Emily O'Reilly

He had a long term partner.

So life was good in that period.

Yeah.

Until it wasn't.

Yeah, so it was Easter 2021.

So I was still working as European Ombudsman.

So when I was in Brussels, sometimes I'd pop over and see him on the Eurostar and we'd meet and we'd go out for dinner.

And I remember there was one day, one evening we were walking down Euston Road and Brian was limping.

And he said, I don't know what this is.

My foot is dragging and I'm going to see a neurologist and I'm going to see this, that and the other.

And one of the things I remember about this particular two-year period was that Brian kept being pre-diagnosed with things that he didn't have.

So at one point, his doctor pre-diagnosed him with motor neuron disease and spinal cancer simultaneously.

So every few weeks and months, he was getting these terrible speculative diagnoses.

So that was the first sign.

And then within a few months, he developed a heart arrhythmia.

And a few months after that, he developed what was called an acute kidney injury, which developed into kidney failure.

And then he developed an electrolyte imbalance.

Basically, there was a problem with his sodium, which had implications for blood pressure, which meant that he would have falls, which meant that he would break parts of his body.

So he had this whole constellation of illnesses that descended within a matter of months.

It was just extraordinary.