Mullingar’s Ken Maleady picked up an Everyday Hero Award at the People of the Year Awards in Dublin last Saturday night.
Ken miraculously saved the life of Mary Leech in this year’s Dublin City Marathon. It was a story about luck, heroism and how compassion and bravery saved a woman’s life. Mary fell ill with cardiac arrest near the end of the marathon, before her life was saved by Ken’s intervention.
“You have the vital minutes from what we call downtime. It’s crucial; you have three minutes to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, get the brain oxygenated and the heart beating artificially,” explained Ken, a cardiologist.
“The sequence of events with Mary and the way things happened… the timing was crucial. At an event like the Dublin City Marathon, where you have lots of personnel around, we were able to get a defibrillator quite quickly and you had an ambulance, so it couldn’t have happened any better. That had a big bearing on her survival,” he recalled.
Ken revealed how he knew Mary and her husband, Alan.
“I know Alan (Leech), Mary’s husband. We played football, underage, with St Loman’s, Mullingar, when we were nippers and he was a year ahead of me in secondary school. We kind of drifted off in life doing our thing and I hadn’t seen him for about twelve or thirteen years,” he said.
“It was very ironic on the day of the marathon that we both ended up running and I met him. I met him coming out of the Phoenix Park and just had a very freakish chat. Then, before I left, I asked him how Mary was. Don’t ask me why, but I did. Further on in the race, I met Mary and I ran with her for a while. I drifted off a little bit. I’m not that fast of a runner, but just happened to drift off a little,” explained Ken.
“I never thought anything more of it and I was looking to stretch somewhere along the way. But the Dublin Marathon is so well supported and I was looking for a quiet little corner! There was no gap appearing, but I stopped and at that stage, Mary must have gone by.
Lady collapsed on the ground
Then, when I was coming up, probably a mile or two from the finish line, I saw a lady collapsed on the ground.
“I didn’t know it was Mary until I ran by and looked back. Things proceeded quite quickly. When I got to Mary, she wasn’t breathing and her heart had stopped. Within a couple of minutes of good quality resuscitation, she was breathing again. It’s called return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) and when you get that, your chances of recovering improve,” added Ken.
Mary Leech was present at the awards nights and has made an amazing recovery from her frightening experience.
“I spent four days in hospital,” she recalled. “One day, I wasn’t awake for it, but after that, they did various tests and everything turned out fine.”
Asked how she is now feeling, Mary replied: “Grand, feeling good, back to normal, back to doing a little bit of running.”
Alan, Mary’s husband, recalled how he learned of what happened when he reached the end of the marathon.
“I only heard when I got to the finish line that Mary had been taken away in an ambulance and I didn’t assume it was that serious. I just thought maybe a dizzy spell, or whatever.”
“It’s a miracle, if you ask me. There were 13,000 people running in the marathon. I hadn’t seen Ken in thirteen years, but met him earlier and the fact that he ran on, met Mary and then stopped to stretch – it’s just a string of coincidences. It’s amazing really. He’ll be on my Christmas party list for the next few years, anyway!” he said.
Michael Lyster of RTÉ, who earlier this year was saved when he suffered a cardiac arrest, was on hand to present Ken with his award.
