Double amputee Jack Lynam on hard road to recovery

Jack Lynam’s first priority is to take his daughter walking in the countryside. It will be quite an achievement for a man who has spent the past year-and- a-half in hospital having had both legs amputated. Returning home this week with prosthetics, his resolve is as sharp as his sense of humour.

“Do you ever hear a lad after an All-Ireland final or a guy who wins Wimbledon and they say it hasn’t sunk in yet.

“I would often say that’s bullshit, but it’s right, it hasn’t sunk in yet,” he says from an armchair in the front room of his north Dublin home, surrounded by family and welcome home banners.

He is a long way from Beaumont Hospital and rehabilitation in Dún Laoghaire, where he has been for the past 18 months.

Hard-fought campaign

Crucially, Dublin City Council has agreed to provide him with an essential grant to adapt his home. He was initially told he would have to wait until 2017, but a hard-fought campaign appears to have turned things around.

The letter arrived two weeks ago, his wife Frances says. It means work will begin on building an extension and providing him with suitable accommodation downstairs, hopefully by Christmas.

“I couldn’t believe it. I rang Jack and he was just delighted. It was like winning the lottery,” she says.

Lynam (53) had developed antiphospholipid syndrome. He was admitted to Beaumont Hospital in January 2014 suffering agonising blood clots in his legs.

The double amputation was necessary to save his life.

Then he developed a serious, aggressive infection from bedsores around his lower back and posterior, which again threatened his life and required surgery to remove it from his muscle and bone.

“Everything seems to be turning around,” he says now. “But it’s been such a long road. We didn’t think we would get this far.”

What he means is, there were times when he felt he was “marked for death”.

He proudly tells the story of how his young daughter Shauna piped up when the doctors said amputation might be the only chance he had. She told the doctors that if it meant saving her father’s life they had to do the operation.

“I thought, how brave for a 13-year-old to stand up and tell them to take her daddy’s legs.”

Lynam spent months lying on his side in a hospital bed while they tried to figure out how to fight his infection.

In October, he missed his mother Essie’s funeral. “That was very hard. I would have gone through all of this again if someone said you can go to the funeral.”

Soon after, he began to make progress and from the end of 2014 to last May, he endured a long recovery in hospital where staff had “become like a part of the family”.

He was transferred for rehabilitation to Dún Laoghaire, where he took his first steps with prosthetic legs.

About two weeks ago, his physiotherapist came to his home to supervise him climbing the staircase for the first time in almost two years.

Emotional challenge

It was an immense challenge, he says, more emotional than physical.

Lynam manages to focus on the positive, a remarkable feat for someone who has endured one blow after another.

He is at times irreverent about his situation – joking about not being able to chase after his daughter’s future boyfriends – and vividly aware of his future.

“It has changed my outlook on life completely. It kind of brings it all home, the priorities,” he says.

“It’s opened my eyes up. A lot of things were taken away from me that I took for granted. Just getting a second chance.

“There isn’t much now that will get me down. You can adapt to things when the chips are down.”

Until the renovations to his home are completed, Lynam may have to spend some time at his late mother’s home in his native Co Offaly, where his thoughts switch to the surrounding countryside and walking there, especially with Shauna.

“It was taken away from me for two years and now I have the chance to do it again.”