Inspirational Ciara Storey still focusing on the positive

You’ve been nominated at corner-back so you’re there in the good gúna, putting on the ritz at the most blingtastic night of the camogie calendar, the All Stars awards in November 2015.

Few in the City West ballroom know that your pre-All Stars’ routine has been dramatically different from that of your fellow-nominees.

Less than 48 hours ago you were in hospital, getting an epidural blood patch.

It involved taking blood out of your arm and injecting it straight back into your spine to restore the proper pressure to your brain and relieve the blinding headaches and dizziness caused by a misplaced lumbar puncture a week earlier.

That was just the latest of a baffling sudden raft of tests on your body/brain that have gone by in a blur.

Yet, what’s really bugging you tonight is that your club team, Oulart-the-Ballagh, which you captain, is playing a Leinster club final tomorrow and you can’t play.

That’s because, less than four weeks ago, you were told you have Multiple Sclerosis.

The most remarkable thing about Ciara Storey (26) is not her bubbly, awe-inspiring positivity and complete lack of self-pity over the diagnosis that hit her completely from left-field a year ago.

What is really extraordinary is how well the 5ft 10in corner-back played this year for a resurgent Wexford who took Cork to extra-time in the All-Ireland semi-finals.

Storey played every single minute of every 2016 league and championship game bar one.

“I got taken off against Tipperary [All-Ireland quarter-final] but that wasn’t the MS, that was just a bad day!” she chuckles.

Further anguish

MS is a progressive neuromuscular disease that 9,000 Irish people live with, more common in women (3:1) but affecting men more severely.

Storey, blessed with a sunny, laid-back demeanour, is in remission at present and it’s just over a year since her body suddenly started to betray her.

Confirmation of her condition heaped further anguish on a family already unfairly overburdened.

Ciara is the middle child of Wexford hurling legend Martin Storey and wife, Rosaleen, and their only daughter.

A year before her illness struck their youngest – Martin Óg (19) – was diagnosed with cancer in his mouth.

The first thing she noticed was blurring and intermittent loss of vision in her right eye.

Then came tingling and numbness in her mouth which spread to her arm and legs, followed by loss of co-ordination.

“After the whole thing with Ogie a year before I really thought I had cancer in my eye so, when the doctor told me it was MS I was relieved in one way,” she reveals.

“It was shocking, but honestly, I felt so sick at the time, at least I knew what was wrong.”

Ogie escaped chemo or radium but had the roof of his mouth removed and rebuilt with fat off the inside of his cheeks.

“His speech was a little affected but they’re confident they got it all and he’s flying now. He came on and scored a point in the county final last year and scored a goal in the Leinster Championship recently,” she adds proudly.

Successful return

See, in the Storey household, everything is parsed, analysed and scheduled through hurling, even serious illness.

Brain scans showed up the bright orange patches that confirmed Ciara’s initial MS flare-up but, to see if it was in her spine (which it isn’t), a lumbar puncture was needed.

With the 2015 county final against Rathnure less than a week away she somehow charmed her medics to delay it.

“The doctor was very good, put me on steroids, did all the other tests and let me out on the Saturday morning. I wasn’t very good, shouldn’t have been playing and got taken off . . . and it was a draw!” she laughs.

After telling her closest friends and Oulart’s management she was insistent that the rest of the team wasn’t informed until after the game.

“There’s more to life than sport obviously but it nearly got me through it because there wasn’t time to sit at home and feel sorry for myself. You just had to trot on.”

Storey was too sick to play in the replay, or in their subsequent Leinster campaign, yet has since made a remarkably successful return for club and county, thanks to medication, lifestyle changes and her own phenomenal determination.

She injects herself twice monthly in the stomach or leg with a pen-syringe, has eradicated all dairy and even bananas from her diet (“terrible hard when you play sport!”) and drinks a filtrated water called Kangen that she finds helpful.

There’s still ongoing limb pain but nothing as bad as the initial flare-up but two other MS symptoms – fatigue and insomnia – affect her badly.

“And not being able to eat cheese, I miss my cheese!” she quips.

She may actually have suffered her first MS episode while in Australia in 2012-2013 as some scarring was found on her brain, but she is not looking back, only forward.

Storey’s two families – blood and camogie – have provided great support and her sporting network has a long reach.

Lighter hurls

She was a nine-year-old sub when she took part in the first of five Féile (All-Ireland U14) finals with Oulart’ and won three.

She was only 16 when she first played senior for Wexford in goals. She’s since won two senior All-Irelands with them and two more with the club with whom she’s won 12 of their 14 Wexford senior titles.

She worked for six years as a beautician in Monart, the world famous spa outside Enniscorthy owned by ex-Wexford hurling boss Liam Griffin, another who has offered unseen support like the free gym membership that keeps her constantly active, which helps.

Her illness, ironically, struck just when she’d started a pre-nursing course locally but she completed it with very few missed classes and is now doing a degree in Applied Social Studies in Carlow IT , through their Wexford campus.

“I’ll be playing Purcell Cup for Carlow this year which is great after getting knocked out of the [Leinster] club,” she says cheerfully, still unable to calibrate life’s vicious swings and roundabouts without her sport.

Her only concession to her condition was to get lighter hurls. She never once contemplated giving up camogie and just agreed some protocols with her various team managements if she is ever struggling, which has been rare.

Her illness, paradoxically, may have helped Storey become even more skilful.

“When you feel you might be a little behind the other girls physically, well I sort of felt I had to make my hurling a little bit better and possibly trained a little bit harder.

“A few other young girls who have it contacted me when they heard I’ve got it because they’ve seen me playing and able to do everything.

“When people hear ‘MS’ they think the worst. Some people who get it think ‘that’s it now!’ but everyone is different and has their own personal story. I think that no matter how tired you are you’ll still feel better after exercise.

“When you get the diagnosis they tell you not to get your hopes up because, when you get an episode your co-ordination mightn’t come back, or it mightn’t come back to 100 per cent,” she explains.

“I might never have another episode or I might get one next week so you kinda just make the most of it.

“When it happened I was probably more worried about Mammy and Daddy,” she admits.

“I’d been in Australia for two years and Anthony was in Canada for four. We all came back around the same time, and then Ogie got sick, and then me. It was a tough time for them but Mammy and Daddy [both nurses] are able for it all.”

Check-ups with her neurologist are now down to every six months, Ogie is well again and they recently celebrated Anthony’s engagement; some deserved and long overdue joy for a Wexford hurling family who have provided so much of it for their club and county.