Dervla Kirwan Quotes

I've been operated on 13 times.

I've just had an operation, but nothing too serious.

I don't like surgery. I don't like elective surgery, I don't like surgery that you have to have.

It was during a cosmetic procedure that I first had painkillers.

I had actually hurt my neck, and because I went a while without getting it taken care of - it was pushing up against the back of my heart - and because I have heart issues, they thought it was this whole big deal. So I spent a good three days in the hospital, two nights in the ICU.

Everybody, sooner or later, will have to go under the knife. Let's hope they make out as well as I did.

When my daughter was ill in Great Ormond Street, it was the darkest period of my life.

I always knew I wanted to be a character in the movies. When I was growing up, I had to have a lot of surgery, and I spent a lot of time recovering at home and in the hospital. Watching movies took me away from my own problems and gave me a total escape.

To the patient, any operation is momentous.

I had my appendix removed in my 20s. I was in the middle of a play with Helen Mirren at the Royal Court Theatre, a fabulous career break. Then two weeks in I began suffering the most horrendous pain and had to pull out. Sadly, by the time I'd recovered, the show's run had ended.

The downside isn't really injury, fear of injury or the process of fighting back from injury. The downside, the very worst thing in the world, is surgery.

The first five to six years of my life were spent in and out of the hospital.

I had open heart surgery, exploratory surgery in my stomach, bilateral chest tubes... all this stuff.

When I was a toddler, I fell ill with diphtheritic croup and was taken to an isolation unit. One of my earliest memories is of being on my own in a tent surrounded by steaming kettles.

I have a great surgeon that put me together.

I've had more than 200 stitches taken in my head.

I did die once, for seven seconds, after a burst appendix.

If the people in the emergency room didn't know my name, they definitely knew my face because I was in there, like, every other week. I was one of those kids.

I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.

My biggest fears aren't with my work. My biggest fears are walking through hospital doors. Once you can face that, being fearless about your work is easy.

I was always in hospital as a kid: I had a tumour on my knee, lots of broken bones. I loved climbing trees.

I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical quality.

I was supposed to be on the Tonight Show but I broke my shoulder instead.

Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.

In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely understand.