A stroke left her unable to read or write – but Máirín Ní Bheacháin still followed her dreams to become a designer

Sat, 03 Apr, 2021 - 08:00

Ruth O'Connor

Máirín Ní Bheacháin has gone down many career paths. She is good at, and interested in, many things — from art and design, to literature and music — and has worked variously in the restaurant business, as a project manager and as primary school teacher. However, a life-changing event set Ní Bheacháin on a creative journey which now sees her work as an image consultant, stylist and public speaker who recently established a new accessories brand: Mise Collars.

Ní Bheacháin was a 35-year-old teacher and mother of two very young children when she began to notice pins and needles, feelings of weakness and loss of power accompanied by changes to her skin, persistent headaches and weight loss. Her hands began trembling and she often felt weak. “I’d be walking along and would suddenly go limp,” she says. “I was finding everyday things like pushing a buggy a challenge.”

Máirín Ni Bheacháin: "Sometimes it can be hard to get the right answers about your health and I believe that people have to go with their gut."

One day she was changing her baby’s nappy and asked her toddler to pass her the nappy. Instead of saying ‘nappy’ the word ‘banana’ came out. At this point, alarm bells were really beginning to ring. Despite numerous visits to doctors, no-one seemed to be able to tell her what was wrong with her and she began to get the sense that her doctor thought that she was a hypochondriac.

“My GP at the time reluctantly referred me to a neurologist who told me that I had a condition called ‘hemiplegic migraine’. I took the medication but it didn’t work,” she says.

“I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and I took a year off work as a school teacher thinking that, if my symptoms were due to stress, perhaps I might begin to feel better.”

Máirín Ni Bheacháin: "I was very disappointed and hurt to have been made feel that I was a hypochondriac or just a worrier — you have to be persistent when it comes to your own health."

Ní Bheacháin says that one of the reasons she tells her story now as part of her MoTalks service is to encourage others to be persistent when it comes to their healthcare.

“Sometimes it can be hard to get the right answers about your health and I believe that people have to go with their gut. I am well able to speak up for myself but I often think of people who maybe have a language barrier or don’t have a good support network. I was very disappointed and hurt to have been made feel that I was a hypochondriac or just a worrier — you have to be persistent when it comes to your own health.”

Máirín Ni Bheacháin: "I wanted to tell people that I was still the same person but I couldn’t speak. I still felt like me if that makes sense."

In 2016, Ní Bheacháin was back in work as a primary school teacher. She tried to speak to her students in class one day but no words came out. At this point she was sent to a stroke clinic but again they could find nothing wrong. “I was getting more headaches and the symptoms were persisting,” she says.

“I then went for a brain scan and my doctor rang me. ‘There is some anomaly,’ he said. ‘You need to get to Beaumont Hospital immediately’.”

Ní Bheacháin was told that she had a rare condition called Moyamoya which restricts the flow of oxygen to the brain.

“I was initially relieved that there was something wrong with me and that I hadn’t been imagining things,” she says. “It was all happening so quickly. I was told I was a ‘ticking time bomb’ so within a week I was in surgery.”

While on the operating table Ní Bheacháin suffered a stroke — waking up in intensive care unable to speak, read or write. While her speech returned soon afterwards she began a two and a half year rehabilitation journey to recover her ability to read and write.

“Firstly, I was delighted to wake up,” she says of the surgery.

“I wanted to tell people that I was still the same person but I couldn’t speak. I still felt like me if that makes sense. It was only after a while I noticed that magazine pages just looked like one big picture. It was then that I realised that I could no longer read or write.”

Máirín Ni Bheacháin: "I am young enough, I have my family, I have all the motivation I need so I just got on with it."

While she has been successful in learning to do so again (from the point of not knowing the alphabet and having to try to memorise the shape of numbers) she still uses technology for the blind to assist her to read and says that she misses the joy of reading for pleasure.

Ní Bheacháin believes that having chronic asthma as a child probably made her resilient but says that her resilience has been tested during her recovery journey: “When I was faced with the challenge of having to learn to read and write again I didn’t even think about it — I just got on with it.

Mise Collars by Máirín Ni Bheacháin, modelled by Julie Webster: “I give talks on styling for Zoom and I wanted to design something that would work with various outfits.”

"I am young enough, I have my family, I have all the motivation I need so I just got on with it. I do get frustrated now every now and then though when I struggle with something. But my family always reminds me that I am probably being a bit too hard on myself.”

While she says that she feels a bit "phoney” calling herself resilient (“We all have our individual challenges and we’ve all experienced extra challenges over the past year”) it’s clear to see that she is a real go-getter as evidenced from the three strands of work — her public speaking, personal styling through MoStyle and her new Mise Collars range of accessories.

“After the stroke I thought: ‘What am I going to do? Who am I?’. So I decided to follow my desire to be creative and now that I have found my thing I am absolutely loving it,” she says.

Her range of colourful collars is inspired by the new 'work from home' normal.

“With Mise Collars I’ve been on such an exciting journey between coming up with the designs and working on social media,” she says.

“I give talks on styling for Zoom and I wanted to design something that would work with various outfits.”

“It was important to me to design something that was not going to cost people an arm and a leg,” she says.

“I am a normal girl, I don’t have tonnes of cash to spend but I do love nice things. With these collars you can change up your look easily and quickly without it costing the Earth. I am very interested in sustainability too so I love the idea of changing the look of an outfit in a sustainable and affordable way.”

Mise Collars by Máirín Ni Bheacháin, modelled by Julie Webster: "The feedback has been amazing."

Her collars have already proven a great success with corporate customers looking to add to existing outfits for online meetings.

“The feedback has been amazing,” she says. “The collars are like a piece of jewellery that you wear to change up the look of an outfit. I feel that they’ll be even more popular when we are finally allowed to go out again because it will be such a joyous celebration.”