RTE journalist Claire Byrne has revealed how she nearly died from meningitis as a child and told how her parents stood over her bed while she given the last rites.
The 44-year-old spent a month in hospital with the disease which struck while she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl.
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And thinking back on it now, she admits that she would struggle to handle what her parents went through if one of her kids became that ill.
Remembering it, she told the Irish Times: “For me it was just I was sick and I got better.
“But now, when I look back and think that my parents had to stand by the bed while I got the last rites, I think, God, if I was going through that with my kids, I don’t think I’d be able to think about it.”
The Laois native said it had a huge impact on her and her family while she was still at school.
‘HUGE IMPACT’
Asked if she could recall being given the last rites, she said: “There were oils and strange prayers I didn’t understand.
“My mother still doesn’t like to talk about the meningitis incident.
“I was tired for about two years.
“Tired and exhausted, coming home from school and falling asleep.
“Yeah, but I should have lost my hearing or lost a limb or lost my sight.
“I was extremely lucky. Being a bit tired is actually not a bad outcome.”
‘KILLED ON FACEBOOK’
Byrne who now hosts her own RTE current affairs show, Claire Byrne Live, has had multiple jobs in presenting including shows on TV3, Newstalk and RTE.
The journalist said that despite her fame she likes to live a quiet life and doesn’t have an active Twitter account.
She said: “I just snoop around. I think you need to know what people are saying. But I’m constantly questioning if things are true.
“As for Instagram, I just don’t get it. It’s all people selling stuff. I think, What is this? Why am I subjecting my brain to this sewage?
“The online world is very strange. I was killed on Facebook there recently.
“The day of the European election results I was down in the RDS, and my sister sent me a screen grab from Facebook announcing my death – ‘Claire Byrne’, a black and white picture and ‘1975 to 2019. Family Are Shattered.’
“It was some company selling diet pills or something. I asked Facebook to take it down, and eventually they did, but they just spring up again and again.”
PRIVATE LIFE
The mum-of three who is married to IT specialist, Gerry Scollan, said she doesn’t do many interviews as she doesn’t like people to know the details of her private life.
She said: “I suppose it was because when I first came into the shiny happy world of breakfast TV I thought, God, this is great, everyone is interested in my life, so I told them everything.
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“I went through a marriage break-up, and all of these things happen in your life, and you realise that you have to explain what happened because you told people things.
“So I just said, you know what? It’s time now to pull back a little bit.
“I have three small children, and they’ll probably never work in media, and I don’t want to divulge any details of their lives.”
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