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 One of GAA star Peter Canavan’s earliest memories is as a child playing the game he has always loved - Gaelic football - but being out of breath and wheezing a lot. As his love for the game grew, he realised he had two main problems; he did not want his asthma to affect his performance on the pitch and he did not yet have an All-Ireland medal. However in 2003, Peter captained Tyrone to the All-Ireland football final, where despite being the underdogs against holders Armagh, the team went on to win the game, marking the first time that Tyrone had ever won an All-Ireland championship. Furthermore, Peter has also succeeded in achieving good asthma control to such an extent, that his performance on the pitch has improved and he is enjoying a better quality of life. Peter was educated at St Ciaran’s High School in Ballygawley and St Mary’s University College in Belfast. He plays club football for Errigal Ciaran and of course is captain of the Tyrone team. It was in the mid-1990s when during a televised game in which Peter was taking part, sports commentator, Jimmy McGee, mentioned on air that he had asthma. The player says he did he did not mind this on-air revelation, but acknowledges that until then, most people would simply not have been aware of the fact that he had asthma since he was a child. “One of my earliest memories was being in primary school and playing GAA but being out of breath and wheezing a lot. I remember I used to get a lot of chest infections. In fact I was off school a few days a month. I also had to visit the doctor a lot”, he explains. Over the years, Peter tried many things in an attempt to improve his asthma control, including different types of inhalers and being quite rigid with his diet. Sometimes it worked, he says, but sometimes it didn’t. “I thought to myself, this is something that I am just going to have to put up with”, he explains. A couple of years ago however, Peter was prescribed one of the available inhaled medications, which for him, made a huge difference. “Within a few weeks, my performance on the pitch had improved and I was experiencing a better quality of life”, he says. When he isn’t busy scoring points on the pitch, Peter can be found in school – he has been a teacher for more than 10 years. Having gone through it himself, he says he can now see the effects asthma can have on the young people he teaches. “I have often seen kids coming into school with notes saying that they cannot do PE because they have asthma”, he says. Peter says he looks forward to a time when ‘kids won’t need these notes’, but adds that for this to happen, there also needs to be greater asthma awareness among parents. For more information, contact the Asthma Society of Ireland on freephone, 1850 44 54 64. |
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