‘I wanted the drip taken out of him and I was taking him to Crumlin’

IT WAS with a sense of irony that James Carroll took a welcome rest at his mother’s house, opposite Crumlin Children’s Hospital, after a week of fear and anguish for his sick baby son.

James, a painter and decorator, grew up in that house, looking out daily on the hospital but never imagining the ordeal he and his partner, Jennifer, would go through trying to get their little boy treatment there.

The drama began for them on Monday of last week when they brought baby Bobby, just five weeks old and obviously unwell, to their GP. The doctor had a quick look over the tot, who was vomiting, convulsing and passing urine from his back passage, and wrote the couple a letter to take to A&E in Drogheda.