THE INSPIRE INTERVIEW: Rise above it all

When pilot and hot air balloonist Aidan Murphy was diagnosed with a tumour in his stomach he quickly decided to do what he does best and rise above it all.

His passion in life is to drift in the summer stillness high above the rolling fields of Meath in a wicker basket attached to his giant multi-coloured balloon ‘The St Pio’ – callsign G-PPIO.

But Dunshaughlin man Aidan Murphy was brought crashing back to earth recently, this unexpected tailspin beyond even his finely-honed piloting skills or any intervention from the Saint himself.

Now, grounded albeit temporarily, Aidan (48) or Captain Murf as he’s recognised by his vast aviating network is doing what he does best and rising to a new, life changing challenge. At this point its best to hand over to the skipper to explain.

“It was back as far as last May, I was out for lunch with Alison and the food was magnificent but after my first bite it was like a bomb went off in my stomach. Then it happened the next day, and the next day, something was wrong. I put it down to the shift work patterns I do with PayPal and I put it aside for a few weeks.

“But it came to a point where it was going on too long. I had lost a stone in weight - weight I wanted to lose - but without doing anything to lose it.”

On the recommendation of his family doctor, Aidan went to see Professor Tom Walsh who specialises in gastrointestinal illnesses in the Bon Secours Hospital in Dublin. An endoscopy and CT scan were quickly arranged. The scope showed nothing out of the ordainary and Aidan was sent home to await the results of the CT scan.

It was during this week in September that the 6ft 4 qualified helicopter pilot’s fall to earth happened. Literally.

“I got notification to go in on a Monday morning and at 2.30am I got up to go to the bathroom and collapsed. I don’t remember falling, I just remember Alison slapping the side of my face and wanting to ring the ambulance. I didn’t want to be bothering them.

“I blamed it on not eating enough that day and every other excuse I could think of but stumbled back to the bed anyway. I managed to sleep, Alison didn’t sleep a wink but I got up again at 8.30am and bang, straight down again. And this time I vomited, and the colour was red.

“Now it was a no-brainer, call the ambulance.” “I spent a week in hospital and finally got the results of the famous tests I underwent the week before. “When Prof Walsh pulled the curtain around the bed I said to myself ‘this isn’t going to be good’ but I told him to give it to me straight. And that’s exactly what he did.”

- The scan has shown a tumour in your stomach.

- How bad is it?

- Well, it’s nasty.

“I did ask for it straight!”

 

“The nurses, the team there in the Bons were, and are fantastic and were offering to do all sorts to help but at that point I just needed to digest the news myself. “Eventually I rang Alison and told her to come back in and that the news I received wasn’t good. She forced me tell her over the phone and I then worried then about her driving in to the hospital alone.

“My face was numb and tingling and I think it was literally the blood draining from my face but within 20 minutes Alison and the whole family mafia was up and around and the support network started to kick in”. When the initial shock subsided, Aidan’s first thoughts like anyone handed shattering news were to the worst case scenario.

“I decided there and then that I wasn’t going to let the dark forces come and take over, that they would be picking on the wrong guy. And it’s not me trying to be arrogant but if it comes after me I’m going to fight 10 times harder to resist it.

Once I had that sorted, the light got brighter and I could see further down the line. With a battlelines drawn, the war commenced on the unwanted visitor in his gut. I go into the Bons every three weeks where I receive chemo through an IV drip feed and I’m on daily chemo tablets. “Their (specialists) attitiude was, ‘this is what you have, we can’t operate on it because there’s blood vessels around it but what we can do is shrink it with chemotherapy and IF we can get it down, because there are no guarantees in this business, we’re going to hibernate it and put it asleep’. And there you have to say okay, I trust you.”

“I’m 48 and in the olden days, growing up as kids, we never knew that a person was sick nearly until the day they were gone and that was our families saying ‘we’re going to keep this among the four walls of the house’, And if that’s the way you deal with it then great, but I decided I couldn’t live like that, it would be like living a double life to me. I decided we were going to fight this in the light, in the open and everybody is going to be told what I know. It’s part of the reason why Aidan reactivated his own website www.aidanmurphy.com and began an almost daily blog of his treatment and candid accounts of living with his illness, answering those awkward questions and everything else in between.

Aidan’s blog has already been read over 10,000 times but his first post from the bed in the Bon Secours was directed only to close family and friends.

“It only a paragraph but it probably took me two hours to write. There was no right way or wrong way to do it. I probably had the sweatiest palms in the hospital that night but once that first message went out to my close friends that night I was happy.”

“I only really launched the blog when I knew my daughter Aoife (8) was happy with it. She asked the question a few weeks ago ‘has daddy got..? Yes, she was told, but he’s going to get better’. And she’s accepted that. It’s only now at the end of our long chat in Aidan’s Dunshaughlin home, adorned with colourful framed images of hot air balloons and get well soon cards, that the ‘C’ word comes close to being mentioned. An unguarded slip?

“I don’t like that word, I don’t like using it. Maybe it’s like in work when you don’t use certain trigger words or panic words with customers. I just divert away from it and funnily enough when I’m writing my blog I don’t mention it either.

Maybe that’s the next step. I’m on this fighting path and I’m sharing it so I might just have to get over it!”

For now, the balloons may be deflated but Aidan’s fighting spirit remains at high altitude. With Alison and Aoife and his massive support network behind him, the next step is recovery.

“If we can’t cure it,or kill, we can put it to sleep and life goes on and that’s the priority. And if along the way can shed some light for people through the blog and offer a silver lining then I’m happy to do that.

“It’s also been a very welcome distraction for me and something I really enjoy. “It’s been something of a rollercoaster but you always come out the far side of those and you always have people on the same journey with you.

It was coming to end of the balloon flying season when Aidan was suddenly grounded so he hasn’t had a chance to miss it just yet. He reflects that having collapsed without warning at home, it could have so easily have happened in the balloon!

“I did had some offers to fly with some dear friends in the ballooning community but at that time just after I was diagnosed the last place I wanted to be was in a basket but I will be back up there next May when the season starts again.” Captain Murf, still rising above it all.

Earlier in the year we were lucky enough to be on the hot air balloon with Aidan, have a look: