DR VIJAY’S SOLEMN expression gave the game away, and our world crumbled. Before she delivered the bombshell news, Pamela and I were full of the joys of life.
We’d travelled to South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel for the first scans of our unborn child, happily reminiscing about how we had been down this road before, with Paul. ‘I’ll be as big as a house,’ Pam remarked with a smile.
It was all so exciting as we looked forward to the little person that would be joining us at the end of February 2012.
Pam sat up on the bed and Dr Vijay applied the gel for the ultrasound. We were greeted by what I can only describe as a black blob on the screen. Sadly, we didn’t see what we were hoping to.
Dr Vijay took a few measurements and we could sense that there was something very wrong. I made eye contact with Pam, trying to reassure her that everything would be OK, but fearing the worst.
Dr Vijay brought us upstairs for another scan which confirmed her suspicions. Pam had suffered a missed miscarriage. We believed that she was three months’ pregnant, but the foetus hadn’t developed beyond nine weeks.
I was praying that we would wake up soon and realize that this was all just a bad dream, but no, this was devastating reality. I was angry, hurt and extremely worried about Pam. She wasn’t just sad, she was petrified, and in floods of tears.
As Pamela got dressed privately, I asked Dr Vijay if there was any hope.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied, gently. ‘What happens next?’ ‘We have to take what’s left inside out. We’ll perform another scan next week and then we will perform a D&C.’ Also known as dilation and curettage, D&C is a surgical procedure often performed after a first trimester miscarriage.
‘If there is anything in there,’ Dr Vijay added, ‘we have to give it to you.’ ‘What are the chances of something being in there?’ I asked. ‘She is gone a bit in the pregnancy, I won’t know until I go in.’
The little life that we created hadn’t made it. At the time, I didn’t realize that anywhere between 10 to 25 per cent of pregnancies will end in miscarriage.
We would later discover a secret society of people who also carry this pain. I would mention what had happened to us to close friends and some would tell us that it had also happened to them. I could see the relief in their eyes, that they could talk about this too.
But right there and then, it was without doubt the worst experience of my entire life. Expectant parents are supposed to skip through those hospital doors and emerge with a little picture of their future son or daughter as a souvenir.
They’ll smile at other people in the waiting room and everything is so right with the world. But when Mammy and Daddy come out of that first room with pained expressions, and then go upstairs, there’s a serious problem. That’s exactly where we found ourselves.
I still struggle with the memories of that mid-August morning. We drove back to Ardfinnan with tears in our eyes. At home, we sat on the sofa and wondered why this had happened to us.
I was far more concerned for Pamela’s wellbeing as I don’t think any father truly connects with his unborn child until he feels it kicking for the first time. I was sad that I wouldn’t get to experience that sensation again but, my God, imagine how Pam or any other woman feels in that situation.
And in the back of my mind, I was thinking what on earth would happen if Dr Vijay did find some thing during the D&C procedure.
I was also dreading the conversations we would have with the people close to us when we broke the news. To make matters worse, I was due to play in the All-Ireland semi-final in forty-eight hours’ time – but that game was a distant dot in my consciousness. In fact, it didn’t even exist.
My left eye was killing me because I’d taken a terrible whack at training the night before. Towards the end of the session we had a drill where a forward would run in from the 20-metre line before hitting a shot at goal, with a defender applying fierce pressure.
Bonner Maher was tackled hard and he threw up the ball to swing one-handed. The sliotar penetrated the bars of my faceguard and struck me flush in the eye. There was a little bleeding but I got it iced before leaving Semple Stadium and again at home that night. When I woke the next morning, my eye was almost closed but I didn’t think it would present any major problems come Sunday.
What had happened in the meantime rendered a game of hurling utterly insignificant. The prospect of playing or not didn’t cross my mind because it wasn’t something I was even thinking about at the time. And yet, despite everything that she was going through, Pamela insisted that I had to.
We decided that I would, but that it should all be over as quickly as possible and I would be back home in a safe place on Sunday evening. I would now represent much more than Tipperary hurling. I would play for Pamela, for Paul, and the memory of that little light that had been extinguished.
Somehow I had to switch into match mode because nobody sitting in the stands at Croke Park would have any idea about what had happened to us. Even if they did, their only real concern would be whether Tipperary would win against Dublin – and if I couldn’t handle that, I couldn’t play.
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I had ball in hand when the full-time whistle went and I belted it towards the upper deck of the Cusack Stand. I didn’t know that I was being photographed at the time but I saw a picture later that captured the moment when I released a torrent of pent-up emotion.
I looked like some kind of mad man, hurl clenched in left hand, right hand raised to the heavens, my black eye clearly visible through the faceguard.
To the naked eye, it looked to all intents and purposes like the reaction of a man relieved to have come through such a tight game, but there was so much more to it than that. It was as if nobody was in the stadium and I was there alone.
My mind had been with Pam through the entire game, and when I cleared that final ball, I knew she would be happy.
These are extracts from ‘Standing My Ground’ – The Brendan Cummins Autobiography. More information available here.
