Care champion Majella Beattie to travel overseas for rare abdominal wall transplant

Majella Beattie will undergo surgery in Oxford, an abdominal wall transplant that will save her life. Picture: Bob Morrison

She is better known for advocating on behalf of people who need care, either at home or in a nursing home.

But now Majella Beattie, who runs Care Champions, is in vital need of some care herself.

This is because the 42-year-old needs an abdominal wall transplant that will not only save her life but will also give her a better quality of life.

Plagued by ill-health for most of her life, she developed a tumour in her left leg at 13, and nearly had to have it amputated.

After wearing her leg in a brace for a time, and after enduring a number of operations and radiotherapy as a teenager, she managed to save it.

Although the tumour went away by the time she was 17, it returned “with a vengeance” 10 years later, growing to the size of — according to her surgeon at the time —  “a watermelon”  between her pelvis and her hip bone.

Indeed, it was so heavy that it burst through her skin and weighed her down so much she couldn't stand up without help.

Over the next three and half years, she had to endure five 18-hour operations, and countless rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy before she could walk again.

Treatment led to bowel complications

However, the treatment led to complications in her bowel, and in 2014, it ruptured; she developed sepsis and ended up in a coma for 11 days in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin.

She also ended up with kidney failure and was put on dialysis.

She also had to have a trachea inserted into her throat to help her breathe.

“It was horrific to wake up and know that a huge period of time was missing from my life,” she said.

“My diet has been very restricted ever since.

“And I have also been left with holes in my abdominal wall that can’t be closed as I'm considered inoperable.

“So there is little or nothing to hold various internal organs in place and I have to have a transplant.”

The operation is so rare that only a small number of specialists are able to carry them out and thanks to a referral for treatment abroad by the HSE and St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, the operation will be carried out around July in Oxford.

It is believed that approximately 50 people in the world have had the operation she is about to have at the Oxford Transplant Centre at the John Radcliffe Hospital under the care of renowned transplant surgeon, Professor Henke Giele.

“The abdominal wall transplant will hopefully give me my life back,” she said.

“The last meal I was able to eat was on February 14, 2021, and since then I've had constant obstructions and am now getting fatter living on nutritional drinks.

“Simple tasks like walking short distances or even bending will cause serious obstructions. 

“So I'm, in a way, almost housebound.

“Thankfully the HSE has approved funding for this surgery.

“I'm so very grateful to Professor Rory Kennelly and his surgical team in St Vincent's Hospital who are supporting and have enabled this opportunity to happen for me and will look after me after my surgery.

“It is a massive amount of surgery to have; even more so for someone who has my health history, especially since my coma in 2014, which I've never fully recovered from."