'So grateful': Offaly Camogie player completes remarkable return weeks after cardiac arrest

Offaly Camogie player Aisling Brennan returned to training just a month after suffering a cardiac arrest on December 29. 

The 27-year-old St. Cillian's player opened up about the incident with Sean Moncrieff on Newstalk this week. She reflected on the events of the day leading up to the incident just after Christmas. 

Aisling recollected: "I had gone up to a friends house and we were planning to hike the Devil's Bit, I don't remember a lot of it but I was in good form by all accounts. I was feeling fine, had symptoms and was planning to go for a walk that morning, then I suddenly collapsed."

Aisling says she didn't regain full consciousness until Near Year's Eve. "I had no triggers or memory of actually collapsing, it was a complete shock to the people around me as well, there was no indication that this was going to happen to me."

Luckily, her friends jumped into action straight away and Aisling admits she was 'fortunate' that there was three people in the house at the time. She said: "They started CPR immediately and were able to do two person CPR, they rang emergency services and had an ambulance on the way, they didn't panic and done everything right."

Aisling is hugely appreciative of their quick response on the day. She explains: "They had no healthcare of medical background, neither of them had ever performed CPR before.

The emergency services were guiding them through it on the phone but even to have the presence of mind to start CPR and recognise the seriousness of the collapse, they acted quickly and thankfully they did."

Two ambulances of paramedics arrived soon after and Aisling was airlifted to hospital in Limerick which took 15 minutes. 

She was then put into an induced coma in hospital as doctors told Aisling's family that they were taking every measure to identify the cause of the cardiac arrest. 

Aisling told Newstalk: "They were doing a lot of tests but the coma was just to give my brain and body a chance to rest and recover and because I hadn't regained consciousness, they didn't know the extent of the damage that was done."

She was then taken out of the coma just before New Years Eve but Aisling maintains that she has no memory waking up from it.

"It's all been accounts from my family really, they stayed with me in hospital until the minute I was discharged, the doctors told them to let me know immediately that I had a cardiac arrest and that I was in the ICU in Limerick, they had to repeat that many times."

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In the weeks leading up to the incident, Aisling was training for a marathon in Rome, playing camogie with Offaly and going to the gym a few times a week.

She insisted that if she was asked on December 28, that she was "feeling the fittest and most healthy she's ever felt in her life".

Although she has visited doctors and cardiologists since, Aisling says that investigations over the cause of the incident are still ongoing.  

"They made the decision to send me to the Beacon where I had a an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) inserted. It's like a little battery powered device and it's inserted right beside my ribcage with a trace somewhere into my heart."

The defibrillator will track and monitor Aisling's heartrate so if there is any reoccurrence of the cardiac arrest or an abnormal heart rhythm then it would deliver a small shock.

Aisling and Sean Moncrieff then discussed returning to normality for the camogie player following the medical incident.

Aisling admitted: "I didn't think this I was going to return to sport, I thought this was going to change my life, I work in the Mental Health Services down in Waterford and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to come back to my job either."

She paid tribute to the support that she received throughout her recovery as cites it as a major reason. "I think it was the support of my friends and family, I don't think there was a single person in my community that didn't send a message of support and that was huge for me."

Aisling says that playing sport again was always on her mind throughout the recovery. "Sport is a huge part of my life, once I had the ICD implanted, I was very eager to get back to it, my surgeon told my dad that I have a second chance at life and I have to live it and that's what I'm trying to do now hopefully."

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Aisling returned to Offaly camogie towards the end of January and despite the setback, it wasn't long before she picked up the hurl again and got involved in a few of the drills. 

She remembered: "I was gradually integrated back in, I was in a good enough place to get back in with the girls and on the panel so started back training and I played 15 minutes in the first game of the league. 

It represented a remarkable recovery for Aisling and she says very grateful to be back out there playing sport just weeks after the cardiac arrest. 

Aisling credits CPR for saving her life and has stressed how vital it is for people to improve their knowledge and have those life-saving skills. 

"The CPR courses are so important and they are so easy to organise within every community, it's a skill that everyone should have no matter what age you are, I was proof that it could happen to anyone."

Aisling says that she is taking the second opportunity at life with both hands. She said: I've returned to sport and work, I don't have the fear that it's going to happen again because you can't live your life to the fullest in fear. 

I'm just living my life now and I'm happy and so grateful because there's many people that wouldn't have survived like I did so I count myself extremely lucky."