When Fergus Farrell suffered devastating damage to his spine following a work accident in 2019 he was told he’d never walk again. He defied expectations and is now planning a major walking fundraiser in the US next year. It hasn’t been an easy journey for Fergus, but the father-of-three tells JUDY MURPHY he has never been happier.

“I’ve had two lives. Before the spinal injury and afterwards,” says Fergus Farrell of the accident on October 26, 2018, which altered his life irrevocably.

“I was unlucky but lucky,” adds the Athenry man. “It changed my life for the better, even if it took me a long time to get there.”

After the work accident which occurred when he was lifting a heavy bench, Fergus was told he would never walk again.

Visualisation, determination and an extraordinary work ethic got him back on his feet – and then some.

Less than a year after leaving the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dublin where he had been treated, the former rugby player walked 206km across Ireland, raising €65,000 for the Centre.

In 2022, he embarked on an unsupported row from New York to Galway with his rugby friend Damian Browne. Fergus didn’t complete that journey, but rowed 1,000kms in challenging conditions, learning valuable lessons along the way.

His just-published book, Rebuilding a Man captures the journey of someone who had previously espoused Celtic Tiger living.

“Before the accident, I thought I was doing really well but it was a very closed life,” says Fergus the day after the book was launched in Galway.

Married, with three young children and his own coach business, life seemed idyllic for Fergus, then aged 39, in 2018.

“The nice cars, good kids and building the dream home. I had it all, on the outside,” he says.

But his business was in trouble, although he kept his financial worries hidden from those he loved. Fergus was trying to keep the show on the road and was under pressure.

When he damaged his spine, lifting a work bench in the bus-yard in Athenry, everything changed.

Paralysed below the waist, this once-independent man was now totally dependent. He lay in his hospital bed wondering, ‘where am I going? What am I doing?’

Those questions related to his business worries, but more importantly, to himself and his unhealthy lifestyle.

Having been told he’d never walk again and determined he would, a new reality began to dawn.

“I thought ‘the better I look after myself, the better I’ll be for my kids and my wife’ at the time,” says Fergus, who is now divorced.

He doesn’t spare himself in the book as he describes the struggles, anger, terrible despair and occasional madness on his road to physical and mental recovery.

The reader travels with him as he attempts to get back on his feet and rebuild his life – with setbacks en route.

Since the accident, he has no feeling in his legs, but has constant nerve pain, which is worse when lying down. Fergus who is currently on 16 tablets a day, takes oxycontin for sleep if he’s had a run of insomnia.

The dosage was far higher immediately after the accident and while that affected his memory, he knows he made mistakes.

Pictured: Fergus Farrell whose book ‘Rebuilding a Man – My battle to remake my body and life, and become the man I was meant to be’, with Louise Ní Chríodáin has just been published by Gill. PHOTO: BRIAN HARDING.