It hit home when I was struggling to carry our child
IT’S scarcely believable that Michael Fennelly, the ultimate warrior on a hurling field for club and county — 13 All- Ireland titles and all — was playing all the time while suffering from a debilitating condition.
Today the 36-year-old speaks out in his first interview on what he went through attempting to manage that condition — Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) — which was first diagnosed when he was 20 years of age, back in 2005.
The former Kilkenny star and current Offaly boss — who lectures at the Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest — decided to speak up after being contacted by Arthritis Ireland.
As is a long-term condition that over 30,000 people in Ireland are living with, in which the spine and joints become inflamed, while sufferers are often hit with extreme tiredness.
There is no cure, and it can get worse over time, but it may also improve in some cases.
The condition is unpredictable. Fennelly, who has two young boys — Teddy and Billy — is worried about his fingers right now.
But equally, he feels that with the knowledge and work he has done, he would be better able to undertake physical tasks.
Once that would mean an immediate spasm, for example if he was under sinks plumbing with his father in the summer.
Buttons
“If I am tying buttons on my young lad’s shirt, within two or three buttons I am in pain on my fingers,” he said.
“They are stiff. There are aches and I am not able to do it.
“The fingers are a bit worrying, but you have to get on with it.
“People are always in worse-off conditions, cancer and all these things are out there, and people’s lives are being short lived, so (I) kind of look at the glass half full as much as possible.”
Fennelly, who only realised he had AS when his father Michael senior was diagnosed with it, continues: “People said to me in my 20s, ‘Do you know what your life is going to be like with the injuries that you have had?’
“The penny never dropped with me I suppose until I was 34 and I had to get a procedure on my knee to get cartilage cleaned out, ‘I’ll be back hurling after four weeks — happy days’.
“The next thing I woke up and I am told the knee is in a bad way. There is a lot of damage in there.
“They ended up doing micro-fracturing, so basically that was seven months of a rehab phase. I was on crutches for a month plus.
“I remember going up and down the stairs at home, and I couldn’t really do it for the first number of weeks obviously.
“I was trying to carry Teddy at the time and life was very tough.
“It really hit home massively that this is not good. I am struggling to carry my own child.
“Up and down the stairs, running and jumping, I definitely put a lot more weight on that now, and it’s important I’m able to do that for the next number of years.”
The Ballyhale Shamrocks club man has learned what some of the triggers are and how to manage the condition to an extent.
“If I am driving a long distance,
you’d be crippled,” he says. “I went from a jeep to a car and straight away my body is changing. My hip flexors are tightening, quite sore.
Severe
“My adjustment is probably a lot more severe than someone else’s. Small things that people would probably laugh at you really.
“Couches kill me. Chairs kill me. Even beds, if it’s a real soft mattress — that would set my back off straight away and I’d have breathing issues.
“There are a lot of things that would trigger it and it would be quite severe. I have to be careful.
“I know myself what works and what doesn’t, and I try to maintain it as much as possible.”
Fennelly’s back issues were well known as he spoke about them during interviews while he was fronting the Kilkenny challenge, but he never referred to AS.
“I didn’t really want to and feel the need to,”he says.“It’s a private enough thing.
“I’d nearly be saying, in one sense, ‘Why would people want to know about me having it?’
“I just wanted to get on with things maybe.
“Some people are suffering with it way worse than I am, in a really bad way for years, and it isn’t until they get a bit of support and realise there is a way around it. Mine is probably a more moderate condition.”
Fennelly was relieved at the time to get his diagnosis, even though he was just 20.
“My back was setting off an awful lot,” he says. “It was a relief that this is not just in my head.
“It’s a chronic inflammatory disease. Not ideal, but it was a relief that I’m not just making this up.
“The problem for me was I didn’t know anyone else who had it. That’s maybe where I would have struggled a bit to try and figure out what’s right and what’s not.
“If I was to do any manual work, I would be in agony after an hour, or half an hour.
“There is no way that I could do it. If I was to do it now, I would definitely be better. My body would like it more, but back then there was no way I could do any of that stuff.
“I’d prefer to be in the background, but I’ve had a couple of phone calls in the last couple of years from people who have had AS.
Stories
“Just listening to their stories and the problems they are facing, I probably felt I should create a bit more awareness.
“I bit the bullet when they asked me this year again, I said, ‘Here, I’ll do it’.
“I want to keep my body as healthy and strong as possible. I want to play golf when I am older.”