I met Eileen Brennan and her husband Anto on Sunday at Corrigan Park after the Antrim v Waterford game, where she was raising awareness of the deadly illness Sepsis. I took her photo with a few of the Antrim players and with Waterford’s Austin Gleeson, who all gladly posed for the pic, which will hopefully boost Eileen’s campaign. Here are a few lines Eileen sent me about how she got involved in the campaign.
My sister in law Paula Kavanagh (Nee Brennan), passed away on the 16 October 2019 suddenly from Sepsis, an illness we knew very little about. Then a few weeks later, 07 November 2019, a close friend of our family, Mairead Donnelly (Nee Darragh) passed away with the same illness, again suddenly. Our families are two big well known families in the GAA community. Paula’s brothers, Johnny & Anto Brennan, are both linked to St Johns while Mairead’s brothers, the Darraghs, and her husband Terence ‘Hippy’ Donnelly and son Cormac, and all their kids who are linked to The Johnnies and Ballycastle McQuillan’s GAA.
This made me think of starting an awareness month and a fund raiser to help support and tell people the signs of Sepsis. In starting this I choose a team to help who I knew would help me and grow the awareness to make it bigger and larger and get the word out there, since doing this another two people from St Johns messaged me who are survivors of Sepsis, Siobhan McCallin and Donal Gallagher (Burger) who is still recovering in hospital nearly a year later. Along with a lot of other families also getting in touch
We got a great sponsor Safeway Spar who sponsored all our tee-shirts which we are selling for our walks, then St Johns have been amazing letting us do a collection at a big match last weekend Antrim vs Waterford which we collected an amazing £350!
We are doing a 5k walk each day in March to help raise awareness and everyone is welcome, our first walk we were met by 36 people it was fantastic and my main goal that night was a crowd of 8! Totally blown away. Also I have people not being able to walk with us walk alone and sending me their photos and their achievements.
On 12th March there is over 70 people participating in a 12 mile walk from Balintoy to Bushmills.
On the 26th of March we have the Gaelic for Mothers & Others holding a Blitz at Corrigan Park all in aid for Sepsis and on the same day the St Johns Wheelers are doing a sponsored 40 mile cycle all to raise awareness. The day finishes with a fundraiser that night in the Andersonstowntown Social Club where there will live music and a fundraising ballot.
Only with the help from our local GAA community we are able to come together and make this massive effort.