Brave Adam gets date for scoliosis surgery after four-year wait
But he is told the operation may not go ahead if there is no ICU bed for him
‘He can’t get up, he can’t function’
A TEN-YEAR-OLD boy who has been waiting four years for scoliosis surgery has been given a provisional date for the procedure – but a chronic shortage of ICU beds means it still may not go ahead.
It comes as the Ombudsman for Children Dr Niall Muldoon said he has tasked a special investigator to look at what is causing the lengthy delays amid an ‘upsurge’ in complaints over waiting times.
Adam Terry’s parents Christine and Mark revealed yesterday how Crumlin Hospital in Dublin has offered them a ‘provisional date’ of Friday, October 29 for the procedure – but explained it may not go ahead if there are not enough ICU beds available on the day.
Christine said: ‘Crumlin contacted us during the week to offer us a provisional date. It’s meant to go ahead, but if an emergency comes in or if they don’t have an ICU bed, it’ll be cancelled. So in the same breath as we were told we had a date, we were told that it may not actually go ahead.’
Adam, from Whitehall in Co. Cork, has been waiting since 2017 for the crucial surgery and his condition has deteriorated in the meantime. Despite assurances being given that he would undergo surgery last year, Adam’s mother Christine was told in February that he would have to wait at least another nine months.
The youngster told RTÉ last week that he’s crying himself to sleep while waiting for the lifechanging surgery.
He touched the hearts of the nation on the morning of the Budget when he described his pain as ‘almost paralysing’.
The issue was then raised in the Dáil and Taoiseach Micheál Martin has since vowed the Government will do ‘whatever we have to do’ to help Adam get the surgery he desperately needs to return to school and play with his friends.
After the matter was raised by Labour Party leader Alan Kelly, Mr Martin said: ‘I don’t think it’s good enough, quite frankly, I don’t think any child should have to wait so long to get vital surgery of this kind.’
Speaking to RTÉ’s Today With Claire Byrne programme yesterday, the Terry family said they’d had a ‘really tough’ seven days since and were close to calling an ambulance at the end of last week due to the severity of Adam’s pain. ‘I’m now dealing with a little boy who is in so much pain he’s in bed daily, he can’t get up, he can’t function,’ Christine told listeners.
‘He was screaming in pain and that was really, really hard. We weren’t sure whether to ring an ambulance or not.’
Christine said that Adam’s surgery was now needed urgently.
She explained: ‘This isn’t elective anymore, he’s just as much of an emergency as a child coming in from a car accident.’
Meanwhile, on the same show, the Ombudsman for Children said his office is dealing with multiple complaints relating to delays in scoliosis treatment.
Mr Muldoon revealed his office has received ten complaints in the last year relating to waiting lists for scoliosis surgery and has dedicated an investigator to deal with the area. He said that while some progress was made in the area following a report by his office in 2017, they have seen issues arise again since 2019.
He said: ‘I’ve no doubt Covid and the cyber attack [on the HSE] would have hampered something. But again they were hampering a system that was already clogged, a system that wasn’t working right, a system that doesn’t seem to have enough orthopaedic surgeons, that doesn’t have enough clinical theatre time, which seems to get caught up in separation between private and public patients. There’s a real sickness within that system that hasn’t been cured yet.’
He said that it is ‘profoundly wrong’ that children are being forced to go to the media and to TDs to seek help.
‘The number of complaints has been so high we’ve dedicated one of our investigators to deal with this specifically,’ he added. ‘It’s something we wouldn’t do normally… We feel that we’re wasting energy and valuable resources when these children should just have what they need as a right.’
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said additional funding has been committed as part of Budget 2022 to address waiting lists and improve waiting times.
‘A real sickness within the system’