A TEENAGE girl who lost her sister and mum in less than a year is pleading for help with her dad’s disability care.
Sequana O’Brien, 16, is fundraising to pay for the treatment of her father’s “cluster headaches”.
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Dad Fintan, 53, suffers from fibromyalgia and has been battling a cycle of excruciating headaches for over two months.
The Westmeath teen looks after her dad but is too young to qualify for Carer’s Allowance.
This means the pair’s only income is Fintan’s Disability Allowance and Sequana’s Child Benefit.
Her mum Maeve, who used to care for Fintan, died aged 49 on May 1, 2022, after battling cancer.
And to add to the heartbreak, Sequana’s sister Realtin passed away on November 8, aged just 22.
Fintan’s cluster headaches started shortly after daughter Realtin’s died and have been “pure torture”.
Sequana told The Irish Sun: “My dad has had chronic pain since he was 26. Fibromyalgia. Lately he has been having these cluster headache attacks.
“Not many people know what they are. They’re very severe. They’re a 9.7 on the pain scale, and childbirth is a 7.5, for some perspective.
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“He is actually in the one per cent of people who get them bilaterally. Usually they’re just one side of the head, but he gets them all over.
“This has been going on for about two months now, since my sister died. She died on November 8.
“After that he wasn’t really sleeping. They were brought on
from sleep deprivation.”
Fintan has suffered an estimated 70 cluster headache attacks in the first seven weeks.
Some of these attacks have lasted up to six hours.
LONG HEADACHES
Sequana said there are “very simple” treatments for cluster headaches but her dad has struggled to gain access to most of them.
In recent weeks they have been able to acquire oxygen and private consultations with a neurologist in Liverpool, which has helped.
She explained: “Oxygen is something that we have now had him on in the last week and he is slowly improving on that.
“That can bring the attacks from three to four hours (in length) to 15 minutes.
‘VERY TIGHT FOR MONEY’
“We were left with absolutely no treatment for him for the first month and a half straight of them.
“It was seven weeks of pure torture. It really was.”
Sequana continued: “We’re very tight for money so trying to get him treatment for the cluster headaches — a lot of it isn’t covered on the medical card.
“So that’s why we decided we’d start a GoFundMe page, just out of pure desperation.
FUNDRAISER SUCCESS
“We had to go further afield and do a lot of private appointments and consultations with people in the UK and Liverpool because the services just weren’t here for the illness that he has.”
More than €9,000 has been raised so far, which Sequana says has been a “big stress reliever”.
She will use the donated cash to get Fintan more treatments and regular neurologist appointments in hopes of getting him out of this “cycle” of headaches.
She said: “You need to be able to stay on the treatments and once you come on the treatments you can slowly come out of the cycle.
“Then he will have to stay on preventatives for a couple of months after.”
‘MY GIRL’S A LITTLE ANGEL’
But Sequana admits there’s no guarantee the headaches won’t return again in the future.
Three years ago Fintan suffered a shorter episode of cluster headaches, lasting two and a half weeks.
That time, he came out of the cycle without treatment.
But this time around Fintan hasn’t been so lucky.
Sequana, who is also a talented make-up artist, said: “We never thought it could go on this long.”
Dad Fintan, who is an artist and shares images of his work online, praised his daughter for her support.
He told The Irish Sun: “I wouldn’t be still here without Sequana, she’s a little angel. She’s an absolutely amazing person.”
Donations can be made to Sequana’s GoFundMe page here.
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