Veronica celebrates miracle of life

MIRACLES can often manifest themselves in ordinary ways.

For Veronica Doyle, Ireland’s first ever lung transplant patient, it is her newfound ability to perform simple, everyday tasks which appears miraculous.

Even being able to walk into a press conference at the Mater Hospital in Dublin yesterday to celebrate the success of her operation a fortnight ago is something the 56-year-old mother-of-three could not have done for the past decade without assistance.

Smiling and winking nervously at her children; Geoffrey, 32, Jeremy, 30, and Emma, 28; Veronica said she was grateful for the new lease of life.

From Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick, Veronica said she wanted to offer hope to other patients who needed a lung transplant. There are 31 Irish people awaiting a similar operation. Until October 2004, patients in need of a new lung had to travel abroad, mostly to Newcastle in England, to have the life-saving treatment.

Veronica said before her operation she couldn’t walk from her bedroom to her kitchen and found it hard to dress herself unaided as a result of chronic emphysema which she developed 14 years ago.

“I haven’t walked my own driveway for nine years,” she said.

Instead of any extravagant form of celebration to mark her recovery, Veronica said she was most looking forward to simple things such as being able to brush her teeth, put on her clothes or walk to her front door unaided. One special treat, however, will be to join her sisters for the first time in years for a walk on the beach at Castlegregory, Co Kerry.

“To me, it’s a pure miracle really and it still hasn’t sunk in how wonderful it is,” she smiled.

Originally from Tralee, Co Kerry, Veronica was overcome with emotion as she thanked her family for their tireless love and support. “I couldn’t have survived or hoped without my wonderful children,” she said.

She also praised her friends and neighbours as well as her local doctors and all the medical staff at the Mater. She singled out the man she described as her “hero” - Dr Jim Egan, the lead transplant physician, for his “miracle brains and brilliant hands”.

“He’s the man I trusted and loved from day one,” she laughed. “I believed in him and he gave me the courage to do what I had to do.”

She also took time out to remember the person whose lung she had received and their family for giving her “the opportunity of life”.

Veronica stressed that her main message was to encourage more people to carry organ donor cards. “One person’s sacrifice can give vital organs to up to five people,” she said.

Asked how she felt before undergoing the three and a half-hour operation, Veronica said she had tried not to appear nervous for her children’s sake. “I told myself I was just going to have a tooth out,” she laughed.

Looking on with pride, her children also expressed their joy at the fact that she was being discharged from hospital exactly two weeks after her operation. “She’s a battler and a fighter and she never gives in,” said her son, Geoffrey.

“She’ll be able to give out to us even more than she used to and be able to chase us around the place now,” joked his brother, Jeremy. Both claimed they had been “worried but confident” before their mother’s operation.

Cardiac surgeon, Freddie Wood, who led the multi-disciplinary team at the Mater’s heart-lung unit, said Veronica was “an amazing, resilient, tough Limerick woman”.

He also praised various health ministers, including Brian Cowen, Mícheál Martin and Mary Harney for their continuous support of the €10.5 million programme against a background of constant crises in the healthcare sector.

Martin Cowley, chief executive of the Mater Hospital, said it was a day of both joy and sadness as he led a minute’s silence at the start of yesterday’s press conference in remembrance of the victims of the Navan bus tragedy.

He described the success of the pioneering operation as “an absolutely marvellous achievement”.