A doctor wished a haemophilia patient well with starting a family on the same day he took a blood sample from the patient for a HIV test, the Lindsay tribunal was told.
The patient's wife, giving evidence using the pseudonym Deirdre, said the least Prof Ian Temperley should have done was waited for the result of the test before advising her late husband, Declan, they could start a family.
She said Prof Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, had done the HIV test without her late husband's consent when he went to ask his advice on starting a family.
The results of the test were not relayed to them for seven months, she said. Dr Helena Daly told her husband he was HIV positive in July 1985 and told them not to start a family. Deirdre was already five months pregnant.
Deirdre said she was also tested for HIV that day and had to wait six weeks for the results. She was negative but when her daughter was born she did not have her tested. They preferred not to know her HIV status, she said.
Her husband was diagnosed as a mild haemophiliac in the early 1980s shortly after they were married. His problems began when he had elective surgery at St James's Hospital, Dublin, to remove an ingrown hair at the base of his spine in 1984. He was very fatigued after the operation and developed glandular fever and hepatitis, she said.
On one occasion when her husband complained to Prof Temperley of being tired, she said he leaned back on his chair and said, "We are all tired."
Deirdre said her husband was given cryoprecipitate to stop bleeding during the operation and although his factor 8 levels had been raised to 90 per cent with this product he was also given factor 8 concentrate. She wanted the tribunal to establish who changed his treatment to "a substance that was lethal", and why.
Her husband's condition gradually deteriorated. He had to resign from work. On one occasion when he was admitted to St James's with raised liver enzyme levels Prof Temperley referred him for a psychiatric assessment which made Declan very angry.
Deirdre said her five-year-old daughter had to see her dying father on a draughty landing at St James's as children were not allowed visit the floor on which he was a patient. She complained and was given an office for visits.
When her husband died Deirdre consented to a liver biopsy being carried out on his liver but the person who was to do it never turned up. She received an apology.
Counsel for Prof Temperley, Mr Brian McGovern SC, said his client would say he believed a psychiatric assessment would have been helpful to Declan at the time. He would also say he was "particularly upset" Declan's treatment was changed from cryoprecipitate to factor 8 concentrate, and it was a matter for the tribunal to investigate how this happened.