Conamara man Tom Durkin emigrated to New York 40 years ago and established several successful businesses. Suffering from heart problems, he was recently fitted with a cutting-edge device that has changed his life. Tom tells BERNIE Ní FHLATHARTA about his surprise at learning it was made in Galway by Medtronic, a company that didn’t exist here when he left.

Most emigrants carry a bit of home in their hearts but one Conamara man has been implanted with an Irish-made heart device that is giving him a new lease of life.

And adding to Tom Durkin’s appreciation of the device that’s both defibrillator and a monitor, is the fact that it was made by a company which has three plants in Galway, one of them its Irish HQ.

When Tom Durkin emigrated to the USA in 1985 as a young man in his twenties, he wasn’t thinking about his future health. And why would he when he was excited about starting a new life in the city that never sleeps?

In the early 1980s there wasn’t much in the line of work to keep him in Galway,  and like so many others, he headed for distant shores.

Little did he know then, that almost four decades later, he would be very grateful for medical advances and pleasantly surprised that the origin of this particular device could be traced back to Ireland.

It’s an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) made by Medtronic PLC, the world leader in cardiovascular stents and implants. The US company has a number of Irish bases, none of which were here in the mid-1980s, when Tom emigrated.

Tom, from Éanach Mheáin in the Conamara Gaeltacht, admits he had itchy feet and a yen for a fresh start, preferably in the United States, where his father, also Tommy, had been born.

“There was no medical company like Medtronic in Galway when I left and at the time, I couldn’t imagine that anything like it would be based in the city I was leaving! A lot of people my age were leaving, so I decided to give it a go for a few years,” he recalls.

Tom and his wife Ann, from Killimor, never intended to settle in the States but three grown-up daughters later, as well as a thriving retail business, it doesn’t look like they intend returning anytime soon.

They both embraced the opportunities the States offered and have no regrets about leaving their homeland when they did. However, Tom says their hearts are in Ireland and they try to visit as often as they can.

Tom, who turns 66 this summer, had his first heart attack at the age of 38. Apart from this being a scary event in itself, he had good reason to be very concerned as his dad had died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1986.

Tommy, a national school teacher in Conamara, had taken early retirement and emigrated to Boston with his wife, Angela and their two youngest children, Ciara and Pierce just a few months before his unexpected death. In fact he died in the first day of his new job.

“If the medical advances available today were there then, my dad might still be alive,” Tom says. “I know now that coronary stents were being developed in the mid-1980s but they weren’t commonly available. I don’t think nitro-glycerine was being prescribed for cardiac patients then, either.”

After Tom’s first heart attack, he gave up smoking and took a keen interest in learning about heart disease, especially as his then cardiologist told him that advances in medical devices were rapidly coming down the line. For example, there have been great improvements to stents since Tom had his  inserted after his first coronary event. He remembers being put on a course of strong antibiotics post-surgery, as a preventative measure against infection.

Pictured: Tom at his home in Long Island with his dog Lacey. His father, Tommy, died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1986. His son feels if the medical advances that are available now had existed back then, his father’s life might have been prolonged.