Hospital needed photo to chart Gavin’s progress

STAFF at the hospital treating two Limerick children badly burned in an arson attack asked their mother for photos to help them identify what her son once looked like.

Describing the “horror” ordeal her children have undergone, Sheila Murray said her children continue to scream in agony — even though they are on heavy dosages of morphine.

Millie, six, and Gavin, four, were in the back seat of their car when it was set on fire earlier this month.

Two youths aged 17 have since been charged with intentionally and recklessly causing serious harm.

The children are being treated at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. Millie and Gavin are in separate rooms but can see and attempt to wave to each other through a glass screen.

Ms Murray said: “Millie is in agony getting her bandages changed, even though she is partly sedated and they give her morphine as well. She still cries with the pain when they change her bandages.

“When I look at Gavin at times it is like something from a horror film. The other day I just wanted to get up and leave the ward.

“They had him sitting at the edge of the bed to get the bandages off his back. He was screaming and shaking. He was holding on to me and I couldn’t leave him. I just had to sit there and look at him.”

Gavin’s head burns are so bad the hospital needed a recent picture to know how he looked before the fire.

Ms Murray said: “He had only started school that week and the school took pictures of all the new children.

“They sent me up the picture from the school, because they needed it at the hospital to know what he looked like before the burns.

“They have the photograph on the wall above him to show them the progress he is making. Nobody in the hospital knew what he looked like before he got burned. He now is getting back the shape in his face.”

Ms Murray said she longs for her children to come home but accepts they will be in hospital for many months.

“And when they do come out they will have to go back again for more operations. As they grow up they will need more skin grafts. They will be going for skin graft operations for a long, long time.”

Millie and Gavin can see each other through a glass screen.

“Millie talks away to Gavin and waves to him, but poor little Gavin tries to wave back by kind of lifting up his arm.

“When Millie first was brought up to see Gavin in the intensive care unit she did not recognise him. It was only when she saw the school picture on the wall over his bed she realised it was Gavin. He was so swollen and with the burns on his face she did not really know it was him.”

Ms Murray singled out Garda Mary Walsh from Mayorstone Garda Station, Paddy Flannery from Moyross Community Centre and Tony Lunch at Barnardos for praise for the help they are giving the family.