Àfter the death of Harvey Morrison Sherratt, focus is once again on the families in Ireland attempting to access scoliosis surgery - with calls growing for Tánaiste Simon Harris to resign.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has called for the Tánaiste to meet with the family of the late Harvey, who died last month after delays in accessing urgent scoliosis surgery.
The Hard Shoulder spoke to two families directly affected by the delays in scoliosis treatment to better understand what they are facing.
Scoliosis
Tony Foley - father of Ronan Foley from Killorglin, Co. Kerry - explained that his son has been waiting three years for surgery.
“We were told in 2017 that he needed immediate intervention for scoliosis curvature. We were told by our team at the time that he wouldn’t be waiting any more than three months.
“Simon Harris stated at that time also that no one would be waiting more than four months for this intervention.
“So the months go by, and suddenly there are five or six months gone by, a year gone, a year-and-a-half gone and it came to the point that after two years we had to do something.
"Our son was getting sicker more often - he was unable to fight things like cold and flus; he ended up in hospital a few times after getting dehydrated."
“One time he actually got a rapid heartbeat because his body was under so much pressure and his lung capacity was diminishing, so we had to do what we had to do - and we went public and took the media route.
“[Ronan] was waiting three years, by which time, two months before his surgery in October 2020, he had a curvature of 95 degrees, and we were shocked to find out just post -surgeryin December 2020 that his curvature had gone to 135 degrees.
"That was a significant increase in his curvature, and we were told that if he had to wait any longer - there would have been no benefit to doing the surgery.
“Our son was in very good health pre-scoliosis and has been in fantastic health since - we can’t thank our surgeon and the staff in Crumlin enough - but we dread to think of what the situation would have been if he didn’t get that intervention.”
Mr Foley explains how going public in March 2020 helped Ronan avail of surgery in December of the same year, but that his health deteriorated in the interim - and explained what delays they faced.
“We tried to make contact with Stephen Donnelly and Simon Harris numerous times but we got no reply at all, we got no help,” Mr Foley said of that period.
“We had 15 pre-operation appointments in 18 months leading up to surgery. Most of those appointments had to be redone because the time lapsed because we were waiting so long for the surgery.
“We had to do a journey of nearly 700km round trip in a day to up to Crumlin, and the agony in our son’s face to know that he had to endure going up and down.
“We had to stop in Adare and in Portlaoise - on the way up and down each time just to give him a rest on the floor of our vehicle because he couldn’t sustain the journey in full.”
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Mr. Foley empathises with Harvey's family.
“So whenever I hear of a new situation like Harvey’s situation, it really annoys me because their quality of life is completely diminished because of the waiting times.
“I think [Simon Harris] should resign, his name has been attached to this for far too long and I think he’s not committed to sorting this at all."
11-year-old Brianna Phelan Somers was born with spina bifida and scoliosis - her mother Catriona Phelan spoke of their exhaustion with the health system.
“We were waiting for five years for Brianna’s intervention. In 2022, she got a growth rod put in because she had become so bad and she was nearly past 100 degrees [in curvature].
!Last year we were sent to London for her to get her spinal fusion done, because they said they couldn’t do it here in Ireland.
“We were there for seven weeks over in London, we’ve come home, and we’ve had no care since we came home.
“We’ve had no follow ups, we went up in January [to Dublin] and her consultant told us that we shouldn’t have attended [that day] and that we were only put on the system so we wouldn’t get lost. That we are under the care of London, but London told us that once we were back in Ireland that our consultant [here] would take over.”
“We were lucky that she didn’t need it [the follow-up care] but [a London surgeon came over] and we were told that if an intervention [wasn’t] done, Brianna would become inoperable.”
The lack of follow-up left the Phelan-Somers family with an overwhelmingly negative feeling.
“I’m upset over it, disgusted that our kids are being left like this.
"It's just heartbreaking."
Written by Cara McHugh
