Amoung those at last week’s meeting to share their often harrowing experiences of travelling for emergency surgery was local mother Patrice Maguire.
Patrice, who lives between Belcoo and Letterbreen, recalled her traumatic journey and outlined the lasting impact on her health, her mental wellbeing and her young family.
In July 2023, just five weeks after giving birth by C-section, Patrice began feeling unwell around lunchtime and progressively became worse.
By the time the evening came, she began to suspect appendicitis and around 8pm she called the out-of-hours GP, who advised her to go to the emergency department.
Journey begins
“I arrived in at the SWAH and they assessed me brilliantly, they were amazing,” said Patrice, who stressed the staff were excellent throughout her journey.
Unfortunately, her suspicions were confirmed and at 2.30am she was told she was going to be transferred to Altnagelvin for surgery.
“That didn’t happen unfortunately. I was lying on the A&E trolley all night long in extreme pain, I drifted off to sleep,” she said.
Patrice was asked by a nurse at around 4am if a family member could drive her to Derry, so she text her brother to avoid waking him suddenly.
Another nurse then reassured her, however, that an ambulance was on its way and would arrive very soon.
The ambulance never arrived, and she drifted in and out of sleep in the early morning, only to wake up with a high fever and intense pain shortly before 8am. She was eventually given morphine.
“My brother arrived in the meantime, I was crying in pain and moaning and groaning. He was shocked to see me lying like that,” she said.
The paramedics then arrived around 9am. She said they were very kind during the ambulance journey.
“The paramedics did say to me whenever I arrived that I would have to go through the whole process again,” she said, which is exactly what happened.
Having waited on the ambulance trolley with the paramedics on a corridor at Altnagelvin A&E for around an hour-and-a-half, Patrice was then handed over by the paramedic crew to the A&E nursing staff who brought her by wheelchair to a chair in a waiting area.
“Unfortunately I sat on that chair all day long in complete agony,” she said, explaining she was left for hours in excruciating pain.
A surgeon eventually arrived and immediately apologised multiple times, though Patrice reassured him it wasn’t his fault. After a difficult examination, she was sent for a CT scan around 5.30pm.
The results, received about an hour later, confirmed her appendix was perforated. However, she had to continue waiting through the evening in the noisey waiting area.
Patrice said she eventually managed to get up to stand beside an open door as she couldn’t cope with the heat in the waiting room.
“I got the attention of a nurse and I told her I didn’t think I had long left,” she said.
Emergency surgery
The nurse who examined her said her heart rate was over 200 and alerted a surgeon. She was rushed into theatre.
“I remember the faces of everyone in that operating theatre. I remember them looking at me really worried but I wasn’t worried, because I was getting surgery and I knew that is what I needed to get,” she said.
The next morning, the surgeon informed Patrice her appendix had been severely gangrenous and there was pus everywhere. She later learned 10 litres of saline solution were needed to flush her abdominal cavity. She also found out she had had sepsis.
After spending nine emotional days in hospital in Derry away from her newborn son in Fermanagh, when Patrice – who had a large incision with 37 staples – was eventually discharged home, she was heartbroken to realise she was no longer able to breastfeed.
“Unfortunately I am still suffering today,” she said, pointing to lasting pain, as well as anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder.
Patrice strongly disputes claims the removal of EGS from the SWAH had not resulted in any adverse outcomes for local patients.
“I do know it has had an effect on our family and our lives, so I don’t believe that there are no patients who have had negative effects,” she said.