THIS DOCTOR SAVED MY HUSBAND, MINISTER

EDITED EXTRACTS FROM AN OPEN LETTER TO MINISTER FOR HEALTH, SIMON HARRIS, JUNE 23

Mr Harris,

I watched with huge hope and expectation as you addressed the question from Deputy Billy Kelleher in the Dáil this evening about the loss of Ireland’s leading sarcoma oncologist, whose employment contract at St Vincent’s University Hospital (SVUH) expires next week and won’t be renewed. I sat next to my very ill husband, and we watched in absolute silence as you parroted back the response from the HSE that we had ourselves received. That “patients’ ongoing care will not be compromised in any way” once Dr Alexia Bertuzzi left her position at the hospital. When you said this we looked at each other in horror, as we knew that you didn’t understand the reality of what was happening.

I’ll never forget the day we met Dr Bertuzzi, or Alexia, as we call her now. Gino was very ill. An infection had been raging through his body for the past month and no antibiotic was working. Pain from the tumour meant that he could no longer walk. He couldn’t feed himself. He couldn’t stand up for a shower. He was dying, right before my eyes. Alexia walked into the room and brought with her an absolute sense of calm. She smiled at us both, and asked Gino to tell her everything. Start at the beginning, she said. Leave nothing out. So he told her his story. And when he was too weak to talk, I told her his story. And at the end she said: “I know what this is. I’ve seen this before. I’ve treated this before. You will have chemo. You will have surgery. And you will live.”

Gino was discharged recently, home in time to celebrate Father’s Day with his four very grateful children. Alexia saved his life. And I don’t say that flippantly. She really did.

It is the sarcoma patients like my husband who will suffer...

Regards,

Kelli Appezzato