*John Lyons pictured at his home in Drumbiggle. Photograph: Natasha Barton
A Lisdoonvarna native with a multitude of health issues has called on the Government to rethink the illnesses and conditions absent from the medical card allowance.
John Lyons who has lived in Ennis since getting a job in the county town in 1972 was among one of the first people in Ireland to be diagnosed as a coeliac, meaning he is unable to consume gluten or wheat. On top of this, he has Charles Bonnet syndrome which causes a person whose vision has started to deteriorate to see things that aren’t real while he also suffers from bi-polar. He suffered a stroke in 2019, he also has “severe arthritis” and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
He found the height of the pandemic last year to be a very difficult time and noticed a deterioration to his mental health with little answers to be obtained from some service providers when John went looking for help. A visit to hospital last March also caused frustration with one doctor telling the seventy two year old that nothing was wrong with him. “It doesn’t make sense to go to hospital if there is nothing wrong with you. I don’t know how people get seen today. There was never an operator to answer the phone, there was times when I got fits of crying and I couldn’t stop”.
“I was in hospital a good few times during the COVID, I was in the temporary facility at UL for a few weeks and they did physiotherapy there but I was falling suddenly with no warning, I fell to the floor one day just like a dead weight, it took three or four of them to lift me up, I couldn’t get up. I was kept there for a few weeks. I’m getting seizures every night but I don’t know about them only for my wife Susan telling me, I rave a bit in my sleep and I don’t make sense,” he outlined.
While some services have led to negative experiences for John, he has been bowled over with the support from staff at the Day Centre in Clarecastle when the facility was closed. “I have to say they have some lovely nurses there who kept in contact with me right through the bad period when everything was shut down and they’ve stayed in contact with me, Mary O’Brien, Nuala Dolan and Áine Clune, they have never met Susan but they talk to her the whole time and she is mad about them, fair dues to them they keep in contact with me. It must be my personality because they seem to be very fond of me”. He also praised South Clare Meals on Wheels which he receives alongside his wife.
In 1984, John was diagnosed as a coeliac, a disease which doctors found difficult to pinpoint. This forced him to leave his job with Mangans and he was put on medical allowance. Initially, gluten free products were covered on the medical card but this allowance was cut in September 2012.
He calculated that the cost of getting gluten free products is more than €100 per week. The impact has led to John eating food containing wheat and gluten, a move which could prove detrimental. “It was affecting me mentally, I’d always be peckish and hungry, no matter what I’d do I’d always be hungry. I’d an awful time during the COVID, I was crying and crying, you’d get very hungry in the evening, now I’m starting to break out because I have to eat something and I’m eating ordinary Corn Flakes again and I shouldn’t be. I know two people died because they didn’t stick to the diet, I hope I don’t reach that stage but I have broken the diet a few times. You can be fooled, the doctor told me if I kept doing it I’d be able to eat nothing in the end and it will become chronic so I started getting worried over that”.
By sharing his story with The Clare Echo, John is hopeful more people will come forward to highlight the need for more consideration to come into play with medical card allowances, “I think the Government doesn’t understand me and there’s lots of people like me”.
