Wally - I wanted to end it

parragirl · Wally - I wanted to end it

Full recovery...Wally Lewis with wife Jacqui yesterday. Picture: Tim Marsden.

By Ray Chesterton
February 19, 2008 12:00am

RUGBY league superstar Wally Lewis was so deeply depressed after a brain operation to cure his epilepsy he wanted to kill himself.

He said fears that his life was falling apart made him think suicide was the only way out.

"Suicide was something I thought of every two or three days," he said.

"I went to the jetty that runs off my backyard and I thought: Do I just jump off?

"Do I put myself in a bag filled with bricks?

"How do I do it?"

Lewis' life unravelled when he became disorientated on camera while reading the sports news of Channel 9 in Brisbane in November 2006.

It was something Lewis had long dreaded - public revelation of his epilepsy of 20 years.

Lewis has told this week's Woman's Day he struggled with epilepsy since he was 19 although it had always been a secret during his long football career.

"When the seizures did occur I'd sink down and think, 'How much longer do I have to put up with this?'," he said.

"When the on-air seizure happened I told myself, 'You're better off dead than going through that again'."

Doctors took a damaged piece of Lewis' brain, about 5cm by 3cm, during an operation which ended the seizures but plunged him into depression and thoughts of suicide as he recuperated.

He said one major factor against suicide was that his wife's brother had killed himself.

"I couldn't put her through that again." he said.

Jacqui Lewis says her husband has completely recovered from his ordeal. "Thanks to the operation he has control of his life again," she said.

http://www.news.com.au/dailyteleg.../0,22049,23237514-5006066,00.html