THE LEITRIM teenager who underwent a liver transplant in London last week is showing no signs of rejecting the new organ, although she remains in considerable pain, her father Joe said last night.
Meadhbh McGivern (14) will be visited today by her sister, Ciara, who has remained at home in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, although the older sister had the opportunity of seeing Meadhbh “all tubed up” over a Skype connection on Tuesday night, her father said.
The teenager missed the first opportunity of a transplant in July after a communications mix-up meant there was no aircraft available to fly her in time to King’s College Hospital in London for the operation.
Her parents, Joe and Assumpta, who are now staying in a flat away from the Denmark Hill hospital, are taking it in shifts to stay by her bed. “I take the night shift and Assumpta takes the day, so we meet for 15 minutes in the morning,” he told The Irish Times yesterday evening.
The couple were contacted yesterday by a HSE official, on foot of Mr McGivern’s complaints this week that his daughter will have to return to Ireland on a commercial flight, despite the fact that her immune system will be suppressed.
Mr McGivern said he was told that the Health Service Executive would organise a private flight if the King’s hospital medical team recommended one, although he said doctors routinely told transplant patients to avoid all forms of public transport for six months for fear of picking up life-threatening infections.
He said they had received two private offers to fly her home, from an executive jet company which would fly her to Knock or Enniskillen, and a Galway helicopter company.
“We could accept and tell everyone else to hump off, but it isn’t just about Meadhbh, it is about all the other transplant patients that will come after her.
“It shouldn’t be up to the hospital to decide on transport, but if they want me to get the hospital to say that she needs private transport, then I can do that.”
His daughter was going “in the right direction and is ‘awake and aware’ on occasions, although she spends a large amount of time asleep because she remains connected to a morphine pump to counter her pain”.
“Tuesday was probably the first day that she was aware of her surroundings. She’s in good shape and thank God for that. The way things were going for a while at the weekend I thought she was going to nose-dive, but that didn’t happen,” he said.
The medical staff at the hospital, which has provided paediatric liver transplants for Irish patients since 1991, were pleased with his daughter’s progress, Mr McGivern added.
“They are quite happy. The plumbing – the connections with the new organ – are all fine and that is where there could have been a breakdown.”
Two other Irish children are at King’s College Hospital – one a baby, the other a teenager, after having received a donation of part of a liver from a parent.
