Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 1 min.)
In Henry Street on Saturday I stopped to contribute to a fund-raising event for a child to have an operation in the United States. I was partly motivated by remembering when a granddaughter of mine, Caitlin Rose, needed to go to the US also for a special operation. I remembered too how generous people had been to my fund-raising for that objective. I had no idea when I stopped in Henry Street that the girl, Sienna, was heading for the same surgeon who had operated on my granddaughter Caitlin Rose some years ago.
Men from Dublin Fire Brigade were doing the fund-raising, their fire truck carrying big posters advertising the campaign. One of them told me that he does a number of charity fund-raisers a year, always in Henry Street, where he finds the response of the people supportive. They don’t get time off from work for this activity and he would be heading into his Blanchardstown Fire Station that evening for a 12-hour shift.
As I stopped to take some photos, I noticed a woman wearing a fire-fighter jacket and went to talk to her, asking how many women were now in the Dublin Fire Brigade. But she wasn’t a firefighter — she was the girl’s mother and only wearing the jacket on loan for the occasion. Chatting to her I discovered that her daughter Sienna is heading to Louisville, USA, to be operated on by Dr. Park, just as was my granddaughter some years ago. When Dr. Park first pioneered it, the operation was a startling new one and, though it is now available through the NHS (Caitlin Rose lives in London) and the HSE, for some reason the recovery time is much slower than under Dr. Park’s treatment.
In the most crude and simplified explanation, in SDR operation the surgeon opens the patient’s back to test which of the sensory nerves are pulling limbs taught and — cuts them! It sounds scary and crazy even but when one sees the results ….!
Dr. Park, a US-based surgeon from Korea, perfected this operation which he carries out in Louisville, Kentucky. Of course, lots of other work is required, including physiotherapy, exercising and often, orthopaedic surgery to correct bone deformity, etc. On 15th November 2018, Dr. Park performed his 4,000th SDR operation.
The cost of the operation, for the flights and the accommodation for the parents while the child is in treatment, time off work – all this is piles up frighteningly high. My daughter, my son-in-law and my son all organised fund-raising events and I was lucky that singers and musicians here supported two fund-raising events I organised, with support from Club na Múinteoirí here in Dublin — and that so many bought tickets. Before the operation, Caitlin Rose could barely walk; now she can even run and dance a bit, ride a bike, etc, and go to school on her own.
I hope at least as much for Sienna.
And that the same operation at the same level of effectiveness be available to all people in Ireland without having to fundraise or leave the country to access it.
End.
Further reading:
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