Husband’s agony after routine op led to death of his wife from sepsis
THE husband of a Dublin woman who died after routine surgery to remove a gallstone has said her condition deteriorated so quickly she would have never known she was about to die. Patricia Bishop, a mother of three, was 66 when she went into St James’s Hospital on September 22, 2016, for a procedure which should have seen her up and about the next day. But during the operation her bowel was punctured and Ms Bishop got sepsis, leading to multi-organ failure and death.
A verdict of medical misadventure was returned at the inquest last week into Ms Bishop’s death. Dublin Coroner’s Court heard that her doctor had “never before seen a case of sepsis like this”. Now as the second anniversary of her death approaches, Tom Bishop – her husband of 46 years – recalled with disbelief the horrifying sequence of events that saw Ms Bishop go from a healthy woman, who was looking forward to going sea swimming, to being surrounded by her family as her life support machines were switched off. “On Tuesday, September 20, Trisha went in for a scope, and a gallstone was found, and the surgeon said he could tackle it that Thursday, so that’s when she went in to St James’s,” Tom said at his home in Drimnagh. “I left her in at 9am and they rang me at 11am to say she was done but not to hurry in because she was recovering from the anaesthetic. “I visited her at around 4.30pm. They were keeping her in overnight anyway, and on the Friday morning I got in and Trisha had difficulty breathing. She was panting for breath. “The doctors said they thought it might be a reaction to the anaesthetic, and Trisha knew she wasn’t getting out that day either,” he added. “I went in the next morning and Trisha was sitting out at the side of the bed, still panting for breath, and the nurse was taking her blood pressure. Then she went to get another machine to check her bloods. “Then this woman came in and asked me to leave for a moment. I was in the corridor when she came out at around 10.30am and told me ‘get your family in’. “I rang Trisha’s brother. Then they said they were taking her down to ICU.” Ms Bishop had gone into multi-organ failure and despite attempts to save her, Mr Bishop was told there was no hope. She developed sepsis due to a perforation of bowel tissues during the procedure and died eight days later on September 30. Mr Bishop said he had no idea what sepsis was until it claimed Ms Bishop’s life.