Doctors gave the all-clear... failing to spot fatal cancer
Sorrowful: Ann and Ciaran Moriarty on holiday in 2007
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Ciaran Henry and his dad flew to London just before Christmas to see Chelsea play at Stamford Bridge. Come on the Blues!
"I'm a Leeds United supporter and so was Ciaran until he was about five," Karl Henry says. "But he jumped ship. His mother was very amused."
A great start to Christmas -- father and son bonding just as 13-year-old Ciaran reaches the right age to start navigating adolescence with dad's support. What more could any son want?
Well, a mother. Ciaran has none. Thursday was his first Christmas without her.
Ciaran is Karl Henry and Ann Moriarty's only child, and all the more beloved for it. On Friday, April 25, 2008, Ann died from breast cancer at 53. Christmas Day was the eight months' anniversary of her passing.
Ann's misdiagnosis became a scandal due to Karl's dogged pursuit of truth and refusal to be intimidated by the fine words of highly paid health administrators. His wife had beaten breast cancer in May 2005, after a left-side mastectomy, chemotherapy in St James's Hospital, Dublin, and radiotherapy in St Luke's Hospital, also in Dublin.
She had six-month check-ups at St James's and in April 2007 was given a clean bill of health.
Ann and Karl found the experience life-changing and realised they wanted more family time together. So in 2006 they decided to move from Dublin to Ennis, Co Clare, where both would work for the Revenue Commissioners, with Ann in Ennis and Karl commuting to Limerick.
A Kerrywoman from the Dingle peninsula, Ann enjoyed the Clare landscape with its warm, welcoming people. They built a second house near their home, to fund Ann's hope of leaving her job to take care of herself, Karl and Ciaran. They'd sit looking out their bay window at the sky, marvelling how clear it looked compared with Dublin and seeing in the stars a light towards their future.
"Ann was my first and only love," Karl says. "I'm in dread of the Christmas period and all I want is to make it as good as it can be for Ciaran. We'll spend it together, just the two of us."
Karl Henry was not a man to make waves. Strong and silent, he'd relied on Ann to put the heart and soul into living, with his gentle support.
Her first cancer diagnosis shocked him but he went along with the medical experts. He assumed that a clean bill of health meant what it said, and held her more tightly as he realised again how precious she was to him. He looked forward to their new life together. Then Ann fell ill with fever in June 2007, two months after the clean bill at St James's. She was admitted to Ennis General Hospital, given a chest X-ray and discharged four days later after another "all-clear". But Karl worried. Something wasn't right. She had more tests in Ennis in early August, where another X-ray also gave her the "all-clear". Ann was prescribed Motilium for a stomach upset but felt so unwell two days later that Karl took her to their GP.
Within five days, Ann and Karl heard that she had cancer. The diagnosis was given at a private hospital in Galway. How could that happen? It was only four months since her St James's mammogram and tests. Meanwhile, Ennis General Hospital had tested her twice, diagnosed a tummy upset and discharged her. "Nobody could begin to imagine the nightmare," Karl recalls. "Within days, Ann was transferred to St James's and (told) she had untreatable, terminal cancer."
Ann left this world eight months later, in the Cahercalla Community Hospital near the town they'd chosen for their future. What future? She'd never see Ciaran wear his teenage Chelsea blues, do his Junior and Senior Certs, enter third-level and eventually find a partner who'd love him as his parents loved each other.
The boat she'd bought with Karl never had a chance to give her the lazy, easy days they'd dreamed about. The cakes she'd bake for their trips, the hampers with home-made jam and titbits, the trips up to the Burren and short breaks abroad where she'd taste paella and wonder at the quality of the saffron -- nothing came.
Ann was two years younger than Health Minister Mary Harney when she died. "There's a cultural taboo that says, 'Let the dead rest,'" Karl reflects.
"But I owe it to her not to let her death pass as if she didn't matter, whatever the cost is to me. I promised her I would love Ciaran for us both and raise him to be a fine man. I can't let what happened to her happen to other families because it is so hard to speak out and the HSE makes it even harder. You pay a high price."
Karl's speaking out began before Ann died when he was frustrated in attempts to get records of her St James's mammogram. It continues, supported by Rebecca O'Malley, who also had a breast cancer misdiagnosis, her husband Tony, a solicitor and former nurse, and Karl's brother Piaras, a UCC academic and former diplomat.
He keeps in touch with Una and John Kelly, whose daughter Edel (26) missed out a year of treatment after communications failures, and died. "My wife is dying; this is not a game," he warned one health manager who wouldn't give details of communications between St James's and Ennis because, he told Karl, "that's nothing to do with you".
Ann's passing was heartbreaking. She'd developed tumours on the brain; others were threatening to burst through her chest wall. She died peacefully, leaving her family shattered and bereft.
Karl succeeded in getting an independent inquiry, set to report in early 2009. He has no faith in the Irish health service. He can't understand why dying people and their families are treated as managerial problems and not as human beings with physical and emotional pain.
"Honesty, openness, trans-parency? It's all rubbish," he says. "There's a veil of secrecy surrounding everything to do with Ann's treatment even though our questions were, and are, perfectly legitimate."
It's ironic that Karl was treated with so much care by his employers, the Revenue Commissioners, while the health services let him down repeatedly. One arm of the State embraced his suffering while the other pushed him away, except in reverse order from what you'd expect.
No words can comfort Karl, left alone to raise his young son and leading by example.
Let's offer a wish to Ciaran, in memory of his brave, betrayed mother Ann. Bob Dylan says it best: "May you grow up to be righteous/ May you grow up to be true/ May you always know the truth/ And see the lights surrounding you/ May you always be courageous/ Stand upright and be strong/ May you stay forever young."
