‘My husband had an absolutely horrific death’
The mother of three children aged between 12 and 18, who lives just outside Mullingar, believes his condition was worsened by the alternative cancer therapy he received at the East Clinic in Killaloe, Co Clare.
Her husband, JJ, who worked as a builder and died in September 2002, aged 48, had stomach cancer for which he had been successfully treated at a London clinic by a top surgeon. Unfortunately, he was later found to have cancer of the liver.
"My husband had an absolutely horrific death. The only time he could get comfort to sleep was for 15 minutes at a time in a bath with a pillow covered in a plastic bag and a towel. Myself or one of the children would hold him up while he slept."
Ms Gallagher, while getting treatment for leg pains at the clinic in January 2002, was told by struck-off Dr Paschal Carmody he could destroy the cancer without chemotherapy.
She burst into tears when Dr Carmody said it was a shame she did not know that the clinic had an advance treatment that could have saved her husband from having surgery to treat his stomach cancer. Her husband, waiting in a car outside the clinic, came in to meet Dr Carmody.
"He spent an hour selling us his treatment and we were mugs, we were sucked in," she said.
In March 2002, her husband, who had stopped receiving chemotherapy on Dr Carmody's advice, travelled to London for a CAT scan and was told his cancer had spread.
While Ms Gallagher complained to the Medical Council in May 2002, she did not make it in writing.
"When they (the council) heard alarm bells ringing at that stage it would have done them no harm to check it out. They heard us cry down the phone but they ignored it and because of that other people had been hurt."
"He (Dr Carmody) was allowed to charged €235 for each consultation that was more than the top London surgeons charged my husband. They are professional people and they don't pretend to be God."
