Ageing with attitude: The only way to live life is to be optimistic

Mary Flynn refused to let health problems get the better of her. The sprightly octogenarian tells Margaret Jennings about her faith and positive attitude to life.

Fri, 31 Mar, 2017 - 01:00

Margaret Jennings

MARY Flynn was disappointed when she was not allowed to do a skydive recently.

She had gone to Slimming World and lost three stone nine pounds in preparation, got the thumbs up from the doctor, and then the skydive organisers wouldn’t give her the go-ahead.

“It’s been an ambition of mine so I was very upset when they turned me down,” says the 85-year-old.

Instead, she went off and got her head shaved — not as an act of rebellion, but as an alternative fundraising source.

She ended up raising over €5,000 which is being split three ways between Beaumont Hospital’s Oncology Unit and its Transplant Unit, as well the Irish Kidney Association’s Renal Support Centre.

As you may gather, the Leitrim-based octogenarian has a fearless streak and a very positive attitude towards life.

The skydive — from which many a younger person might cower — would just be another leap into the unknown, considering the numerous health challenges Mary has already overcome.

The mother of 10 and grandmother of 22 had two kidney transplants, one at the age of 58 — which failed almost straight away —and another at the age of 60, which she says proved to be “super duper” and which has served her well for the past 25 years.

But her health woes did not stop there: She had her gallbladder removed 14 years ago; surgery for colon cancer seven years ago; open heart surgery for an aortic valve replacement five years ago and a pacemaker inserted three years ago.

She faced all those procedures with a feisty zest that she brings to life in general; if anyone deserves to wear the T-shirt and to dole out advice about the will to live, Mary does.

“If you have sickness or anything wrong with you, you shouldn’t worry about anything. You should always say you are going to get through it, because if you give up, you’re not going to get well; it’s up to yourself to get better. That’s my attitude — have a positive attitude,” she says.

“When I was in having my first kidney transplant my white blood cells [the body’s immune cells] went down to one and I was put into an isolation ward and the lady that went in for surgery before me, she passed away and she was the same as me — her blood cells down to one.

"But I said I wasn’t going to die — I was going to get better and I fought it. If you don’t have a will to live, you’re not going to get better.”

Aside from putting her faith in the surgeon she also has a great religious belief.

“I pray in my own way — I don’t actually sit down and say the rosary. I talk to God and I pray to my angels. They do everything for me. I have two altars here of angels and I light candles to them. I have good faith.”

Although her husband Peter passed away from colon cancer 20 years ago, when her youngest child was 16, Mary has faced every challenge with the same motto: “The only way to live life is to be optimistic”.

That optimism alone would test many a parent today, if they had to rear 10 children, all under the age of 16 — six boys first, then four girls.

Mary had to give up her work as a psychiatric nurse back then, when she got married.

“That day there was no option but to keep going — there was no such thing as contraception, so I had to be a good Catholic and not do anything out of the way,” she says.

“I had my own veg, milk and meat. We were self-sufficient because we had a farm in Drumkeerin, (Co Leitrim).”

Fast forward to today and she’s self-sufficient technologically too. We spoke on her mobile phone.

She is well able to use Facebook and says “because I have family away, I talk to them on Messenger”.

Mary’s 22 grandkids — “all sweethearts” — range in age from 34 to seven and she keeps up also with the more traditional grandmother duties for family with crocheting, baking and making jam.

“I can’t sit down without doing something. I’m better to be crocheting than playing games on the tablet,” she giggles.

Games? “I was addicted to them, so I then started the crocheting instead, to get me away from them. I love Candy Crush and I play solitaire as well, but I just allow myself one game when going to bed at night — I need something to keep the brain occupied.”

The trajectory of Mary’s life — one lived to the full with a twinkling eye — might have been very different however, had she not received that successful kidney transplant a quarter of a century ago and she will always be grateful to her donor.

* The Irish Kidney Association’s annual Organ Donor Awareness Week campaign takes place from April 1-8.

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