After a traumatic experience with two major surgeries on his left eye last year, including a failed operation, cycling was the saviour that pulled the TV star from a deep depression.
“I was really down in the ditch and kind of lost all my spark. I had a first operation in February last year for a detached retina, but sadly that failed. It hadn’t stuck the retina back on the eye quite enough and it detached again. That meant a second operation, which was brutal but thankfully it worked. “
Anyone who has had to recover from big operations will know it’s hard to bounce back – not just physically but mentally. You end up in a dark hole and feeling sorry for yourself, and wondering why you can’t snap out of it. It was super-hard to get motivated to do work and people sort of knew that I wasn’t right.”
While it took the award-winning journalist 10 weeks to recover physically from the emergency vitrectomy surgery, the mental toll lasted much longer. Paddy, who also has glaucoma, was worried he was going to lose his precious eyesight again at any time – if a tear in the retina recurred and became too big, it could cause irreversible blindness.
Esta historia es de la edición March 14, 2022 de New Zealand Woman's Weekly.
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Esta historia es de la edición March 14, 2022 de New Zealand Woman's Weekly.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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