A picture from the couple’s wedding day last week
Less than a year after leaving hospital a local man with locked-in syndrome has got married.
David Garvey from St Nicholas’ Avenue got engaged to Bernie Dolan three years ago but had been in the Beaumont Hospital for two years until just before Christmas last year.
David’s condition means he is unable to move his muscles, talk or swallow while he relies on a ventilator to help him breath. The 35-year-old can only communicate with his eyes but used an eye-controlled technology to say ‘I do’ on his big day.
Bernie told today’s Irish Daily Mirror she never doubted the wedding would go ahead.
“I always knew we would get married, I just knew it would happen and it did.
“We had a fantastic day. It was very emotional.”
David was consulted on all the arrangements and with the help of his sister Lynn, he wrote a heartfelt speech about his bride – which Lynn read on his behalf.
Bernie added: “He said how much he loved me and a lot of our guests were nearly in tears.
“I managed not to cry during it but I had cried enough going up the aisle.”
David was a keen rugby player and had no serious health concerns until 2002, when he had three strokes and a brain hemorrhage during a trip away.
He was flown back to Beaumont Hospital where doctors discovered an unusual cluster of cells in his brain on his MRI scan. A subsequent operation on a cavernoma on his brain stem left him wheelchair bound and he remained at Beaumont and later the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire for almost two years learning how to adjust to his condition.
He came home in 2004 after his family had made the house fully wheelchair-accessible.
Although he was no longer mobile, brave David still got on with life and even managed to find love with care assistant Bernie.
They got engaged in France in June 2012 having driven over by campervan and had planned to set up home in Navan before David’s condition worsed in autumn of that year when the cavernoma in his brain grew again.
He began losing his speech and he underwent three operations to insert a shunt on his brain that would help drain fluid. Unfortunately they didn’t work and on Christmas Eve 2012 he was given just three days to live.
His fighting spirit shone through as he overcame obstacle after obstacle though to finally tie the knot at a civil ceremony in the Castle Arch Hotel in Trim on September 4th.
Here’s hoping they have a lifetime of happiness together.
