lethal antibiotic). One particular stand-off with authority stands out. To help her transfer from her care faclity in Sligo to her almost-ready new home in Castlebar, an adequate care package had first to be agreed on. While living in the residential setting in Sligo, her allotted care hours were 47 per week, plus night help. But, inexplicably, due to what was called a budget shortfall, that allowance would be cut to 42 hours a week on her return to Castlebar, despite the recommended allocation for a spinal cord injury being 56 hours per week.

Forty two hours per week translated to six hours a day for a person paralysed from above the chest. That person needed four hours each morning to get up and prepare for the day, and another hour to retire to bed at night. What followed this new crux was a long, wearying dispiriting battle, involving meeting after meeting, until in the end the authorities conceded the argument. Geraldine Lavelle's sheer persistence paid off, and the required hours of home care package would, after all, be provided.

Brendan Courtney of RTÉ had commented that Geraldine Lavelle's first book should be part of the school curriculum, so important it is that young people learn that life is a constant stream of challenges. That recommendation would be even more apt for 'When the Apple is Ready, it will fall'.