“I have shortened my life” coming home to Ireland says terminally ill Irish mother who returned from Australia
A terminally ill Irish mother from Ballinrobe, County Mayo, has said she is ‘disgusted’ with the Irish healthcare system, after returning home from Australia.
Meabh Feerick, 25, was given a devastating diagnosis of advanced and aggressive melanoma, a form of skin cancer, in December 2020. At the time of her diagnosis, Ms Feerick was living and working in Homebush, Sydney, and raising her three-year-old son, Noah.
Prior to her diagnosis, she had visited a doctor five to six times about a small lump on the bank of her neck. Despite her concerns, she was assured by medics that it was nothing too serious over a timescale of two years.
Sadly however, the young woman’s worst fears were realised after she pushed for tests and it was discovered she had stage four melanoma skin cancer – and her condition was incurable.
In a bid to remove some of the cancerous tumours, Ms Feerick underwent extensive neck and head surgery, as well as having a hip replacement. Unfortunately, immunotherapy did not produce the result she had hoped for. As her condition rapidly worsened, Ms Feerick decided it would be best to return home to Ireland.
A GoFundMe page was set up in April to help Ms Feerick raise funds to return home with Noah.
On the fundraising page, Meabh’s sister Aoife and uncle Kevin explain: “Meabh and her family are now coming to terms with the life-limiting nature of her diagnoses and are hoping that with treatment her life can be extended so that she can spend as much time as possible creating some amazing memories with [her son] Noah, family, and friends.”
“Meabh’s world has been turned upside down in such a short period of time and she is tragically unfortunate to be in this heart-breaking situation at such a young age.
“She is facing so much uncertainty yet manages every day to maintain a positive attitude and a fighting spirit that we can only say is inspirational. She will battle this disease every inch of the way and will give everything for her little boy,” they wrote.
Now, Ms Feerick has raised serious concerns about the Irish healthcare system, and said that since returning home terminally ill, she discovered that the healthcare system in her home country is “a mess”.
From her hospice bed in Castlebar, Ms Feerick spoke to the Western People about her experience of receiving treatment in Ireland.
“I brought all my files, scans, etc home on a USB with all the information from my doctors in Australia. However, when I brought them to doctors here, they couldn’t read them or access them because of the Cyberattack on the HSE. As a result I had to have all the scans and x-rays done again but I was told this would take six to eight weeks. For someone with my diagnosis, this was devastating. There was such a backlog in the system, there was no room for me to be booked in for tests and scans. The whole thing was really scary and we kept hitting brick walls,” she said.
An oncologist in Galway said Ms Feerick currently has between three to five months to live.
“When I did get the scans, it then emerged that if the images were taken at Mayo University Hospital, they couldn’t see or transfer them to the team in Galway. There was a complete breakdown in communication.”
She added: “After I came home, I had problems with pain management and other issues related to my cancer and was admitted to hospital a number of times. On all of these occasions, my oncologist was never informed that I had been admitted and was never aware. When I was in Australia, the first person to be told I had been admitted was the oncologist.”
She said that although the oncologist is doing the best he can, the Irish Government and Irish healthcare system are falling short. In her experience receiving care in both Australia and in Ireland, Ms Feerick said she believed that “one nurse in Ireland is doing the job of five nurses in Australia”.
“There are no resources and no staff. One nurse in Ireland is doing the job of five nurses in Australia. The system is shocking because budgets are so low. The whole thing is poorly run and so inefficient with nobody being held accountable,” she said.
She also said that devastatingly, despite the severity of her heart-breaking diagnosis, there appeared to be no sense of urgency to her care after returning home to Ireland.
“There were constant delays in getting appointments, scans and treatments, staff are completely overwhelmed. All of this has a knock-on effect. People’s diagnoses are taking so long that at times, their cancer has spread and the issues are much worse than they could have been.”
“I am disgusted and appalled to see that the system in our small country is so bad. If I had stayed in Australia, I would have had better options. I am embarrassed to say that because I came home, I have shortened my life,” she added.
Meabh brought her son, Noah, to his first day of playschool just over two weeks ago.
She added that she believed the HSE are “hiding behind coronavirus and the cyberattack” as an excuse to give less than adequate care to patients. The committed mother feels she would have received better treatment in Australia, but it would have been impossible to have her family around her due to the country’s Covid-19 restrictions.
“I spent a lot of time on my own in hospital in Australia. I had time to reflect and make peace with my diagnosis. Now I want to try to make some sort of change here. We are letting people down. The Government need to see the effect they are having on sick people here and the issues they are causing among staff and patients in the system. This poorly ran and inefficient system is disgraceful,” she said.
The GoFundMe page is still live and funds will go towards the continuation of her treatment and associated future medical costs which will not be possible without financial assistance.
Donations will help with getting sure Meabh and Noah receive the crucial help and support they need, both immediately and during the course of Meabh’s ongoing treatment for this aggressive form of cancer. So far, almost €200,000 has been raised in a mammoth show of support for this young mother and her little boy.