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Dr. Cillian Aydan O'Donovan

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Created on 2023-05-24 14:18:51 (#4116370), last updated 2023-05-25 (112 weeks ago)

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About

Name:	Dr. Cillian Aydan O'Donovan, OBE
Birthdate:	Sep 17
Location:	Belfast, County Antrim, Ireland
Website:	@ DreamLikeNewYork

Mini Bio

Dr. Cillian Aydan O'Donovan was born and raised in the seaside town of Bangor, located in County Down, Ireland where his dad (his namesake) ran the family pub with his grandfather, Aydan, and his mother, Maeve, was a seamstress who also ran a small dance school in the evenings. He was the middle child and only son, with both an older and younger sister, Catraoine who was four years older than him, and Caragh, who was two years younger. Cillian was a happy kid and couldn't fault his childhood, though he found growing up in a smaller town like Bangor could be quite insular in a lot of ways and he always had a curiosity for the wider world with no desire to remain there for the rest of his life. He was relatively young, around 12, when he decided he wanted to be a pilot because he loved planes and around 16 when he made a firm decision to join the British Royal Air Force when he finished high school after being in the RAF Cadets for three years. His dad and grandfather were understandably disappointed that the only male progeny from his generation (his dad's four sisters all had only daughters and no sons) didn't want to take over the family business and run the pub, but they were beyond bursting with pride with his alternative choice. His whole family were, especially when he got the highest grades in his school and breezed into RAF training college and ultimately ended up becoming a fully qualified doctor and RAF Medical Officer.

Luckily, his younger sister, Caragh, adored the pub and ended up taking over managing it when their dad had health complications that led to a significant surgery to remove part of his bowel. The family feared it could be bowel cancer with how seriously ill he was with rapid-onset symptoms but the diagnosis ultimately ended up being an hereditary inflammatory bowel disease that Cillian's grandfather and uncle were both diagnosed with at a young age. However, his dad never really had severe symptoms so was diagnosed much later in life at the time he had to have the emergency surgery. The health scare made Cillian's folks decide life was too short to work themselves into the ground without much enjoyment together, and with the encouragement of their three kids, their dad semi-retired and handed management of the pub over to Caragh and they went on a round-the-world trip seeing all the places they dreamed of together. His other sister, Catraoine, followed in their mum's footsteps with a love of dance and ended up being selected for the Royal Ballet in London where she performed for five years before opening a second franchise of her mum's dance studio in Mayfair, London.

During high school, Cillian began to have an awakening that he was sexually attracted to guys after hooking up with lad from another school at his cousin's birthday party. Although he didn't have sex with him, he definitely wanted to though all this was before gay people were allowed to openly serve in the British Forces so Cillian tried to stifle the urges. When that didn't really work, he convinced himself he was bisexual and would only date girls, but be discreet with hooking up with guys so it wouldn't jeopardise his military career. His first serious relationship ended up being with one of his female best friends from high school, Siobhan, and they stayed together even once he moved to England for RAF training and she moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to attend university to study paediatric nursing. The plan was for them to live together once his Foundation Years training at the RAF College in Cranwell was complete and Siobhan could transfer to a uni closer to where he was posted. It wasn't meant to be and the distance proved to be too challenging at their young age while they were discovering their new-found freedom away from home. He had confided in her while they were still in school that he was bi and she had been supportive of him. Being away, though, Cillian's attraction to men strengthened and whilst he would never have cheated on Siobhan, he started to think maybe their relationship had only functioned because they were such good friends in school and suspected he was gay rather than bi. He was about to break up with her once he understood what he was feeling deep down, until she called him and told him she had just taken a pregnancy test and it was positive.

Panicked, Cillian flew up to Edinburgh to see her and go to a doctor's appointment with her to confirm the result. The pregnancy test had been accurate and it sent them both into a tailspin. Both realising neither of them were ready - or wanted - to be parents that young because they were dedicated to their chosen career paths, Cillian stayed with Siobhan while she had an abortion. They stayed up late into the night talking about everything and Siobhan ended up being the first person Cillian came out as gay to. They parted and vowed to stay best friends, a promise they stayed true to right to this day and she supported him through the toughest days of his life; things he couldn't have fathomed he'd ever had to face as a young naïve kid thinking he had life relatively worked out when they were together romantically.

Even after the laws changed at the turn of the Millennium to allow gay and lesbian citizens to openly serve in the UK armed forces, Cillian still feared backlash or judgement. It wasn't until much later when he was based in Oxfordshire after his second deployment and now qualified in Trauma Medicine, Aviation Medicine, and Aeronautical Evacuation that he came out officially when he fell in love with a librarian from Oxford University named Scott and they decided to move in together. Things got serious and he was the first guy Cillian took home to Ireland to meet his whole family. Soon after, they moved in together and began discussing marriage and having a family together. Just before Cillian was due to return to the Middle East for his third deployment and after being promoted to the rank of Squadron Leader, he proposed to Scott, who happily accepted. It made facing the separation and distance they were facing much easier to deal with.

That was when Cillian's life took a terrible turn when the Chinhook helicopter his team was flying to evacuate wounded soldiers after an explosion was shot down and crashed. Only he and one other Medical Officer survived, but he suffered a serious complete L1 lumbar spinal chord injury leaving him paraplegic and wheelchair-bound, with his legs completely paralyzed. Every aspect of his life changed in an instant. Not only did the tragedy leave him physically disabled, he was soon diagnosed with PTSD when he struggled emotionally and psychologically through his rehabilitation. His relationship with Scott crashed and burned when Scott couldn't handle the burden of caring for a disabled partner. After he was medically discharged from the RAF, he moved back home to Bangor with his parents and his whole family couldn't have been more caring and supportive but it was difficult for Cillian to be a burden on them, especially when, in the months prior to the crash, Cillian's grandfather was diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer and passed away while Cillian was still in a coma in hospital. Siobhan, still prominent in Cillian's life as his best friend, also moved back to Ireland where she invited Cillian to come live with her so she could personally nurse him through his rehabilitation. The final blow came when tests revealed that even though there was hopeful prognosis Cillian would recover at least some level of sexual function (albeit, likely impaired), the accident left him infertile, with no prospect of fathering children.

That was one of the hardest blows Cillian had to take and it sent him into a long period of deep depression where he struggled to even get out of bed, let alone face rehabilitation. It was Siobhan who intercepted one day when he came close to taking his own life with a gun. It was a terrible shock to them both, and his family, but it proved to be the wake up call he needed to pull himself out of the dark place and re-learn how to live. Siobhan and his sisters formed an even closer bond through his recovery, and they all pitched in to get Cillian a support assistance dog, a beautiful golden retriever called Clover. Together with Siobhan and his sisters, using his compensation money, Cillian formed a charity foundation to help LGBT+ people with spinal chord injuries recover some meaning and purpose in their lives through periods of rehabilitation and funding the provision of assistance support animals for them. His charity work led to him being awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) which he received at Windsor Castle, his family and Siobhan all there beaming with pride. Now, he has returned to work as a General Practitioner in Belfast three days a week, while spend his other days focusing on his charity work and remembering to keep living.

It was shortly after this that Cillian decided he wanted to learn more about his family history and jumped on the bandwagon of having his AncestryDNA tested. He couldn't have ever been prepared for what the results uncovered, something that would change his life more than his injuries ever could. Eagerly logging on to check to see if he really was 100% Irish blood, a 50% DNA match popped up for a guy in the USA called Merlin Larson... his biological son.