Tommy Tiernan Show: Annmarie O’Connor on Parkinson’s and why she is ‘not a victim’
Annmarie O'Connor on the Tommy Tiernan Show
Irish Examiner Fashion Editor Annmarie O’Connor was the first guest on Saturday night’s Tommy Tiernan Show and she spoke passionately about her experience with Parkinson’s disease.
O’Connor was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in December 2021 and shared her story in the Irish Examiner last year, detailing her symptoms, diagnosis and life since then.
She said she was diagnosed after 14 months of symptoms, which she had assumed were caused by a trapped nerve. “I didn't know anything about Parkinson’s,” she said, saying she has been feeling the effects of it more in recent months.
“Since August, this has been kicking off like no man's business, to the extent that it's been impeding my ability to make a living, I can't type,” she said, adding exhaustion has been a struggle. “I am tired all the time and I'm tired of being tired.”
She said she is “constantly setting alarms” to take her medication on a schedule and she no longer has spontaneity in her life.
O’Connor said dating can be difficult for someone with Parkinson’s as “it's going to get to the stage where you're looking at a future together and if your future doesn't seem bright, you wonder what's love got to do with it? Someone may just decide that's too much for me.”
However, she said she is “not a victim” and she never thought she’d become an advocate for Parkinson’s disease.
“I’ve never seen myself as being an advocate but the personal is political. I don't want people to feel that they have to hide. Why should they have to hide?
“It's really important to talk about it because I'm never going to outrun it. It's always going to be the spectre that's hanging over your life. I'm going to fight it as much as I can. Knowledge is power. I've spent 49 years creating a life that I'm happy with. I'm not going to throw that away and I'm not going to let something get in the way of that.”
Tiernan’s second guest was impressionist Mario Rosenstock, who spoke about his grandparents meeting during World War II as well as his decision to seek therapy and the benefits of talking.
“I’ve been doing quite a bit of chatting with this recently realizing that I'm damaged, since everybody's damaged. We've all got damage,” he said.
“One of the things we don't talk about, and I think that we will start talking about, is the damage we all have from our families. I'm not talking about abuse or misbehaviour or anything. Like, ‘I haven't spoken to my dad for 14 years’ or ‘My brother married somebody and I haven't talked to him for 10 years’. Nobody talks about those things at all.
“They give great damage to you as a person and we bottle them up because we too shamed all the time to admit that there's something within our family. We think that everybody is like the Waltons, and that we're fucked up.
"But actually, every family is fucked up and there's no harm in talking about it. How much damage has been done to you by just being in a family? I felt okay talking about my experience, problems I had and have with my father.”
He also spoke about how he chooses his impressions and why his take on public figures like Paschal Donohoe, Leo Varadkar and the late Gay Byrne resonated with his audience. “There is an element of letting it happen,” he said.
Finally, Tiernan was joined by writer, academic and broadcaster Emma Dabiri, who spoke about her experience growing up in Ireland as a black person.
Dabriri said she became fascinated by “the relationship between Irish history and black history” and how the architecture of race is “an English innovation”.
Dabriri said she grew up in Dublin at a time when there did not seem to be many other back people.
“When I was growing up, I was very much an anomaly. This was in the ‘80s and if I saw another black person it felt like an event.” Dabriri said she visited family in Nigeria when she was a child and saw their wealth firsthand. However, she said her descriptions of this were dismissed when she told people here.
“I remember being deeply, deeply chastised for trying to say that there were some wealthy people in Nigeria,” she recalled.
She said she was “very angry” when she moved from Ireland to the UK but she said she realised quickly “how culturally Irish” she was when she emigrated.
“I feel like I've come so full circle with my relationship to this country and being Irish.”
