Seeing bypass convinced me of ‘prime mover’

The wife of pioneering surgeon Maurice Neligan has told how watching her husband perform open heart surgery made her believe in life after death.

Pat Neligan opened up about her husband’s death nearly two year ago for the first time on Saturday Night with Miriam as the Mater Foundation paid tribute to the much-loved cardiologist by naming a new theatre after him.

Mr Neligan, one of the best-known doctors in Ireland, performed the first open-heart surgery in 1974 and first heart transplant in 1985.

But his wife Pat, a former anaesthetist, said her exceptional husband never attended a doctor for his own medical health.

“He disliked doctors intensely and always felt they would find something wrong with you, so he didn’t go,” she said.

“You were either for open heart surgery or you weren’t sick.”

She said his death in Oct 2010 in his sleep came out of the blue.

“[I had] no idea anything was going to happen to him,” said Pat. “He played golf the day before and we were going away the following day to play golf.

“He went to bed and woke up that morning and he just wasn’t there. It was as simple as that.”

She said the thousands of letters from his patients and the doctors he worked with around the world have been a huge comfort.

“He had a huge number of patients here in Ireland and abroad and his team literally came from all over the world and they still keep in touch with me which is very warming,” said Pat.

The family has been hit by tragedy, too. Pat Neligan finds it too painful to speak of her daughter Sara’s murder in 2007 but she said her husband believed that he would meet them all again after death.

“Maurice always spoke about the sunlit uplands and he always felt that we would all meet there again someway or other, and it was a great comfort to him,” said Pat.

Her husband was known as a deeply spiritual man, but Pat said it was watching him work on a heart by-pass gave her a belief in a “prime mover”.

“When you go into to see open heart surgery, as I did quite often, I loved watching what they were doing.

“They would stop the heart and put the pump on and operate on the heart and to me the extraordinary thing about life was to watch the heart taking off again all on its own.

“You took the pumps off and you waited and the heart started to beat again. That to me was absolutely awesome. There has to be something somewhere.”

Her son Maurice Neligan Jr said it gives him “great comfort” comfort to believe his father and his sister were together.

“It was hugely difficult for all of us,” he said. “Sara was very much part of our family and was an intensive care unit nurse in the Mater Hospital.

“She was very clever and very vivacious. She had her problems but was getting through them and doing extremely well.

“Dad was a deeply spiritual man and he and mum had a bench made in Kerry which had her inscription on it and it sits out right beside the beach.

“Dad would often sit there and we all knew what he was thinking about.”

* To donate or share memories go to www.materfoundation.ie