‘Like being in a car hurtling towards a wall’

ERIC DORAN celebrated his 31st birthday earlier this month but there is little to cheer about in his life.

Eric suffers from Freidreich’s Ataxia, a progressive condition that affects his balance and has become desperately tough to live with.

“I’ve known since my teenage years what lay before me, that I was going to become more dependent in so many years and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to prevent it. It’s like being in a car that is hurtling towards a brick wall,” he said.

He tries to keep going as best he can but dreads the day that his mother, Alice, is unable to look after him and his younger brother Joseph, 22, who also suffers from ataxia.

There are around 200 ataxia sufferers in Ireland and the little understood disease, thought to be genetic, needs more research.

Secretary of euro-Ataxia, Dr Mary Kearney, whose two daughters have the more common form of the syndrome Friedreich’s Ataxia, said the difficulties ataxia sufferers experienced were extremely frustrating.

“Before becoming wheelchair bound, they can fall over suddenly, causing huge upset, embarrassment and hurt,” she pointed out.

Alice from Dunlavin, Co Wicklow, said a policeman once thought Eric was either drunk or drugged when he was just nine years old.

Alice is glad that this Sunday is International Ataxia Awareness Day because at least it will at least make people think twice when they see someone walking like a drunk, or on drugs.

Asked if the State was doing enough for families like hers, Alice replied: “Absolutely not. Nobody cares. I looked for home help and was only given two hours per week; That’s ridiculous!”

* More information about ataxia is available at www.euro-ataxia.org and www.fasi.ie.