Every day I ask myself why I’ve survived and others haven’t
SHERIDAN’S MENTAL FIGHT AFTER HIS VIRUS BATTLE
LITTLE more than a month ago Brendan Sheridan was fighting for his life on a Covid-19 intensive care ward – now he is facing a fresh battle.
The Oldham assistant coach and younger brother of Ryan, the former Leeds, Great Britain and Ireland scrum-half, was forced to spend two weeks in an induced coma.
Sheridan went from feeling “9-out-of-10 fine” to being rushed to hospital within a matter of hours, having shown none of the coronavirus symptoms before struggling to breath one afternoon.
The otherwise healthy 41-yearold was placed on a ventilator and later needed to be packed in ice to reduce his fever while his family had to rely on updates from the hospital.
While he recovered, Sheridan says the experience took a significant psychological toll and he has been referred to the Sporting Chance clinic to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’ve been really struggling with how to cope with it,” admitted Sheridan, who estimates that he has only slept for 14 hours in the past 10 days.
“A lot of people go into hospital with that and tragically don’t come back and, if that would have happened to me, I would never have been able to say a proper goodbye to my family.”
And he admits that getting to grips with that has been hard on him.
“That haunts me, and every day I ask myself why I’ve survived and others haven’t,” he said.
“Physically, I feel fine now – I’ve walked over 90k since I came out and they’ve even been telling me to slow down.
“But it’s hard to process everything else at the moment. I had a Zoom call with Sporting
Chance on Monday after being referred by Rugby League Cares and that has opened me up a bit.
“But it’s a tough thing to do.As rugby players you shrug off bruises, breaks and torn muscles, but you can’t see the tears on the inside.
“I’ve been carrying some mental baggage with me all my life and what this has shown me is that if I live for another 41 years, I don’t want to be burying that every
time I put my head on the pillow.” Sheridan, who was on the books at Sheffield and Batley before three successive cruciate ligament tears forced him to return to the amateur game, says he owes his life to the NHS staff at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield.
He said: “They are under massive amounts of stress but their work ethic is unreal. Those NHS staff members have become people’s families when they’re not allowed to see their loved ones in hospital.
“Then they have to take what they’re seeing to their own families and carry the mental baggage of so many people dying every day.
“They are unbelievably special people and I can’t thank them enough.
“Hopefully, to help repay them, I can enjoy the rest of my life and do the right things. I’ve got nothing but admiration for them.”
NHS staff have become people’s families when they are not allowed to see their loved ones in hospital