New lease of life
Med-tech innovations can dramatically improve quality of life, as Donna Feeney and Elaine MacHale have witnessed first hand
T hree weeks before her daughter Savannah was due in April 2013 Donna Feeney noticed that her left leg was sore and very swollen and when she went to the hospital she was told a vein had collapsed in her stomach.
“The baby was lying on my vein and it collapsed from my groin all the way to my heart causing a blood clot in my groin. I had to have my boyfriend give me a Heparin injection in my stomach at the same time every day until I had to give birth,” she explains.
“A nurse from the hospital thought him how to do this. It was very important he put the injection in at a certain angle and release the drug slowly because if he didn’t the drug would pool under the skin and wouldn’t work.”
After Savannah was born Donna had to take blood thinning medication Warfarin, wear grade 2 compression stockings and continued to suffer pain in her leg.
With her weight at 10.5 stone, she couldn’t exercise and had to spend a lot of time with her leg up on the couch, making it impossible to go back to her pre-baby weight of 8.5 stone.
“My bloods were tested two or three times a week while on the Warfarin to check how thin the blood was. It never regulated so the dose was constantly changing,” says Donna.
A turning point came when Donna had an appointment with Dr Gerry O’Sullivan, consultant interventional radiologist at Galway University Hospitals when Savannah was six months old.
“Gerry took an ultrasound of my leg and told me the rest of my veins were coping with one having collapsed but recommended vascular stenting surgery. I would be a bit panicky about surgery, but when he told me that without it I would put on more weight and not be able to lose it I knew that would cause me depression so I decided to go for it.”
The procedure taking around two and a half hours involved key-hole surgery through the back of Donna’s left knee and 28cm of stents being delivered through a catheter to open up her veins. The device was a venous stent designed and manufactured by Cook Medical in Limerick. She only had to stay in hospital for one night.
“Within a couple of months I had lost weight without dieting and could walk around properly again. I still had to wear compression stockings, but only the knee-high ones, for two years after the birth as a preventative measure. The pains in my leg stopped.
“Before the surgery there were so many things I couldn’t do, like pushing a full trolley in the supermarket and I was nervous chopping vegetables because I was worried about my thinned blood due to the Warfarin [which I no longer have to take].”
Having previously worked in fashion and retail, 24 year old Donna decided she wanted a change this year and applied for a position at Boston Scientific in Galway, which manufactures drug-eluting stents, biliary stents, and catheters.
She got the job and has now been working as a product builder at the facility for the past five months. “We are regularly shown videos of the patients Boston Scientific products have helped and I can see now through personal experience and working there how everything counts in medical procedures. We are making products that save people’s lives.”
WITHIN A COUPLE OF MONTHS I HAD LOST WEIGHT WITHOUT DIETING AND COULD WALK AROUND PROPERLY AGAIN