Alison Mc Kim interview
copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2003

Sometimes it's hard to believe in love. Even in the most romantic of relationships, one wonders whether true love really exists. Celebrity couples like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston, Posh and Becks and Guy and Madonna might appear to be besotted with each other, but if you took away the money and the fame and the perfect teeth and svelte, toned bodies would they stand by each other? If Madonna lost all her money and got fat and hairy and if her new album bombed, would Guy stay? Would Becks have married Posh if she wasn't Posh, if she worked in Tesco and dressed in Chain-store chic instead of her designer frocks? Does anybody really love anybody else warts and all, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health?

Alison Mc Kim was a gorgeous twenty one year old girl with her whole life ahead of her, when two weeks after her birthday she discovered that she was pregnant. She wasn't a girl who had ambitions to get married, she wasn't in a long-term relationship, but she decided to have the baby anyway. Zak was born after six months, weighing one pound fourteen ounces, and he was about an inch longer than a Bic biro.

"They said he would be born dead. He came out breathing, but we didn't know if he would survive."

Zak didn't do too badly for eight months, when it was discovered that the pressure of the fluid on his brain was making him agitated. So they operated and put a shunt in, to drain the fluid. Not long after that he got fungal meningitis and the doctors said he had a two percent chance of pulling through that. He did pull through, but it left him with Cerebral Palsy. There followed chest infections, followed by more shunt operations and then more chest infections. The valve that they had put in behind his ear to drain the fluid kept getting clogged and they have had to do sixteen shunt operations, so far.

Zak is eleven now, but he's small for his age.

"You're getting there, though aren't you Zak?" Alison says fondly, caressing the child who sits in his wheelchair and leans back, rolling his eyes in her direction. Zak's eyes are beautiful, liquid brown pools with lashes longer than Sinead O Connors, but he's blind, he can't see his mother. He can't talk to her either, she knows he feels things, but she can't be sure exactly what is going on inside his head. He expresses himself by making loud noises, when he's not happy and by smiling when he is, but most of the interpretation is intuitive on Alison's part. That doesn't stop her talking to him constantly and as we sit in the little house that she shares with her child. She keeps up a running -albeit one-sided- conversation with him, so that he's never excluded.

" He had loads of pneumonia and bronchitis and I didn't think it was funny at all, did I Zak? I've lost count of the number of times he's had pneumonia and the doctors have said he wouldn't make it through the night."

Alison is friendly and relaxed and she looks like a girl who works out daily, her body is trim, toned and muscular, but she never has to go to a gym. Her muscles have been developed from lifting Zak, who weighs six stone. Clearly it can't be easy to bring up a child who is blind and can't do anything for himself. Especially if you have to do it all by yourself. Alison works part-time at the Carer's Association, but it has been touch and go, financially making ends meet.

"You've got to cut down on everything that you are used to having. You can't afford to buy clothes, you are lucky to be able to pay the bills. You are lucky to be able to eat, some weeks, on the money that you get from the Eastern Health Board and the Social Welfare. I haven't found the Eastern Health Board to be very good at telling me what I am entitled to, or not entitled to. Nobody seems to know and they don't seem to know where you are supposed to get the information from, which is very frustrating."

When Zak was a baby, he could be carried easily, but he's getting bigger and soon, she won't be able to lift him at all. He goes to school, he's picked up at nine every morning and then Alison goes to work.

"I work for four hours and that leaves me two hours during the day to do the shopping, clean the house and get his medication. I have to be home at half three, for when he comes home."

Alison is not entitled to a car allowance, because she is receiving lone parent's allowance.

"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, because I'm on the lone parent's allowance and I'm not entitled to any of the things that the Carers would get, I get no help with electricity or telephone, or the TV licence."

There has been very little room for a social life, so the way that Alison lives is extremely isolating.

"If Zak is sick, by the time I get out of the hospital I'm too tired. When he's well, I can't get anybody to babysit. And even if there was anybody, I couldn't afford to pay them. So, from half three every day I'm usually indoors, unless the weather is nice and I can bring him for a walk. The cold air really affects his chest, so I have to be careful. I have to make sure, when he comes home from school on Friday that I have all the food I need, and my call card for the phone. But I try to live as normal a life as possible, in the circumstances and in the summertime, I bring him camping. That's lovely, to be able to do that."

I put it to Alison that a boyfriend might come in handy, someone to say 'I'll make the breakfast, darling, you stay in bed." She laughs.

"A boyfriend? They would expect you to make the breakfast! You're joking me, I've enough work to do. And Zak takes up all my time, so there wouldn't be the time to have a proper relationship. It would be a serious thing to ask someone to take on."
Does she never meet men that she likes?

"I've met a few, all right, but they would drive you mad, after a while! Men are grand, but they're boys, really. Women are much more sensible and reliable . You can ask a woman to do something and you know it's going to be done. I don't know what planet men are from. They just want food, beer and sleep and they want to watch football on the telly! I have enough to do with Zak, without having to clean up after anybody else."

Surely there's got to be men in the world who aren't like that? What about David Beckham? I say. He cooks and cleans and looks after the kids, even if he is a footballer.

"That's just one, and there might be something wrong with him! It's what's inside you that's going to make you happy, anyway, not getting married to someone. You've got to be happy and content with yourself before you'll ever be happy with anybody else"

So she is resigned to being alone, but there is very little support, once you are in her position. Her parents are elderly and her sisters have busy lives of their own.
"Once your child is at home with you, that's it, really. There's no back-up support. I've never even been offered counselling."

To look forward to a time when Zak is twenty is very difficult to do, Alison says, because he is sick, so often.

"It's hard to think of next year, you really don't live in the future, you live day by day. Every time he goes into hospital, I'm aware that this might be the time that he doesn't come back."

Another person might be torn between the desire to have a life of their own and wanting their child to survive. Not Alison.

"He is my life. He is my reason for getting out of bed in the mornings. Aren't you Zak? Is he worth it? Oh yes! Absolutely. Because when you smile you're gorgeous, aren't you?" Real love clearly does exist, and it transcends the frailties of the human condition, too.