Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I meet the Minister of State again at the handy times and he gets all the handy ones. While I am bringing this up, I want to put on the record that the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, also has the full documentation on what I am about to raise. Ms Katie Byrne is a young lady aged 17 from Cobh. She has been waiting for an operation since she was four years old. Katie's family have been through hell for the past 14 years and Katie has been damaged mentally. After a recent visit to the hospital on Monday, 22 January 2024, she was told by a specialist that if they operated on Katie, she would never walk again. This has really upset Katie and she has lost total trust in our health services. A recent article in The Echostated:

Katie said that the possibility of having to return to a wheelchair permanently has left her “terrified.”

“It’s like I’m screaming but nobody is listening,” she told The Echo.

The transition year student has once again become reliant on crutches and her wheelchair. She said she is extremely disappointed that the HSE has left her family with no option but to fundraise due to restrictions on what country she can be treated in through its treatment abroad scheme...

[Katie said] “I do my best not to cry in front of doctors because it just causes a scene. However, this happened recently and the doctor had to apologise for making me upset. It can feel so isolating.

"Every time a doctor tells me there’s a chance I might end up needing my wheelchair, I’m terrified ... I got out of my chair. I don’t want to have wasted the last 10 years of my life just to get back into it.”

The 17-year-old had a message for the HSE:

My message would be not to look at the X-ray and look at the person in front of you. If I'm telling you I'm in pain then I'm in pain. All I want is for people to believe me instead of disregarding what I'm saying...

I generally experience upset more than I do anger. The fact that I haven't even been offered a referral from those who can't help me or a small contribution for my operation is particularly frustrating. Instead we are being sent from doctor to doctor, all of whom are telling us the same thing.

On Monday, I met with the family here in Leinster House. Katie has now gone from being in the children section to being in the adult section. She was physically upset. She is an amazing strong lady who has been looking for this hip operation from four years of age. Her mother contacted the surgeon they had contacted previously, an American top surgeon, who can do this operation. Her mother wrote:

On talking to this doctor who was very dismissive of you doing both surgeries at the same time because you would weaken her femur and weaken the already weakened muscles, he outlined some risks and basically scared the living daylights out of Katie to the extent that she is now terrified to have surgery anywhere.

Some of the risks highlighted were:

1. Risks of blood clots

2. Risks of Katie never walking again should she have the surgery

3. Because she has cerebral palsy the muscles around the pelvis would be weakened to the extent that she would be left in a wheelchair permanently.

In his reply the surgeon stated:

I appreciate the local surgeon's concerns. However, I don't agree with him. The pelvic operation is done in a way not to disturb major hip muscles. I have done this many times on CP patients and have never made their outcome worse than before. Not only have I not weakened but the opposite, it made the function better because of the improved mechanics.

Regarding doing the femur and the pelvis at the same time: This is something we do all the time. The femur part of the procedure is done using an intramedullary nail (rod inside the bone). We are able to do this part minimally invasively. Meaning only a few tiny incisions.

I will come back to it later.

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