Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Drugs laced with rat poison did this to my son.. just don’t do it
Mum’s plea as teenage son Odi cheats death
He had no bowels, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart or brain
GRAINNE HEARTY COBURN DUNDALK
THE mum of a teen who defied a 1% chance of survival after taking a pill laced with rat poison has shared pictures of him to deter youths from using MDMA.
Odhran (Odi) Hearty Coburn’s temperature rocketed to 45C and he went into multi-organ failure after taking a €2 ecstasy tablet at the Belsonic Concert in Belfast on June 25.
Tests later showed the pill was 78% rat poison. While the 16-year old pulled through, his mum Grainne vowed to spread awareness of the risks of taking drugs.
Grainne and husband Alan, from Dundalk, Co Louth, were in London when they were told the teenager was seriously ill.
She said: “We got a call to say Odi was in the Belfast Mater Hospital in resuscitation.
“Odi got to a paramedic and told them he didn’t feel well, that he was a Type 1 diabetic and had taken insulin 15 minutes before.
“Within three minutes, he started seizing and convulsing. Despite packing him in ice, he remained at 45C for 39 hours.
“I was in hysterics at the airport all night while Alan was pacing the floors waiting for hourly updates from the hospital which told us Odi wasn’t likely to see the next hour.”
When they finally reached the hospital the following day, Odi had gone into multi-organ failure.
“He was hooked up to so many machines. He had nothing. No bowels, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart or brain. Our worst nightmare.
Odi was too ill to travel to King’s Hospital in London and was instead brought to St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin – a centre of excellence for liver care – as medics thought if they could just get that vital organ working again, the rest might follow.
For 33 days, Odi was given just a 1% chance of survival but on the 34th day he opened his eyes.
Grainne recalled: “He tried to say something and just his expression told me I had Odi back.”
However, he suffered a setback with an autoimmune disease and his grandmother Josephine died in August.
She said: “I was praying for a miracle for months and I received it but God took the backbone of my family.”
Odi is still going to rehabilitation and is without the use of his left arm and short-term memory.
Grainne said: “If there’s anything I want from this it is to create more awareness of how available these drugs are and the damage they can do. If by sharing these pictures it will stop even one other child from taking MDMA or any other drug, it will be worth it.