A mother broke down in the High Court on Tuesday as she told how they battled to resuscitate her 21-year-old daughter after she collapsed at home some three hours after he was discharged from hospital.
“I told her she was the best thing that ever happened to me. I told her she was my baby. She kept trying to smile. She took off the oxygen mask and said ‘I am so sorry’. I think she knew what it would do to me if she died,” she said.
Melanie Sheehan Cleary also told how her husband and ambulance crew tried to save Eve after she collapsed on the stairs at home in July 2019 hours after her hospital discharge and two days after she fell and hurt her leg and went to the University Hospital Limerick‘s emergency department.
She said she was thinking how she would break the news of Eve’s death to her five other children when she was told Eve’s body would have to be moved to the morgue as the UHL A&E department was busy.
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Ms Cleary’s parents, Barry Cleary and Melanie Sheehan Cleary, and her siblings, Kate, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Emma and Sean, all of Corbally, Co Limerick, have sued the Health Service Executive (HSE) over her death and for mental distress.
It is claimed that Ms Cleary was allowed to develop a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and that an opportunity was missed at the hospital to put her on the anticoagulant Heparin on admission.
The HSE accepts a formal risk assessment in relation to blood clots was not done but has denied all other claims. The HSE does not accept the failure to carry out the risk assessment was a breach of duty.
Ms Sheehan Cleary told the court how the day after her daughter died the hospital sought a meeting to discuss her death.
She told them she wasn’t ready but said she had her phone off during her daughter’s funeral and at the crematorium and there were missed calls from UHL.
A meeting was arranged at a Limerick hotel for July 31st, 2019, 10 days after Ms Cleary’s death with hospital representatives including the then chief clinical director of the UL Hospitals Group, Dr Gerry Burke.
At the start, she said, Ms Cleary’s weight and that she smoked 20 cigarettes a day were referenced, so ”we felt Eve was being blamed”. However, she said, her husband said that was not true and Dr Burke said you are right.
“He said Eve was failed from the minute she walked in the UHL door and there will be an investigation to say who failed,” Ms Sheehan Cleary told Ms Justice Emily Egan.
She said that, on behalf of UHL, Dr Burke “apologised for the death of our daughter”.
Ms Sheehan Cleary said Dr Burke “was crying and telling us how sorry he was. We went from that meeting believing we had an apology”.
She said that after Dr Burke retired the new chief clinical director, Prof Brian Lenehan, met them.
“I said what Dr Burke had said and he said it never happened. Their stance was Prof Lenehan had taken over and what Dr Burke said or had not said was irrelevant. It was devastating,“ she said.
Last year, she said, HSE chief executive, Bernard Gloster, sanctioned an examination of her daughter’s case but Ms Sheehan Cleary said it halted because she was told they could not contact Dr Burke.
Ms Sheehan Cleary said that all she ever wanted “was somebody to say they were sorry for what they did to my Eve”.
She said her daughter was triaged in UHL emergency department at 9.50pm on July 19th, 2021, but she was not seen by a doctor until 5.30am the next day. She was given a bed in a ward at around 3pm and was discharged at 8.30pm.
The HSE‘s lawyers have said the evidence from their side will be that Ms Cleary was so determined to leave that a discharge against medical advice form was prepared. The blank form was not signed but had a sticky note on it.
The case before Ms Justice Emily Egan continues.
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