Former Clare footballer Shane Hickey’s health scare puts life worries in perspective

Shane Hickey: ‘It never bothered me in the slightest all my life until that day. These things can just can pop up out of the blue like that.’ Picture: Stephen McCarthy / Sportsfile

Former Clare footballer Shane Hickey now understands the meaning of the phrase ‘life can change in a heartbeat’ better than most.

The Kilmurry Ibrickane stalwart, an ever-present during their recent dominance of the club football scene in the county, added to his medal haul in the 2020 victory over Cratloe. But a few weeks earlier his world was turned upside down while playing in their championship opener against Miltown in early August.

“During that game, I started feeling dizzy and ended up falling over at one point. I was running back the pitch and I just fell. I jumped back up after a few seconds and just played on. That night, a dinner was organised so I jumped in the shower when I got home but when I came out, I was feeling as weak as water, and sweat was coming out through me.

“I knew that something was not right. I didn’t know if I had Covid or what the story was but a few days later I booked into the doctor and got bloods done. It is a condition that shows up on an ECG and that is what initially flagged it.

“I had a Holter monitor put on for a weekend so that was sent off for analysis and the diagnosis came back a month or so later,” he recalled.

The problem was eventually diagnosed as Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, which is described as being an extra electrical pathway between the heart’s upper and lower chambers that causes a rapid heartbeat.

He continued: “It came out of the blue and to use one of those famous words over the last year, it was asymptomatic. It is asymptomatic in most people but the most common signs are fainting, anxiety, palpations, dizziness, and that kind of thing. The first time I heard of it was when I went to Dublin to the cardiologist and he told me it was something I had since birth.

“It never bothered me in the slightest all my life until that day. These things can just can pop up out of the blue like that.

When I heard the initial diagnosis that there was something wrong with my heart, that was very worrying.

“In the end, it was minor enough in my mind from what it could have been. You hear stories that other people have suffered through with cancer and the likes, and that can have a huge impact on them.”

With 2019 seeing Hickey suffer only his second ever county final defeat since joining the Kilmurry senior panel, the prospect of making up for that loss was one which drove the eight-time championship winner to make the decision to postpone any procedure until after the final.

“I told the cardiologist that I had a game to play. He didn’t advise me against it but he wasn’t all for it either,” Hickey says.

The buildup to the game was an emotional rollercoaster for Hickey with the death of his grandfather Denis “Junior” Considine followed a few days later by the birth of his son Cillian, who joined Shane and his wife Orlaith along with their eldest son Séan and daughter Caoimhe in their family home in Quilty.

“It really put things into perspective and I don’t think I have ever been so calm before going out to play a final. My son Cillian was born and my grandfather passed away in the same week leading up to the game. That is how life works, you have to deal with death and you also have new life coming into the world. It is the way the wheel rolls. One thing about these lockdowns is that we have a lot more time to think about life in general.

“I have gone back to the cardiologist since and thankfully it seems to have gone. The concerning thing about it is that it can come back again but at the moment I am in the all-clear category.”