On a Sunday night in May last year, Jennifer Cultra was preparing to start her training as an emergency medical technician (EMT) for the Ambulance Service when she got a call to say her oldest son Jack had been involved in a car accident.
The 22-year-old plumber was rushed to hospital where medics found he had serious injuries including a broken back, neck, hip and pelvis. He spent weeks in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and had to use a wheelchair for several months.
“It is the worst phone call you can receive as a parent of a child of that age," Ms Cultra said.
The 47-year-old, who is vice-president of the Camogie Association and chair of the Ulster Council took six months off work to care for Jack, whose accident happened while her younger son Fintan, now 17, was sitting his GCSEs.
“It is the worst phone call you can receive as a parent of a child of that age," she said.
“The first road traffic collision I went to in work (after Jack’s accident) - it was strange,” the mother-of-two, from Kilclief, Co Down, said
“I wondered how I would manage but I managed just fine because it was good to be able to help somebody - that’s what I like to do."
Although her son is recovering well, he has not yet returned to work.
Ms Cultra returned to her EMT training in November, but was struck down with coronavirus in early April. After an overnight stay in the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, she was bed-ridden at home for a week.
At one point during that week she became seriously concerned about her breathing.
“I sat on the side of the bed for about four-and-a-half hours,” she said.
“I couldn’t go anywhere else, I couldn’t make it down the stairs, and I just sat there shallow breathing. I should have rung for help, I needed help, but part of me was thinking ‘don’t ring for an ambulance, your colleagues will come, just try and work through it’.
“There was a bit of improvement by about day 10. I still certainly sounded like someone who was in the middle of an asthma attack. I could barely talk on the phone. I certainly couldn’t walk and talk.
"Day 14 I went out for a walk. I walked probably 100 metres and stopped a couple of times to get my breathing back. I met a neighbour at the end of my walk and I couldn’t really talk to them because I’d used all my energy to get there.
“I’ve recovered fairly well but my breathing is still not great. When I’m out walking I would be struggling a wee bit.”
She added: “I am a sea swimmer and I find that when I go into the water it takes me a while to regulate my breathing in the water.”
Ms Cultra said she has a lingering cough and has also suffered from significant hair loss
“I still have lots of hair but I’m probably down about 40 or 50%,” she said.
A fitness fan, she had no underlying illnesses and said the diagnosis “came as a shock”.
“I suppose you would say it was an occupational hazard for me,” she said.
"It’s very hard to avoid it in healthcare settings.”
She added: “I think because the hype is around numbers and positive Covid tests, once you don’t have Covid, once you’ve recovered people are like ‘she’s fine, she’s back to work’. It’s just there are a lot of lingering symptoms to it.”
Ms Cultra took around a month off while she recovered from Covid and was then deployed to front line care.
“In hindsight it was probably a bit soon,” she said.
During lockdown, she continued her EMT training with online lectures and returned to the classroom in June.
“My school days were often 10 or 11-hour days because I would do 40 hours a week formal study and I would usually have 20 or 25 (hours) of informal study on top of that,” she said.
"The writing up of my assignments all had to be done outside school hours.”
She graduated in July and is “loving” being back on the road.
While studying, she had to juggle her training with her camogie responsibilities.
“Lectures were maybe four hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon,” she said.
“Then perhaps I would have to go on a three-hour Ard Chomhairle Zoom meeting that night. Because we cover two jurisdictions, if the HSE (Republic’s Health Service Executive) or the Executive put out something new we were trying to have to keep up-to-date with both.”
She said the Ulster Council and Camogie Association had to look at how to manage staff, budgets, competitions and sponsors while no games were being played.
“I have found it tough at times but I am very lucky in the Ulster Council to have a wonderful team around me and they have stepped up to the mark,” she said.
Ms Cultra said clubs have adapted well following the return of competitive matches last month.
“My own club (Kilclief Ben Dearg)… they put in a new one-way parking system, they have hand sanitisers everywhere," she said.
"There is a good system in place and everyone is just very grateful to have their sport.
“It’s an absolute joy to go down to my own club again…particularly now that numbers have increased.
She added: “We have lots and lots of people coming to our club who haven’t played in quite a few years… They just feel ‘sure I really enjoyed playing camogie, let’s go down again’."
Camogie's Ulster Council and Ard Chomhairle had face-to-face meetings in Armagh and Dublin respectively earlier this month - their first since lockdown.
“Face-to-face meetings are important because things can get lost in translation,” she said.
“We do need that physical connection. We do need to see people.”
Ms Cultra said that as a healthcare professional she felt it was important for people to stick to guidelines around wearing masks in shops.
“There’s no hardship to wearing a mask,” she said.
"Yes they can get a bit uncomfortable but we wear them all day in work.”
She added: “I think the wearing of masks gives other people confidence…by wearing masks we are giving (vulnerable) people the confidence to go out.”
Despite a difficult year, she said she’d been buoyed by the support of her camogie family following her son’s accident.
“(People) were constantly sending messages - ‘I’m thinking of you and Jack, I’m going to do Clonard, I’m going to say a prayer, if there’s anything you need just shout’," she said.
"Even when I went back to games people were saying ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your boy’. Jack used to come with me…as a little boy. People knew my children at camogie because they were always there.
“If you have a sport like camogie you have friends for life.”
