Mother’s anger over state of hospital

LINDA DILLON will never forget the night she rose from the hospital vigil she kept beside her sick little girl.

Looking out of the third-floor window across the expansive compound of Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, all she could think about was her daughter, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Yet, the sight that greeted her was less than edifying.

“I was on the top of the main building and I could make out the flat roofs of the flimsy-looking structures below me.

"They looked like a rabbit warren of huts and Portocabins but, in fact, they housed wards caring for some of the sickest children in the country.

"It seemed impossible to think that this was our national children’s hospital, the last hope for seriously ill children from all over Ireland.”

The cramped conditions, poor facilities and the closure of wards at Our Lady’s has prompted a national outcry by parents of children cared for at the hospital.

One of those children is Linda’s youngest, Alice, now aged five. She was diagnosed in April 2001 with Neuroblastoma, a rare form of children’s cancer.

She had a large tumour in her left kidney and had developed secondary tumours in her bone marrow and liver.

The situation looked hopeless and Alice was given barely two weeks to live.

But, against the odds and, due in large measure to the care and skill of the team at Crumlin, Alice not only survived, but began to thrive.

Yesterday, as she prepared to pick up her daughter from school, Linda contemplated how lucky she and her husband, Patrick, are to have their little girl at home in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, and able to share a normal life with her elder sisters Kate and Jenny.

“We know we are not out of the woods yet, but she really is a wonder, so full of life.”

Though reticent to expose her family to the glare of publicity, Linda feels compelled to reveal the true extent of the facilities at Crumlin in the hope other families will not have to face the ordeal she and Patrick went through.

“My husband gave up his job to look after the older girls. At the start, when Alice was undergoing treatment every day, I spent most of the time beside her in the hospital.

"At one stage, I didn’t leave for seven weeks."

She often slept on the floor beside Alice’s bed and there were occasions when she and her daughter had to share an armchair in the cancer ward day room , while another sick child occupied the bed next to them.

The New Crumlin Hospital Group, a lobby of parents whose children are regularly treated at the hospital, wants Crumlin to be completely renovated.

Meanwhile, the reality is that facilities are fit neither for patients nor staff.