Anger at lack of specialised care for paralysed woman

The parents of a once healthy woman, whose severe paralysis means she can now only communicate by blinking, have told of their anger that their daughter has been denied the specialist care she needs.

Lynsey Cribbin, 21, was a had “everything to live for” until she inexplicably suffered multiple strokes last January that have left her unable to talk or move.

Lynsey was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome and has extreme physical limitations, despite her brain functioning as well as ever.

Remarkably, Lynsey is still able to hold a full conversation with her parents Peter and Catherine by blinking to indicate the spelling of words on a specially-designed alphabet chart.

Although simple sentences can take as long as 10 minutes, the family, who live in Finea, Co Cavan, have been given a lift recently as their fun-loving daughter has smiled for the first time since she was struck down.

However, they are hugely frustrated that Lynsey is still being cared for at the Mater hospital, rather than the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, which is home to the only four beds in the country that fit her requirements.

Although he praised the staff at the Mater, Mr Cribbin, who has seven other children, faces an agonising wait until January when one of the high-dependency Dún Laoghaire beds will become available. He said matters were made worse by the fact that Lynsey has not had a bath or shower in seven months because “there aren’t the facilities to do it where she is”.

“It’s still very hard for us to come to terms with what’s happened to Lynsey.

“It’s very difficult to see her like this, because she’s such a bubbly, fun-loving girl. She’s still as bright as ever, but it can take between five and 10 minutes now for her to communicate a sentence to us. What she has is the worst kind of locked-in syndrome and it’s very rare.

“But we’ve seen a bit of her old self back lately, because she’s been able to smile and we’ve been able to feed her pureed food.

“She should be being cared for in Dún Laoghaire and she needs to be there straight away. There are only four beds in the country for someone with her needs, in other words one bed per one million people. There’s something really wrong there.”

A spokeswoman for the HSE Dublin North East said: “While the Mater Hospital does not comment on the care plans of specific patients, the hygiene needs of all patients are fully carried out according to specific care plans.”