{"id":8307,"date":"2026-04-23T21:40:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T21:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/?p=8307"},"modified":"2026-04-23T21:40:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T21:40:48","slug":"on-the-way-to-cover-pope-franciss-funeral-i-felt-dizzy-and-had-this-odd-metallic-taste-in-my-mouth-i-didnt-realise-it-then-but-i-was-in-the-middle-of-a-medical-emergency-that-could-happen-to-any","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/?p=8307","title":{"rendered":"‘On the way to cover Pope Francis’s funeral I felt dizzy and had this odd metallic taste in my mouth – I didn’t realise it then, but I was in the middle of a medical emergency that could happen to anyone’"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

In Rome to cover the funeral of Pope Francis<\/a> for the Mail, Philip Nolan suffered a massive stroke. The extraordinary speed of medics averted death but left him semi\u2013paralysed… and so began a remarkable physical and mental battle to impose his will to live<\/span><\/p>\n

IT WAS the day before the funeral of Pope Francis in April, 2025 and the month was living up to its reputation, wet without warning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I got up, had a shower in my hotel room, and checked for the rain that had surprised me the previous evening as I walked up the Via Condotti to the Spanish Steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I set out for the Vatican and the majesty of St Peter’s Basilica, where I was to collect my accreditation for the solemn proceedings the next day.<\/p>\n

I stopped to buy Gillette Mach 3 razors, and remember thinking with a smile that they were as expensive everywhere as I tucked them into my blue knapsack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just then, the heavens opened but, after a quick scuttle, I found some scaffolding that offered cover, and ducked in out of the rain.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, though, I felt strange, in a way that to this day I find hard to describe. It was weird, as if I was outside my body looking in, as the world spun out of control.<\/p>\n

I decided the best course of action was to take refuge in a nearby caf\u00e9 and ride out the rain, and the dizziness, and the odd metallic taste in my mouth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Un americano e un croissant, per favore,’ I asked in my hesitant Italian, but no sooner had I heard the whoosh of the machine than I blurted out, ‘No, dottore, dottore’. I needed a doctor, now.<\/p>\n

Behind the counter, someone clearly sprang into action and dialled 112. The server dashed out and, rubbing my shoulders, he beseeched me to stay awake, when all I wanted to do was slump against the wall and sleep.<\/p>\n

Within minutes, an ambulance arrived and I was lifted onto a stretcher and carried out, before being sped through the streets to the Umberto I hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn’t know it at the time, but what started out so regularly was the last normal day of my life.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Philip <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Philip Nolan’s life changed forever on April 25, 2025\u00a0\u2013 the day before the late Pope Francis’s funeral<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In a second, under a nondescript scaffold a long way from home, I had a stroke.<\/p>\n

I HAD got the call from the editor the previous Tuesday as I wandered around Woodie’s in Bray, looking at bedding plants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pope Francis had died on the Monday, the Easter bank holiday, and given that I had written his obituary, and worked at his election in the Vatican in 2013, I wasn’t surprised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few consultations on timings later with the office administrator, I had my airline ticket \u2013 Aer Lingus out Thursday, Ryanair back Sunday \u2013 and a hotel sorted.<\/p>\n

I had been a national newspaper journalist for nearly 44 years, since I was 17, and you might think I was jaded by now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Far from it. I still get a thrill from the big story, from being a witness to history, and though I wasn’t as nimble as I used to be, I was excited to be asked to go.<\/p>\n

I arrived in Rome on the Thursday, and took the Leonardo Express train from the airport to Termini, the massive train station \u2013 among the busiest in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I bought an extra battery pack there (above all else, a journalist worries about permanent connectivity!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

I took a taxi to my hotel (everyone was gouging, I remember, because the city was full after the Pope’s death), dumped my luggage, and found a nearby caf\u00e9 bar where I had a panini, a pint of Peroni, and a Negroni, that Italian cocktail made of gin, red vermouth, Campari, and a slice of orange.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was huge, much bigger than you’d get at home, freely poured and half the price. ‘When in Rome’ \u2013 literally, I laughed.<\/p>\n

I was in bed before 10, nine back home, which is very early for me. Since I was slated to write 2,000 words a day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before I flew back, and planned to be at St Peter’s before the crack of dawn on Saturday for the funeral itself, I needed the rest.<\/p>\n

All this was going through my head in the ambulance, a journey I later learned was a code red \u2013 the patient is very critical, maximum priority, and needs immediate access to treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chillingly, one phrase stands out. There is, it says, a danger of death.<\/p>\n

The siren cleared all before it and we arrived at the huge Policlinico Umberto I hospital, the largest in Italy by area and the third largest by number of beds, and were met by a team of nurses and a triage doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was wheeled into a room where the polo shirt, a red one from Dunnes now covered in vomit, was cut off. Dignity went out the window as everything else was whipped off and I was completely naked as I was assessed.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"A <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

A nun (C) looks on as she queues to pay her respects to late Pope Francis, with a view of the Vatican’s St Peter’s Basilica, a day prior to the late Pope’s funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Strokes, it turns out, are different. The less common haemorrhagic ones are in a way more serious, and involve a bleed on the brain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mine was ischemic, which means no blood gets to part of the brain at all, leaving cells there to wither and die.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first couple of hours, as is the case with heart attack, are critical, and they need to know what they’re dealing with.<\/p>\n

They found my phone in my pocket. ‘Who should I call?’ a nurse asked.<\/p>\n

I heard a strange sound coming from my mouth; already, I couldn’t speak properly, but I could be understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I told her to call my boss, who wasn’t going to get the 2,000 words he expected, and to call my younger sister.<\/p>\n

‘Call Joyce,’ I said with some urgency. ‘Call Joyce’ And with that, I slipped into unconsciousness.<\/p>\n

In the background, a lot was going on. Joyce, understandably, was shocked. She didn’t know what medication I was on \u2013 no one besides me did, in fairness \u2013 but she did understand the gravity of the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our older sister, Annie, was on a golfing holiday in the United States, and our older brother, Mark, couldn’t get to Rome straight away.<\/p>\n

Joyce’s office, and my own, were brilliant. Hers said she had to go straight away, mine bought her airline ticket, and kept my hotel room free; just as well, since my entire family would take it in turns to stay there over the next two weeks.<\/p>\n

As Joyce went home to pack, I was in theatre. I had woken again and was under local anaesthetic only.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I recall being on tiered marble benching, but I think that bit is hallucinatory. Far from a Roman baths, a latter\u2013day Caracalla, it is much more likely I was on bog\u2013standard stainless steel.<\/p>\n

I do remember one thing, though. The doctor, surgeon, whoever, had a very calming voice, though he repeated the same phrase over and over. ‘Keep still,’ he said. ‘Keep still.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

I won’t bore you, because my medical notes go into detail about the size of needles and so forth, but I had a thrombectomy, which is the removal of the clot blocking blood flow to my brain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My right carotid artery was completely blocked and attempts to put in a stent proved fruitless. On the left carotid artery, it was, thankfully, more successful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A stent went in there all right, which is just as well, since they found 90 to 95 per cent stenosis. Effectively, that means it was almost completely blocked.<\/p>\n

I had an angioplasty too on my basilar artery, which supplies blood to the brain; in other words, it was opened up by a tiny balloon that went in on a wire through my groin, and I was taken to the high\u2013dependency unit, what we used to call intensive care.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Joyce was flying to Rome, and I can only guess at the loneliness of that flight. She and I were the last two at home, laugh like drains at the same things and have always been close.<\/p>\n

At 30,000 feet, without phone or wifi, she had no way of knowing how I was doing. On a Friday in April, one that had started so normally, she had to face the unthinkable. When this plane lands, I could be told that Philip is dead.<\/p>\n

Well, I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t in great shape. Joyce arrivs very earlyed too late to be allowed in to see me, and was told in fact she couldn’t do so until Saturday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By then my niece Katy also flew in from Surrey, and both waited patiently outside. I was perplexed in the unit. How had two wall clocks stopped at exactly the same time?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The truth dawned on me. Only one had, but double vision, thankfully temporary, is one of the most common stroke symptoms of all.<\/p>\n

Come five o’clock, and after me wailing like a banshee for the staff to let Joyce in, she and Katy came to my bed and hugged me, although I was far from out of the woods.<\/p>\n

In the first couple of days after a stroke, the swallowing mechanism can be impaired, so even water was thickened before I was allowed to drink it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More importantly, the threat of pneumonia is ever present. Death had been shown the door, but he was reluctant to go through it just yet.<\/p>\n

Annie’s golfing holiday in the States had ended, and she flew onwards to Rome. My niece Katy, Annie’s daughter, had gone home, but Joyce remained to overlap by a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pretty soon, my sisters learned at least one good thing: thanks to the speedy intervention of staff, there was no problem at all with my cognition, as I rattled off practical things, such as passwords for various online accounts, six\u2013digit codes for banking apps and so on. I even read a novel.<\/p>\n

There were issues though. A lump in my bed annoyed me and stopped me going to sleep, before I realised in shock it wasn’t a lump at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was my right arm, the dominant one I use to sign, to type, to drive, even to wipe. Now, I had a catheter and nappies.<\/p>\n

At 61, I was little more than a baby again because with two exceptions \u2013 a Romanian woman whose brother lived in Dublin, and Dr Mango, who showed up on rounds every day \u2013 no one spoke English either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For most of the time, it was difficult to be able even to ask to be put in a comfortable position in bed.<\/p>\n

On the Wednesday, Joyce went home and Annie took her turn, staying for another week. I had been moved by that stage to a ward of four beds, with three patients.<\/p>\n

One man was old, and his adult daughter smiled wanly at us when she visited; one day, he was gone. I still don’t know if he is alive or dead.<\/p>\n

The other man played loud music late at night, and spoke loudly to himself. To amuse myself, I decided he was a priest.<\/p>\n

On the second Wednesday, things started moving. Dr Mango arranged a transfer to a rehab hospital beside the Grande Raccordo Anulare, Rome’s ring road which I have driven many times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, I had done so just months beforehand. Now I wasn’t sure if I would ever drive again.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"In <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

In Rome to cover the funeral of Pope Francis for the Irish Mail, Philip Nolan suffered a massive stroke.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

That was the Wednesday. More people spoke English, including the speech and language therapist, and I smiled when I saw a new Pope elected. In normal times, I would have gone home, done a week’s work, and returned for the conclave.<\/p>\n

Instead, things were in train. Mark was talking to the Mail’s CEO, Paul Henderson, and they were liaising with the insurance company, which was liaising with Annie, and through them all, I was going home on Tuesday, May 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, and I’m not sure the doctor liked this, things moved a lot quicker than that.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, May 10, I had been told to be ready for 10am. Instead, three hours later, an ambulance pulled in to the hospital grounds. Mark and I got in, and we were taken to Ciampino, Rome’s second airport, where a small Lear jet awaited.<\/p>\n

He went through all the formalities with passports while I was stretchered to the tarmac, and then we both got on the plane for the three\u2013hour flight.<\/p>\n

With two pilots, a doctor and a nurse on board, we nosed onto the runway.<\/p>\n

Lying fully flat across the backs of three sets of seats, I looked down as Rome receded from view. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand. I was completely numb on the right side of my body.<\/p>\n

I had a big, big hill to climb, one not on my radar a fortnight before.<\/p>\n

One thing had gone right, though. I was going home. To Ireland anyway. My actual home? Well, that was going to take a little longer.<\/p>\n

See Part 2 for the inside story of Philip’s rehabilitation\u00a0journey<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Rome to cover the funeral of Pope Francis for the Mail, Philip Nolan suffered a massive stroke. The extraordinary speed of medics averted death but left him semi\u2013paralysed… and so began a remarkable physical and mental battle to impose his will to live IT WAS the day before the funeral of Pope Francis in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[520],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}