Exhausted mum’s plea for new house without stairs to help disabled boy
Yvonne tells of struggles while stuck on waiting list
A DESPERATE mum who is forced to carry her son up and down the stairs several times a day is pleading for urgent action to find a suitable home for her family.
Yvonne Hogan, 45, found out at six months pregnant that Troy had spina bifida – tragically she lost a baby to the same condition at just two months old.
She has been trying to give her son, four, the best quality of life possible but describes it as a “daily struggle” having been on a waiting list for a house transfer for the past three years.
The home she has been living in with her partner and three children in Trim, Co Meath, for the past 10 years is too small to accommodate Troy, who is a wheelchair user.
The mum of five said being forced to carry her son up and down the stairs every day is leaving her “exhausted” and having to catheterise her son on a couch as a result of having no sterile area to carry it out leaves him with “no dignity”.
She added: “The house is too small, the hall is too narrow.
“Troy has to go to the end of the hall and try and turn his chair and come back up.
“He gets frustrated because he’s banging into doors. It is so unfair on him. I am doing his bowel washes in a bedroom when I should be doing them in a sterile environment like a bathroom but there is not enough room so he’s at risk of infection.
“I also have to drain his kidneys four times a day and I have been doing that on a couch for the past four years. It’s a disgrace.
“Enable Ireland got us a bath chair but it doesn’t fit. Because he has no balance you have to hold him in the bath, bend over, wash him and try and get him out, carry him out into the bedroom and try and dress him.”
Brave Troy has also had to have two major surgeries in his short life to have a shunt inserted to drain fluid from the brain.
Yvonne said: “The council said they could build an extension on the ground floor for Troy but because he went into cardiac arrest in the past he has to be beside me at all times.
“They said they’d give us a stairlift but he can’t sit on a seat because he has a high lesion on his back.
“Enable Ireland has sent the council letters, Temple Street has sent them letters but I’m getting nowhere.
“I’m going to keep fighting for Troy, I’m not going away.”
Meath County Council has been contacted for comment.