Another family goes through court torture while coping with cancer

‘SOUL-destroying,” Paul Morrissey said describing his and his seven-year-old daughter’s future. “It’s heartbreaking.” Of course it is, watching the love of your life face the end of her life, while knowing her death may have been avoidable, seems an unfathomable cruelty.

Earlier this year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Simon Harris promised not to “drag” victims of the CervicalCheck scandal through the courts.

But here we are, after Vicky Phelan and after Emma Mhic Mhathúna, reading about yet another woman forced to spend hours of her precious, limited life in the Four Courts. Away from the comfort of her home.

Ruth Morrissey (37) and her husband Paul are suing the HSE, US-based lab Quest Diagnostics, and Irish firm Medlab Pathology Ltd. Ruth’s cancer recurred this year, and doctors have told her it will progress to be terminal within a year. Her lawyers have argued that recurrent failures to report previous smear tests correctly are to blame.

Another case of multiple alleged slip-ups, another family destroyed. In court, Ruth spoke of the impact her illness has had on her family life.

She is no longer able to have an intimate relationship with her husband. “You miss the intimacy. You know you love him so much, you feel you want to show you love him,” she told the court.

Paul spoke of the hurt his daughter was experiencing. “When you go downstairs, and you hear your daughter say ‘mammy, please don’t die, don’t leave’, it’s devastating.”

He added: “To think I’m going to lose my wife at 38 years of age, she’s the only person I’ve ever slept with. She’s never going to see our daughter’s confirmation… or see her married. It’s souldestroying, it’s heartbreaking.”

It’s hard to untangle all the strands of anger and hurt here.

It’s harder still to understand how the Government can let more women and their families go through this torture.

It seems a barbaric way of compounding a tragedy: forcing people who are sick to slog it out in the High Court with medical companies and in the view of the public.

Instead of hugging each other, they’re discussing court procedures and legal letters.

Listening to the evidence the Morrisseys gave, it’s impossible not to wonder how many more women have to endure this agony before finding some fleeting respite.