Richard Delevan

Bad enough to have breast cancer. How much worse that you’ve had breast cancer for so long that losing a breast is your only option, if you’re lucky; that your clean bill of health 14 months earlier was a monstrous mistake. How much worse still, if the bureaucrat who finally copped to the “error” in the very next breath tells you it would be better for everybody if you participate in a coverup.
Think about that. Imagine you’re a young woman of 40. Your three young children and husband have just seen you through a masectomy and a nightmarish course of chemotherapy. You’ve had your lymph nodes removed from your armpits because they’ve discovered microscopic tumours there.
You’re told that, had they done their job properly, you and your family might have been spared it all.
You’d be angry, to put it mildly. You’d want to scream from the rooftops, if for no other reason than because other women, other families, might have to go through the same thing - or worse - if the process that led to the misdiagnosis isn’t corrected.
But what if the cancer isn’t totally gone? What if it comes back? If you go public, tell the world what happened, if you don’t do what the hospital managers and the HSE bureaucrats ask you to do, what might happen? You’re dependent on them if the cancer comes back.
Or if, God forbid, your child needs something from the HSE, can you 100% rule out of your mind the possibility that some form of reprisal won’t be taken? How could you risk it?
Rebecca O’Malley, 41, a mother of three in Co Tipperary, didn’t have to face that particular dilemma. When Cork University Hospital failed to tell her about her cancer in 2005, 14 months later she lost her breast. But she didn’t receive her cancer treatment in Ireland but in the UK.
It was only in April that she learned that the original cancer tests that gave her the all-clear were wrong. She agreed to remain silent when asked, when bureaucrats warned her that revealing the injustice done to her would cause unnecessary distress amongst other women who had been through cancer screenings, because it might cause them to lose faith in the system. But she agreed, on the condition that an independent investigation be carried out into what went wrong. When the authorities made no move to start that investigation, she said she’d go public. She was ignored. She gave them one last chance. Then she told the world.
Since then Rebecca O’Malley has received the support of well-wishers all over Ireland for her courage and strength. Speaking from her home on Thursday she said that going public has already taken a toll, but she felt compelled to launch a campaign to insure that when medical mistakes are made that they can’t be covered up. She wants legislation to require patients be told immediately of errors, a national registry of the errors and whistle-blower protection for medical staff who discover them.
“Following everything that happened last year, in trying to build up my own immune system, this has been exhausting,” she said. “Not sure I’ve had all the juices and smoothies I should. And you lose some of the sleep you need.”
The hospital authorities with whom she met, it should be noted, say their minutes of the meeting don’t show them asking her to keep quiet. Not in so many words. But even if they did, could her going public cause “panic” amongst women who had cancer tests conducted at the same hospital?
“Women have a right to know,” she said. “They could go back to their GP, get a re-referral to a hospital. That’s not for the authorities to decide. We all have a voice, I did not fear using mine.”
Many women, and their families, may have cause to thank Rebecca O’Malley in coming years for her courage. The HSE has agreed to an inquiry carried out by the Health Information Quality Agency. HSE boss Brendan Drumm, in an unusual stroke of candour, told O’Malley he didn’t expect the report would be comfortable reading.
But we have to wonder, if Rebecca O’Malley was someone else, someone who was dependent on the HSE for her treatment, would we have ever known? Or would the subtle threat have forced her to be part of the coverup?

rdelevan@tribune.ie