When personal finance expert Eoin McGee pops up on Claire Byrne's show, it’s usually to discuss, well, personal finance. But this time there was no pension advice on offer. This time, you could say, it was personal.

Six years ago, Eoin had a major health scare – while getting out of a taxi he fell and cracked his skull in three places. As he put it to Claire, "I fell out of the taxi and the first thing to hit the ground was my head." The 36 hours immediately after the fall were confusing for Eoin and busy for his doctors:

"It happened on a Thursday evening. I was moved up to Beaumont for surgery on Friday and really the first time that I came around was on Saturday morning. And it was kind of in and out and in and out for that 36 hours."

When he regained consciousness, Eoin saw the surgeon at the end of his bed, talking to his team. The first thing he asked him was when he’d be able to go back to work. The doctor told him it’d be six to eight weeks.

"I said, 'Doctor, doctor, you don’t understand. I work for myself. I need to know when am I going back to work.’ And he turned to me and he said, ‘No, you don’t understand. I have you here alive.’ And he walked off."

When the doctor and his team left the room, it dawned on Eoin that he was lucky to have made it through his injury and subsequent surgery. And he decided, sitting there in his hospital bed, grateful to be alive, that he needed to make some changes in his life, both personal and professional:

"On the personal side, I was in a relationship I wasn’t happy in and I’m now in a very happy relationship, so that was one big thing that changed. On the personal side, I had built up some weight and was very unhappy with the weight and I decided – I had done nine marathons, and I said I want to do another marathon and I’m going to tackle the weight."

Eoin spent almost two full months effectively bedbound. But – spoiler alert – he did do another marathon. He spent his time in bed thinking about how he would change his lifestyle and worrying about work:

"The biggest question in my head wasn’t, ‘Am I going to get better?’ At that time we had three staff. I had three people working with me. One of them had just gone on maternity and one of them had only joined me two weeks before the accident. And I sat there going, ‘Is there going to be a business for me to go back to?’"

Eoin decided that he either needed to sell the business or bring someone else in to run it. He wanted to make sure he was doing the sort of work-related things that he actually enjoyed, rather than the stuff that felt too much like a chore. Now, the business is bigger, not smaller, but Eoin has someone else running it, while he does the things that he loves:

"What do I love about my work? And what I love is working with clients. I love being face to face. And the other part of my work is I love coming in here and talking to you and I love doing TV shows and my Instagram on a Saturday and writing books and all of that stuff. And the corporate speaking, that’re the things that get me out of bed in the morning."

Claire makes the point that many people who go through the sort of health scare that Eoin experienced start off determined to change their lives for the better, only to gradually slip back into their old ways. He says that – so far – he's sticking with the changes that he’s made – he's working in the areas that he enjoys, he’s lost weight and he ran the New York marathon 18 months after the accident. And his relationship with alcohol changed too – but not too much:

"I know you hear lots of people will sit here in this chair or somewhere else across the station and say, 'Yeah, I've given up alcohol and it’s changed my life.’ I’m back on it. I missed it. After 18 months I said, ‘No, I want a life with that, I don’t want a life without it.’ And for me, that was the choice I made."

Any lingering issues, Claire wonders? One or two, to be sure:

"I had a headache for a year. And I say a headache – it wasn't that on and off. It wasn’t like, I got headaches. I had the same headache for about a year."

Eoin’s taste and smell – which disappeared after the accident – are mostly back at this stage. So, he made a good recovery, and he credits the medical team for their good work on him.

You can hear Claire’s full conversation with Eoin by clicking above.