Woman claims ovary wrongfully removed

A woman told the High Court yesterday that, when she asked Co Louth obstetrician Dr Michael Neary why he had removed her left ovary, he had shouted at her: "I didn't like your bloody ovary anyway."

Ms Rosemary Cunningham said she was very upset by Dr Neary's manner towards her just after she had undergone an operation to remove a ruptured tube and her left ovary at Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, on August 15th, 1991.

In a letter of complaint to the Medical Council in December 1998, she had written: "I hope no other person goes through what I have suffered. A dog would have received better treatment."

Mr Justice Ó Caoimh was told the Fitness to Practice Committee of the Medical Council had inquired into Ms Cunnigham's complaints about Dr Neary and had made no finding of misconduct against him. He also heard Dr Neary was denying having made the comments alleged by Ms Cunningham.

Ms Cunnigham, of Corlea, Kingscourt, Co Cavan, has taken proceedings against Dr Neary, a consultant obstetrician/gynaecol-ogist, representatives of the Medical Missionaries of Mary and a nominee of the North Eastern Health Board, arising from her treatment by Dr Neary in 1991. She claims he wrongfully removed her left ovary.

In a preliminary motion, Dr Neary and the other defendants are claiming the action is statute barred - brought outside the three-year time limit for proceedings - and have asked Mr Justice Ó Caoimh to determine that the action is statute barred and to strike out the proceedings.

In opposing the preliminary application, Ms Cunningham argues that she only became aware that the removal of her left ovary was unnecessary when she received a report from a Dr Porter in April 2001, and her action was initiated in March 2002. In light of that, she pleads the action is not statute barred.

Until Dr Porter's report, she had believed the removal of the ovary was necessary, she said. She claims she could not reasonably have been expected to know before April 2001 that the operation was unnecessary.

Opening the preliminary application yesterday, Mr Charles Meenan SC, for Dr Neary, said the court had to ascertain what, at the relevant times, was Ms Cunnigham's state of knowledge in relation to her alleged injury.

In her letter of complaint to the Medical Council, dated December 19th, 1998, Ms Cunningham agreed she had started the letter: "I wish to lodge a complaint with you concerning a Dr Michael Neary...I am at last putting pen to paper to tell you my story which has troubled me for a long time now." Further on, she wrote: "My nightmare began in July 1991." After visiting her GP with symptoms of a miscarriage, she was admitted to the Lourdes hospital on July 8th, 1991, and was attended to by Dr Neary. She said Dr Neary carried out an internal examination and told her he could feel "a lump", that he was not sure if she was pregnant but he would do a D and C anyway. On July 11th, a D and C procedure was performed.

She said that afterwards Dr Neary told her she was not pregnant, would probably never get pregnant and that he did not know how she had ever become pregnant (she had had two children previously) as her womb was tilted backwards. She said he told her she could go home the next day and he would see her again in six weeks. She asked him about "the lump" and he told her not to worry, that he did not know what it was.

Ms Cunnigham said in the letter she went home still bleeding from the womb, as she had been on the first day she was admitted. The bleeding became heavier. Some days later, she collapsed and was rushed to the Lourdes hospital on the night of August 14th, 1991.

At the hospital, she said she kept telling the staff she was pregnant but they ruled that out because of the D and C. The following day, she said a staff nurse and a woman doctor had "words" and the staff nurse requested that Dr Neary himself should come and see Ms Cunningham.

In the letter, she said: "Shortly afterwards Dr Neary arrived up and stood at the end of my bed and said: 'Mrs Cunningham, you had sex with your husband in the last four weeks since I saw you and you are now pregnant in the tube.' I knew I was pregnant the first time he saw me and I felt degraded by Dr Neary's manner and the way he shouted this at me for all in the other five beds and their visitors to hear. So I sat up and said I was pregnant the first time he saw me and that was the 'lump' he had felt with his fingers and he had misdiagnosed."

The hearing continues today.