Johnny Martyn: ‘I want to finish on my own terms’

Johnny Martyn could feel the right side of his mouth collapsing. Dizzy and disorientated, he stood frozen in shock. 

A team-mate rushed to his side expressing concern. Martyn opened his mouth to respond. Nothing. Not a single word could he utter. Panic.

Martyn arrived into Markievicz Park shortly before 7pm on the third Friday in July last summer. Eight days out from their round 3 qualifier against Cork, the Sligo full-back was expecting a fairly intense session to be handed down by Pat Flanagan.

A light jog pretty much floored him and Martyn grew more uncomfortable as the warm-up progressed. He became dizzy, off-kilter. Adrian Marren noticed his distressed state and enquired as to what exactly was wrong.

Martyn attempted to describe the awful sensation coursing through his body. Silence.

He sought to shout it out. Further silence.

The pair left the warm-up. Perhaps he simply needed a second to collect himself. Marren asked again. Martyn again tried to respond. Blank. He collapsed to the ground in a state of panic.

With alarm bells now ringing throughout Markievicz Park, the team physio rushed to his aid and instructed Martyn to carry out a simple breathing exercise. After three or four minutes he regained some semblance of composure.

Rushed to Sligo General Hospital by Eoin McHugh, he was unable to communicate to the A&E receptionist what had happened. McHugh stepped forward and Martyn was admitted.

“My family and friends were in throughout that weekend and I couldn’t talk to them,” recalls the St Mary’s clubman.

“I couldn’t answer their questions. I was getting embarrassed because I wasn’t able to get out a full sentence and was slurring my words.

“I was worried. The speech wasn’t coming back and I was thinking, ‘what is going on here’. When I played it through in my head it sounded like a stroke, but it couldn’t have been a stroke, surely not.”

The doctor called around on Monday morning and since nothing out of the ordinary had shown up in the slew of tests conducted, Martyn was discharged.

“I was annoyed as I was still in the dark. The doctor said it could very likely be a viral infection.

“I didn’t get to see the neurologist at the time as he was on holidays. When I got out I got onto the Sligo team doctor to arrange a meeting with the neurologist, Dr Kevin Murphy, when he came back. I met him that Friday and he scheduled an MRI for the following Monday. That was the day before the Cork game. I had long ruled myself out of contention. There was no way I was playing.

“I travelled with the team that Saturday to O’Connor Park and remember being at the back of the bus. The boys were chatting and I couldn’t engage in conversation. I was slurring my words and it was embarrassing.” Sligo exited the championship and Martyn went in for the MRI on the Monday. Dr Murphy’s number flashed on his phone early on Tuesday morning and he was requested to come in straightaway.

“I was thinking, ‘holy shit, what’s after showing’.

On the scan was a round fella, kinda the size of an almond, if not bigger. It was scarring on the brain.

“The neurologist still wasn’t sure what it meant so I went for another scan that day.”

The results were far more conclusive on this occasion. Martyn, as he himself had surmised, had suffered a stroke at training.

“I was in shock.

“That Tuesday I was readmitted for a second time and spent three days at Sligo General. We went down to the heart surgeon and he put a scope down my throat to see what the problem was. He found a small hole on the heart. The heart surgeon explained that the hole can cause a blood clot which can trigger off a stroke.

“That was a relief to hear the reason why it happened. Yet, when you are being told you have a hole on your heart, it is another shock to the system.

“One day I am being told I have suffered a stroke, the next I am being told I have a hole in my heart and they need to put a plug in to prevent any future strokes. Obviously it crossed my mind whether I could ever play again.” His worst fears were not realised, keyhole surgery would return him inside the whitewash.

One problem, though. Johnny was unemployed at the time. Health insurance he simply could not afford. To go the private route would set him back €20,000. The alternative was to have his name scribbled onto the public waiting list and hope to be called some time before the turn for 2017.

“I genuinely didn’t know what I was going to do or how I was going to fund the surgery. I had nothing.” St Mary’s senior manager Tommy Breheny reached out to former Sligo footballer and GPA officer Dara McGarty and within a week Martyn was booked into Dr Kevin Walsh’s surgery in Dublin’s Mater Private, a date in early December set.

“I was blessed to have the GPA. Only for them I would still be waiting for the procedure.”

He continued: “There was a bit of a dilemma when I was offered a job by Diageo in late November. I explained to Dr Walsh that I couldn’t really tell my prospective employer that I am going to be out for a month after not being in the job a wet week.”

Martyn eventually went under the knife in early January and was home in Sligo 24 hours after the procedure. He was back running within a fortnight and returned to the Sligo set-up a month later.

On March 9, he was introduced for the final moments of Sligo’s 2-26 to 2-9 Division 3 league win at home to Louth. Closure.

“The most difficult part of the recovery was the mental side of things as there is always the fear it might happen again even though the surgery took care of that. You’d still be worried in your own mind because strokes aren’t too common amongst 33-year olds.

“The way I feel about it now is that I am glad it was found out. If it hadn’t been found and I had a stroke in 30 years time when I wasn’t fit enough to handle it, there could have been serious damage. The fact I was young and fit meant it didn’t have long-term consequences.”

The long-serving Yeats County footballer will sit out this evening’s Connacht semi-final against Roscommon having ruptured ligaments in his ankle during a club game against Tubbercurry last month. Is it time, perhaps, to call it a day?

“Even if I get another setback, I don’t want to finish out my career injured. I want to finish it on my own terms.”