The mother of a 19-year-old brain-damaged man, who has taken an action for damages for injuries allegedly arising from the circumstances of his birth, told the High Court yesterday that medical staff had not told her the child was distressed before birth.
Ms Bernadette Dolan, Ballydowd, Lucan, Co Dublin, was giving evidence in the action by her son, Mr Francis Dolan, against Mount Carmel Hospital and two consultants, Dr Margaret Kennedy, a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology, Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, and Dr Brian Denham, a paediatrician, Sandyford, Dublin.
Mr Dolan, who has cerebral palsy and the mental age of a 41/2- year-old-child, was born following a Caesarean operation performed by Dr Kennedy on April 26th, 1982.
Lawyers for Mr Dolan have claimed a scan carried out on April 22nd, 1982, had confirmed grown retardation which suggested a call for earlier intervention.
It is claimed Dr Kennedy should have had Ms Dolan admitted to a specialist obstetrics hospital. It is also alleged Dr Denham arranged for an undesirable and inappropriate concentration of dextrose solution to be given to the baby. The child was subsequently brought to Our Lady's Hospital, Crumlin.
The hospital and both consultants deny they were negligent.
In court yesterday, Ms Dolan said that on his discharge from Crumlin, Francis had appeared perfect to her. However, at seven to 10 months, she thought he should be sitting up if propped up but he was falling over.
Dr Denham had told her there was a little bit of spasticity but not to worry. After 18 months, a doctor in Crumlin was not happy with the child's progress, she said. Her son was seen at the Central Remedial Clinic and they were told the child was spastic.
Ms Dolan said she and her husband brought Francis for treatment to the Peto Institute in Hungary over a three-year period which they financed themselves.
She gave her son physiotherapy for about two hours each day. He was confined to a wheelchair. She and her husband had to have adjustments made to their home and to their car and they brought him everywhere they went.
Ms Dolan said her son thought himself normal and wanted to be either a garda, politician or lawyer. He believed he was going to walk away from the wheelchair some day. About 1996, they were given a full picture of his condition and were told he had the mental age of a 41/2-year-old child. They wrote to Mount Carmel and the doctors and asked for records.
Cross-examined by Ms Mary Irvine SC, for Dr Denham, Ms Dolan said she had mentioned to Dr Kennedy all her babies had been small. She had told Dr Kennedy she used to smoke about 10 to 15 cigarettes a day before her pregnancy but had reduced this to three to five a day.
Nobody told her that her placenta had started to disintegrate before Francis's birth, she said. She was not told at the time that he was distressed before he was born or that while in the uterus, the baby had bled back into her. She did not believe that and had not heard it suggested.
She was not told that, apart from haemorrhaging from her own placenta, the baby had been starved of oxygen and was anaemic. These were told to her when the action began.
The hearing before Mr Justice Kearns is expected to last between four and six weeks.