Health victim’s refusal to play blame game an example to HSE

When she found herself surrounded by journalists and microphones, she took the pressure off her friend by identifying herself as the patient, and then delivered a haiku of concentrated misery.

That’s women for you. Mná na hÉireann. Represented ably by just one of them. A woman from Offaly who, in her black coat with its furry collar, demonstrated the strengths of 10 claimed by the sisterhood, but rarely personified so neatly, so completely.

For starters, she’s a risk manager, this woman. Her mother died of breast cancer, so she knows her risk is genetically higher. Generations of mothers have known this and been derided when they swore to their kids — kids who were much more sophisticated and better educated than their mammies — that cancers run in families. The kids rolled their eyes to heaven and did a “Yeah, Ma, whatever”. When the scientists came around to precisely the same point, many older women silently rolled their eyes to heaven and did a “Nobody listens to me,” shrug.