Cork great Kevin Hennessy 
A hurling great tells Seán Ryan how a long stint in hospital has led to a deepening of prayer
“Illness weakened my body, but it strengthened my Faith.” That’s how former Cork hurling star, Kevin Hennessy, sums up the transformation in his life from sport star to cripple.
Between 1979 and 1992, he played in nine All-Ireland hurling finals, winning six and losing three. Playing any position between midfield and corner-forward, he won minor (1979) and under-21 (1982) medals before ascending to the senior ranks and winning a further three medals (1984, 1986 and 1990), while also adding a club all-Ireland with his native Midleton.
Along the way, he registered the quickest goal in hurling final history, when he slotted the sliotar past Galway goalkeeper, John Commins, in the 1990 decider, after just 48 seconds.
Golf
Upon retiring from the inter-county scene, he put his competitive nature to work at golf. A member of the East Cork Golf Club, he started off on a 16 handicap and eventually lowered it to nine, bagging the club matchplay title among other trophies. He had just bought himself a new set of clubs – an “expensive investment” as he admits – when illness called a halt to his sporting ambitions, and led him down a path of pain, involving more time in hospitals than he ever spent on hurling fields or golf courses.
First up was a hip replacement, probably a legacy of his sporting career. It should have been a routine operation, but it wasn’t. A letter informed him that the replacement was faulty and so he had to undergo the operation again. Two years later, he was visited by cancer – the disease he had secretly dreaded. As one of nine children – seven sisters and a brother – he had at one time morosely speculated on the likelihood that at least one of the siblings would get cancer.
“I’m just glad that I was the first,” is his view now, “and, thankfully, the only one so far.”
Cancer attacked him in his brain – five tumours, each the size of a five-cent piece. That explained the severe migraines he was suffering, and the good news was that, although it was inoperable, the cancer was treatable. Good news at the time, but there was a sting in the tail, as he discovered 13 years later.
Treatment
The treatment involved a six-month spell in Cork University Hospital undergoing a mixture of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. As far as Kevin was concerned, the real heroes of this ordeal were his wife Una and his three children, Caoimhe, Seán and Megan. “They were terrific,” he recalls, “they were always there for my treatment, five days a week, same time every day. Going through a treatment they made sure someone was with me. My sisters rowed in to lighten the load, and they ran a roster to help my wife, who works in special needs.
“On Tuesdays, my treatment would be a shunt in my head, which took two hours, and on Fridays it would be treatment in my chest which would take 24 hours. It would be the same every week,” he recalls.
In the midst of this torment, Kevin discovered the comfort of prayer. “I was praying every day and was taking more and more to it, and I got solace from it. I try to live my life the way my mother raised me. I’m not a Holy Joe, but my own parish priest, Fr Denis Kelleher (he’s now in Aghada) and the former Bishop of Cork, John Buckley, who used to play for Sarsfields, would visit me.
“When you’re in hospital, you’ve a long day ahead of you, and with big gaps all day, you fill them with silent prayer. When I was first in hospital, I was 42/3 and then I asked the Lord to get me to 50, and then to 60 [he turned 60 in March], and then I’ll ask him to make 70.
“You’d get very religious. I’d be saying my prayers every morning and every night. And I might have a cry, because I’d be thinking: ‘Jesus, I don’t want to die’.”
The treatment was successful but, 13 years later, it came back to haunt him. It first materialised as a blindness in his left eye, and a loss of power down his left side, which led to an inability to dress himself, or even hold a spoon in his weakened hand.
SMART syndrome
Further tests revealed that he had acquired SMART syndrome. “I had never heard of it, and when they showed me a scan of my brain, it looked like a ploughed field, with a white line coming down and hitting one of the furrows. They told me I was number 84 in the world with this syndrome, but that it was not life-threatening.”
SMART stands for stroke-like migraine attacks after radiation therapy. It is a result of all that radiation he endured as treatment for his cancer in 2006. Most patients don’t live long enough to fall victim to SMART, with susceptibility thought to be between 12 and 14 years after radiation. Kevin is heading towards 15.
Last year he won a Nissan Qashqai in the local revenue staff credit union draw, but he has yet to drive it. “I’m crippled,” he admits, “I can’t walk properly, and I am very grateful to my wife – she drives me around the place. And Megan’s child, JJ, he keeps me going now.”
As for regrets about the time he devoted to sport, he is adamant: “None, I’d do it all again. Sport was great to me, and I owe it nothing.”
He ends our conversation on a hope-filled note, which is a good reflection of the battler he is: “I’m hopeful that I’ll be back driving soon, and back to work in Revenue. I know I’m susceptible to the virus, but I’m on the list for the vaccine.”
