Hospital’s work inspired Solihull man to help others

Uncategorised • 21st May 2014

Laughing and joking with patients on Ward 18 at Solihull Hospital, volunteer Stephen O’Brien looks like a different man.

Just two years earlier, in March 2012, Stephen spent three-and-a-half weeks at the hospital after suffering three seizures caused by alcohol.

The 42-year-old was taken to hospital within minutes of his father calling an ambulance, and the episode finally kicked Stephen into quitting his drinking for good.

During his hospital stint his mother Rosemarie showed her son a picture of him in intensive care – and the shocking photograph was the wake up call he needed.

“That picture scared me,” admits Stephen, who lives in Shirley. “I wanted a better life for myself. It hasn’t been easy, but now I have hopes for the future.”

But Stephen, who has been sober for two years and two months, doesn’t remember anything of the night he was admitted to hospital.

“My dad had woken my mum up during the night and told her that I had two seizures and I started having a third. That’s when my dad phoned the ambulance.

“I spent three-and-a-half weeks in there.

“I was having hallucinations – telling my mum I was going on holiday and thinking I was at the hairdresser’s.”

Stephen’s mum was by her son’s bedside everyday, while he battled with serious liver damage and alcohol withdrawal.

“Mum showed me this picture and I just turned my head to the one side and I just cried and cried. That was the kick up the backside for me then.

“I said to myself, ‘you’ve got to do something otherwise in six months you’ll be dead’.”

Growing up Stephen worked part-time at the wholesale markets in Birmingham.

Earning a lot of spare cash compared to his contemporaries, Stephen would spend his extra money on visits to the pub.

By the age of 16, Stephen was working nights full-time and would hit the pub straight after his shift.

“I thought of it as a social thing at first. You would finish work at 11.00am and think you would have a drink before going home.

“But one would turn into more and salesmen would be flashing the cash and buying bottles of champagne.

“Money was no object.”

Stephen continued this pattern into his 20s and was drinking every single day. But soon his health began to be affected, and he started having fits and seizures.

He moved in with his parents and was hiding alcohol in the flat, in bushes, in parks, and in the shared garden in a bid to keep his problem a secret.

“At one point I was hiding about 200 cans of lager under the bed,” he says.

“I would have to have a couple of cans after waking up just to get rid of the shakes.”

Stephen, who worked on the assembly line at Land Rover until 2004 went through five detoxes and one visit to rehab from 2004 to 2010 but all failed.

After two months in rehab in Aberystwyth, Stephen left to come home – but as he had 90 minutes to wait for his train, Stephen went into the station pub and drank several pints, before buying more for his journey home.

“When I got home I was straight with my parents and told them I had a few drinks.

“My dad answered the front door and he was wearing a baseball cap.

“I said ‘take that off your head you silly sod’.

“He took it off his head and he was bald as a badger.

“That is when he told me that he had been suffering with breast cancer.”

Stephen’s dad Francis had undergone treatment without telling his son.

“He did it to protect me,” says Stephen. “They thought if they told me while I was in rehab then it would send me over the edge. It really hit home.”

But despite the devastating revelation about his father’s illness, it wasn’t until a few years later that Stephen would finally take his life into his own hands.

Determined to get his life back, Stephen finally kicked the alcohol with the help of counselling after his three-week stay at Solihull Hospital.

On the ward, he got to know the staff, and they suggested he should come back and volunteer.

“I said ‘you’re having a laugh aren’t you’. But I thought I might give it a go.

“They only asked for three hours a week, but after I did it I wanted to do more.

“I was working on the ward where I had been a patient, which was a big inspiration to me. You would get people coming in with the same problems as me.

“I would sit with the patients and talk.

“Eventually they would slowly open up to you and I would explain that I was a patient here. I could really relate to them.”

Now Stephen has been honoured by the Heart of England Trust, which runs Solihull, Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals, which named him Volunteer of the Year 2013.

“I couldn’t believe it. It gave me such a big boost,” he says.

“My mum was really proud.”

Since then Stephen has had a number of achievements at Fircroft College in Selly Oak, including mentoring and counselling qualifications.

“I came out of school with nothing – to achieve what I have in the last few months has been amazing.

Now Stephen can finally look forward to the future for the first time in years, and hopes to make mentoring and counselling his new career path.

“I’m just grateful to my family for all their support. They never gave up on me.”

Alcoholism, the more serious of the disorders, is a disease that includes symptoms such as:

* Craving – A strong need, or urge, to drink.

* Loss of control – Not being able to stop drinking once drinking has begun.

* Dependence – Withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and negative emotional states such as anxiety, after stopping drinking.

* Tolerance – The need to drink greater amounts of alcohol to feel the same effect.

The shocking truth:

* It is estimated that 2.6 million children in the UK are living with parents who are drinking hazardously and 705,000 living with dependent drinkers.

* In England in 2011/12 there were 49,456 hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver disease.

* Liver disease is the only major cause of mortality and morbidity which is on the increase in England whilst decreasing in other European countries.

* Deaths from liver disease in England have reached record levels, rising by 20 per cent in a decade, with alcoholic liver disease accounting for over a third (37 per cent) of all liver disease deaths.