Victoria Mary Clarke

Breda Brennan interview

Breda Brennan interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2002.

Maureen, Mairead and Serena Brennan have all made Valentine’s Day cards. Serena, who’s five, shows me the one that she’s colouring, a big red heart. Her sisters, who are eight and ten have made more elaborate cards, with coloured tissue and pretty drawings. The cards say “I love you, Mummy and Daddy”. I am rendered speechless, as I look at the cards and feel the profound love that is being expressed. Valentine’s Day, for me, is a time to wonder what I’m going to get, will there be flowers, cards, jewellery? I never send my mum a Valentine. Breda Brennan, their mother, is a lucky woman, I tell her, as we drink tea in her kitchen, and eat apple pie. ‘Yes,” she says. ‘They make me cards for every conceivable occasion.”
To be a part of such a loving family is indeed a blessing. But this is no ordinary family. For out of the three little girls, Maureen, the eldest and Serena, the youngest, have the condition known as Muscular Athropy, a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy. And this particular Valentine’s Day, Muscular Dystrophy Ireland launched their latest awareness campaign, by selling boxes of handmade chocolates, around the country. Maureen is at school now, with her sister and soon we’ll go and collect them, in the specially designed people carrier that is parked outside. For all of the children, Breda and her husband Noel have done their utmost to ensure that they get as good a life and as normal a life as is possible. Maureen was the first person in Ireland to be assigned a personal assistant by the Department of Education, so that she can attend the local school, with the other kids.
‘We don’t ever say can’t in this house,’ Breda says, fixing me with a no-nonsense look. “If there’s an obstacle in the way, we find a way around it. If you take no for an answer, it makes a huge difference.”
In what way? I ask, as Serena whizzes round the kitchen in her electric wheelchair and positions herself next to the apple pie.
“Can I have some apple pie?” She says, looking at me inquisitively with enormous eyes. Breda cuts it for her.
“If you decide that you are not going to be able to go somewhere, well then, you won’t go. If you decide that you are going to take them somewhere, you just get out there and do it. Okay, you have loads of obstacles in your way. You want to go to Dublin Zoo, you have to go and find out if there are entrances available to you. You have to figure out how to get in and out. For anyone else, they can just walk in and go wherever they want to.” She pauses and glances out into the yard, where the Mercedes people carrier is parked.
‘But since we got that van, there’s no stopping us, we go wherever we want. We go on holidays and we go away for weekends. Most people have a plank of wood or something, so you can get in and out of their houses, you don’t need to go fussing and mussing. If you don’t do it, they’re deprived. They may be wheelchair bound, but they’re still children and there’s no other difference between them and any other kids, their minds are a hundred and ten percent.’
“I’m going to bring down my dolls-house,” Serena says.
“You’re going to bring it down by yourself?”
‘Yes!” she whizzes out, laughing.
“It’s a credit to you, to have that approach,” I tell Breda.
‘But if you give up, what will they do?” she says. “They’re totally reliant on you.
I cried that day, the day we found out and I haven’t cried since. If you cry, they cry with you.’
“Would you not cry when they’re not there?”
“No, because if you cry, you’ll only get depressed. Crying solves nothing. My husband feels the same. He works locally and at night he turns the kids, five or six times.”
The children cannot move around in bed, by themselves, she explains. Muscular Dystrophy is a condition whereby the skeletal or voluntary muscles which control movement degenerate and become progressively weaker. There is no specific treatment and the cause of the condition is not known, but the girls wear body jackets, to help them stay upright and to prevent their spines from curving too much. And they have physiotherapy, every night before bed.
Serena returns with a dolls-house and asks us to make room for it on the table. She shows me how when you ring the doorbell, a dog barks.
It must be tempting, at times to spoil them, I say.
‘Oh no, I don’t spoil them,” Breda looks shocked.
They don’t get extra sweets?
They don’t get sweets often. You can’t afford to give them sweets, because if you gave them sweets they might get fat and that’s no good to them.”
Maureen swims, though.
‘Yes, but her head is very heavy, so I’m trying to get a collar from England, to hold up her head. She loves the water. Serena will learn next year. We do everything as normal, as much as possible.’
Watching Serena, she seems to be playing with the dolls-house just like any other kid would. Can she use her hands in the same way as other kids? I ask.
‘Serena has more problems than Maureen, but she can draw. Maureen can write and she has just got her laptop, in school, so she’s flying on that. I taught her how to touch type.’
How will the condition progress?
‘They can’t tell. Determination makes a huge difference to them, though. They’re willing to try anything.”
And how about Mairead, what’s she like?
‘I don’t know how to describe her. An angel from the skies? That’s the way I look at her, because she’s at everybody’s beck and call. Okay, they have their arguments, but ninety percent of the time, she’ll do stuff for them without even thinking. She does have her own life though and she has her own space. They adore each other and they idolise their daddy. Idolise him. It’s a very close team we have here. We rely on each other.”
It must have been a big disappointment, I say, when Serena was diagnosed.
‘No,’ Breda says, philosophically. “We’d already decided that whatever came would be whatever came. You couldn’t do it otherwise, we knew we were taking a massive risk and we had to be prepared. We said we would try for a third one.”
They wanted three?
“We wanted four. But we would have to give it a lot of thought, before we would go again.”
We arrive at the school, now and two little girls get into the van. One of them has curly hair, she’s Maureen, the eldest. She’s the one in the wheelchair. I ask them if they like school and they both say yes. I tell them that’s unusual and they say it’s an unusual school, they get to do things like knitting and playing music and they have a good time. None of the other kids seem phased by the wheelchair. Back at the house, the girls talk about what they will do for the weekend. There might be a hurling match to go to. Maureen’s been to Croke Park three times and they are all huge fans of the game. As I leave them to their plans, it occurs to me that this family might be rare in that they are dealing with Muscular Distrophy, but that they are also getting on uncommonly well together, a rare enough thing too.