Wife ‘died from an ulcer, something so simple’

IN recent years, Jim and Catherine McCarthy spent much of their life working out where they wanted to visit across Europe.

Their two boys Ryan and Ethan were in their mid-teens, their mortgage nearly cleared and the couple planned buying a camper van and exploring a different country each year.

Neither of them thought for an instant that, after 28 years together, they would be apart.

But last March, Catherine McCarthy, 42, died from an undiagnosed perforated ulcer.

She had lost three stone in the four months before her death but no doctor could seem to find the cause.

“Myself and my wife spent two thirds of our life together. We were together since we were 15 and 16. I’ve gone from a wonderful life to a life that is not wonderful. All I can say is thank God for my children,” Mr McCarthy said.

An inquest this week heard that Mrs McCarthy, from Turner’s Cross in Cork, was admitted to hospital after she began coughing up black dry blood. She was put under the care of specialist haematologist, Dr Mary Cahill.

But Dr Cahill told the inquest that neither she, her team nor a colleague covering for her was informed that Mrs McCarthy was their patient.

After admission to the A&E, a preliminary diagnosis of constipation was made. A junior doctor in the A&E department queried if Ms McCarthy had a perforated ulcer and sought an X-ray examination but the X-ray report was not completed until after the deceased passed away.

Her husband, an emergency medical technician, said that she wasn’t visited by a doctor after she left the A&E. The following day, he was shocked when he called to see her.

“For the rest of my life I will regret that I didn’t scream from the top of my ears that I believed she was very ill. Why didn’t I demand a doctor to see her on the Sunday? My wife didn’t have a clue what was going on. She never thought it was so serious.

Ms McCarthy had been at Bantry General Hospital and the South Infirmary on two occasions the previous summer with abdominal pain. The Coroner’s Court also heard that she had a history of depression and alcohol dependency but had not drank for months prior to her death.

“My life is over. She was the love of my life.

“I rarely came home and she wasn’t there. Her life had been dedicated to her family. Sometimes, I think it would be easier to cope with if she had died from cancer and had been sick beforehand. But, my wife should not be dead. She should be alive. She died from an ulcer, something so simple. It wasn’t as if it was a brain tumour.”

Mr McCarthy is now seeking a garda investigation into how 15 hours of his wife’s nursing records are missing.

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said evidence “pointed to a failure” in the hospital system.

The jury returned a verdict of medical misadventure, but added a recommendation that hospital management should review its X-ray reporting and admission procedures.