A Laois mother has outlined the heartache caused when she received a hospital appointment letter for a daughter who died almost four years ago.
Laura Horohan recounted the upsetting incident on Joe Duffy’s Liveline Show this afternoon.
She received the letter yesterday for a three-year developmental check and said she was in “floods of tears” when she read it.
“My daughter died over three years ago,” she said, adding that “you can only imagine the shock and upset that letter caused”.
Little Gemma passed away in Temple Street Hospital when she was 13 days old.
“I had a lot of post yesterday and didn’t realise the first name that was on it. It was only when I opened it, that I realised,” Laura said.
“I was in floods of tears… She died almost four years ago,” Laura added.
She rang the contact person on letter. “She did apologise and said she would refer it to her manager. She accepted it shouldn’t have happened,” she said.
“I was in convulsions when I was talking to the woman from the HSE and she was also quite upset,” Laura said.
Gemma was born in Kilkenny hospital and was transferred to Temple Street Hospital two days later.
She was born with two holes in her heart and her lungs never opened, Laura told Joe Duffy. “When she was born, she didn’t cry,” she said.
“Her little kidneys started to shut down,” she said.
“Our family and friends all got to meet her. We never got to hold her until she was five days old,” she said.
Charlie Gard
She sympathised with the parents of Charlie Gard – the high profile case of a terminally-ill child in the UK – and said she understood their struggle to keep their child alive as long as possible.
“We had to turn off the machine. We had to make that choice. You do it knowing that your child is not going to be in pain,” Laura said.
Listen to the full interview here.
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