& AWESOME
Geordie Jnr was rushed to the specialist children’s unit at Royal Belfast Hospital along with Georgha.
The girl’s raincoat had melted into her skin. Their father, who was taken in the next ambulance to Lagan Valley Hospital, suffered multiple organ failure and severe burns.
He needed four operations that day. The children returned home after a few days but their dad was transferred to a specialist care unit at Ulster Hospital.
It would be a month before he woke from his coma.
Sharon said: “The doctors told me for the first five nights, ‘There is no way he will survive.’
“The lightning shut off everything in his body. But Geordie has made up the rules himself.
“It went from being told he was going to die, to being told he won’t move his fingers again, to being told he won’t walk again. But he has proven them wrong every step of the way.”
Geordie was finally allowed home just before Christmas thanks to the local community group Ballymacash Cultural Awareness Project raising £5,000 to help out.
The money went towards adding mobility aids in several rooms in their semi-detached house. Now his memory is gradually improving although he has no recollection of the accident.
He’s been back in his local gym doing light weights to build up his strength and he might be able to walk without any help by summer.
“Geordie has come this far through sheer determination,” says Sharon, who married him five years ago.
Fighters
Now his concern is catching up on lost time with the children.
While young Geordie plays with his favourite Play-Doh, giggling as he sits on his daddy’s lap, it difficult to imagine him experiencing such horror.
Sharon says the one good thing is Geordie Jnr also remembers nothing from that distressing day.
But Georgha remained conscious throughout and, sadly, still has harrowing flashbacks of her dad lying lifeless on the playground gravel as the staff desperately tried to save his life. Wiping away tears, Sharon says: “She is completely traumatised.
“I remember her saying to me, ‘Mummy, Daddy was bleeding from his eyes.’ Now she won’t’t even go outside when it’s raining.”g.”
Her husband adds: “Thehe kids have had to goo through their own fight,, not just physically but in their heads.
“Georgha still has a struggle every time there e is bad weather. That is something that will stay tay with her for ever.
“But they are fighters rs and we know they’ll get through it.”
Meanwhile Geordie wants to raise awareness of the importance of schools having defibrillators.
He is sure he would not be here without the efforts of vice-principal Mr Mulligan. “I just don’t know how to thank him,” Geordie says. “He saved my life.” Sharon adds: “My husband would not be alive today if it were not for that de defibrillator. They should be in e every school, workplace, sho shop, everywhere.” The British Heart F Foundation’s senior c cardiac nurse Chris Allen s aid: “It’s w wonderful they r recovered. It will have h helped that Geordie was aya young, fit man but both him and his son were helped by CPR. “We are campaigning to get more people trained in CPR and more schools and businesses to get defibrillators. It will save more lives.”