'Lack of oxygen to the brain erased memories of my early life': Cork writer on living with undiagnosed tumour

Cork man and writer Derry O’Leary tells Helen O’Callaghan about the single evening that represented a key turning point in a life lived until then with an undiagnosed brain tumour that caused unrelenting debilitating seizures

Derry O’Leary: 'I veered away from everything, went into my shell. I was living at home with my parents and a sister. I felt less and less part of society. I wasn’t speaking anymore, my speech and confidence very limited, my vocabulary went to zero.'

The seizures started the night before the Leaving Cert, June 1991. I believed they’d go away, never thought they’d take over. They increased, got worse.

The doctors did EEGs. The neurologist found "nothing conclusive": I wasn’t epileptic, this was unusual and didn’t make sense. He called them pseudo seizures — plus a fugue state when my brain was rebooting back to normal. That was difficult.