‘I knew in my heart’ Charlie Bird speaks about motor neurone disease diagnosis

evoke.ie:

Former RTÉ journalist Charlie Bird has revealed that he has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Bird, who spent 38 years with RTÉ, said he first realised something was wrong last St Patrick’s Day when he was unable to speak to his wife during a walk in the mountains. ‘I’ll never forget the first issue I had with my voice,’ Bird told Joe Duffy on RTÉ’s Liveline. ‘I was walking in the mountains with my wife Claire and my beautiful dog Tiger.

We were eating a sandwich in a very remote place in Wicklow and I got a coughing fit like I never got in my life. It really floored me. ‘Basically, since St Patrick’s Day, things have been coming and going with my voice and I knew there was something.’ Bird said that, long before he was diagnosed