Philip Nolan: Emma was betrayed

IDON’T even know if my little baby is going to remember me.’ They were the 13 words that went through the heart of a nation like a spear, and left anyone who heard them simultaneously mute with sadness and with rage.

I wasn’t driving yesterday when Emma Mhic Mhathúna was interviewed on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland, but I suspect if I had been, and had looked sideways, every driver on the road would have had tears running down his or her face.

The anguish in Emma’s voice was so raw, so palpable, so desolate, it made for deeply uncomfortable listening, but it and the interview Emma gave to Jenny Friel in this newspaper yesterday were a powerful reminder of one thing, and it is this.

We must not lose sight of what the CervicalCheck scandal is all about. It is not about bureaucracy. It is not about Tony O’Brien, the hapless head of the HSE whose cyborg lack of emotion this week has been startling. It is not about politicians. It is not about procedures. It is not about defending or protecting the institutions of the State.

It is about women. Full stop. Women such as Vicky Phelan whose clarity of intent and refusal to be cowed have made her a towering figure in the history of our country, the woman who hopefully has changed forever the culture of omertà and – forgive the language, but I’m mad as hell – the relentless arse-covering that blights every aspect of public life.

It is about Emma Mhic Mhathúna, a lone parent to five children aged between two and 15. She is one of the 209 women whose smear tests were misread, some of whom already have died and others who face hearing the same devastating news that was delivered to Emma this week.

The failure to correctly identify obvious signs of cancer in a smear test Emma underwent in 2013 was the gravest of errors, but it might, if you were to be excessively charitable, be put down to human error.

Except that is not good enough, because no one person alone ever should be left to check every test, and we still have no idea if all the oversight protocols were followed in the laboratory contracted to assess them.

Even more chillingly, though, multiple signs were missed. Emma knew she was sick, but her concerns were routinely dismissed. At 35, as she was then, and with five children, who could know her own body better than Emma? Instead, she was treated with condescension.

When she was pregnant with her youngest child, Donnacha, she was worried about excessive tiredness and unusual discharges. Remember, she had not suffered these symptoms on the other four children, but still she was told they were effects caused by her pregnancy.

She was on immunosuppressants for Crohn’s disease, which has been linked to a higher risk of cervical cancer, but that too was ignored. In July 2016, she went to A&E and was bleeding on the floor but she was told she would have to wait until the end of October for an ultrasound. She was bleeding on the floor. In front of them. And they sent her home. Later that year, another smear test picked up the fact that she had Stage 2B cervical cancer. The tumour had been present that July, the cause of the symptoms she begged them to investigate, and they did nothing.

Relentless

So she underwent gruelling, invasive treatment, including internal radiation that left her so sick she, at one point, was hospitalised for a month while a friend minded her children.

Finally, on April 4 just gone, she was told she was free of cancer, but less than a fortnight later found another lump in the same area. On Wednesday, she received the news that her cancer was back and has spread to her lungs, and that her condition is terminal.

Some time today, when you and I will be making plans for the weekend, hoping that Leinster win the Champions Cup and Ryan O’Shaughnessy wins Eurovision, Emma will sit in an office. And there, someone will tell her when she is going to die.

Even typing those words is making me shiver, so I struggle to imagine what it would be like to hear them. Imagine sending your children off to school, and trying to compose yourself before heading off to that meeting. Imagine the emotions that would be running through your head – the regret, the sadness, the anger, at how needless and pointless the whole situation had become.

Often on this page, I indulge my frivolous side and write about the fripperies that make life what it is, a vast ocean of possibility and an endless source of fun. For the third week in a row, though, even thinking about such trivialities is beyond me as I again have to address Ireland’s profoundly negligent treatment of women, a national shame for which we not only never have fully atoned, but that we perpetuate.

Today, as has been the case every day since Vicky Phelan stood on the court steps and defiantly laid down a marker that she would not be muzzled by the State that was supposed to protect her, we will hear of efficacy rates in the testing process, and how the new HPV test will be more accurate, and we will ask why the head of the HSE – who was asked to resign ‘respectfully’ – declined to do so until last night when the pressure from Emma became to great, even for him.

Respectfully? Yesterday, when asked what he thought of Emma’s interview, the one that those unconnected to her listened to as their lower lips trembled, Tony O’Brien said he hadn’t heard it. Where is the respect in that? If I were him, I think the very least I would do, to prepare for my day, is listen to RTÉ’s flagship news show, even if it cynically was to plan my arse-covering strategy.

But, look, enough of him – he will go now, unlamented – and back to Emma. It would be lovely if someone could give her a hug, then look her in the eye and tell her, yes, of course Donnacha will remember her as he grows up, but that sadly cannot be said with certainty. And this is where we come in. Long after the clinicians and the politicians are footnotes to history, we must remember the names of Emma, Vicky and all the women so badly failed in what now surely is the worst medical scandal in our history.

We must do everything in our power to demand change, to demand that women are listened to when they know they are sick, to accept that they know their own bodies better than anyone, and that if a concern is voiced, that voice must be listened to, immediately.

Above all, we must tell Donnacha, and his siblings Oisín, Mario, Séamus and Natasha, that their Mammy loved them very much and that we know this because, even through her tears, even with her voice shaking, even as she faced the toughest news of her life, she was thinking only of them, the joy they brought her, and the love they shared.

And for Emma Mhic Mhathúna, in her remaining time, we wish her only love and strength.