Remembering a brilliant surgeon and a deeply compassionate man
The tragic death of Professor Aongus Curran last week is a loss to us all. Emily Hourican pays tribute to the man who diagnosed her cancer
THE word that came up again and again, as patients of Professor Aongus Curran expressed their sadness and shock at his sudden death, last weekend, in a fishing accident on Lough Corrib in Galway, was ‘compassionate’.
There is no doubt he was a brilliant surgeon and consultant. His professional achievements stand to that — a graduate of University College Galway, he was Professor of Otolaryngology at UCD, and attached to St Vincent’s and the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear hospitals; he also set up a ground-breaking rapid assessment unit in St Vincent’s for patients with suspected head and neck cancer, the first of its kind.
But what stood out, for his patients, was the compassion. The profound, human kindness. The way he saw in front of him, not sickness or disease, but people; scared people, worried people, people in pain, and the work he did to help them.
In my own life, Prof Curran played an exceptional role. I may be exaggerating when I say I think he saved my life, but that’s certainly what it feels like. Because he diagnosed me with cancer of the tongue base last November, after a frustrating six months of not getting answers, and started me on the road to the treatment that cured me, handing me over to an excellent team of consultants. And at the end of that road, he was there to help me take stock, and seemed to truly share in my relief and delight at how well everything had gone.
Perhaps another consultant would have done what he did, but by the time I had the good luck to come before Professor Curran, I had already seen a couple, and they hadn’t. He took one look at the ‘annoying lump in my throat’, on a Friday morning, and knew exactly what he was looking at. I know this, because I asked him, much later when treatment was over, and he said so. And yet so reassuring and calm was he that he managed to send me off for the weekend with an entirely quiet mind.
That Friday, he booked me in for a closer look, under general anaesthetic, the following Wednesday. Five days from the initial visit. By then, I had already seen one consultant who suggested he might be able to take a closer look in around six weeks. While I was making the appointment for the Wednesday with his excellent receptionist and PA, Professor Curran popped his head around the door and said to her, “you know, I’ ll see her on the Monday instead, in the Eye & Ear”. He bumped me forward by two days, in what was undoubtedly a busy schedule, which should have rung major alarm bells, and yet still managed to send me home feeling happy and confident.
When I came round from the anaesthetic, it was Prof Curran who told me “you have a tumour, and it’s malignant”. The way he said it, I knew he was sorry to be saying it.
Throughout that week, during which I remained in the Eye & Ear on his advice, so that I could be speedily booked in for all the scans and appraisals I would need in order to get a complete picture of the cancer, and therefore the treatment, he would pop in from time to time while on his rounds. He was always that mixture of kindness, humour and complete professionalism, that did so much to reassure and encourage me. I looked forward to his visits, knowing that the immense loneliness of those early days would be temporarily alleviated by his presence, by the confidence I had in him.
He would ring my brother, my authorised companion on the cancer ‘journey’, after-hours in the evenings and patiently explain to him what was happening, the picture that was emerging. I felt that with Professor Curran in charge, everything would be OK. And it was. So much so that I believe that I was lucky that no one diagnosed me earlier, even though the wait most certainly allowed the cancer to progress, because it meant I came under his care.
We are all irreplaceable to our families and friends, but for most of us, professionally, that is not the case. Which is exactly as it should be. And yet some few people, by a combination of their experience, their expertise, their drive, their competence and the all-important extra dimension of their personality, are exactly that — irreplaceable.
Professor Curran’s death is a terrible blow to the medical profession, to cancer care in this country, and to the many patients who admired and relied on him. To his family — his wife, five children, parents, siblings and wider network — it is of course far, far more than that, and my thoughts and prayers are with them. If it is any consolation, I hope they know that he will never be forgotten by those whose care he undertook so well, whose lives he saved, whose difficult moments he assuaged with gentle compassion.
At his funeral last Thursday — a funeral so packed that the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in Foxrock was filled to bursting, with almost as many again standing in respect outside, hymns were Abide With Me and Panis Angelicus. Gifts laid on the coffin, to signify the passions of Professor Curran’s life, included a fishing rod, a Man Utd jersey, books that spoke of his love of literature and poetry, and, most significantly, a photograph of his family.
Because the mass and celebration that unfolded spoke of a man dedicated first and foremost to his family; a husband, father, son, brother. As his sister described him in her homily, “a kind, loving man who enriched the world around him”.
That is the man we will remember.
‘So reassuring and calm that he managed to send me off for the weekend with a quiet mind’