Paralysed mother secures €5m settlement
A woman left almost completely blind and paralysed down the right side of her body due to a delay in diagnosing and treating an aneurysm at Sligo General Hospital has secured a €5m settlement in the High Court.
Bernadette Surlis (60) from Drinaum, Strokestown, Co Roscommon, is confined to a wheelchair and is in a nursing home.
The €5m settlement means she should be able to realise her wish to return home, Mr Justice Kevin Cross was told. Ms Surlis’s daughter Carla welcomed the settlement. “It’s been really hard, it’s torn apart our whole family, we lost our mom and our whole family was gone. “Hopefully she’ ll be home this time next year,” she said. Ms Surlis, a mother of three adult children, sued the HSE alleging negligence in her care and treatment at Sligo General Hospital in November 2013, Michael Cush SC told the court.
Mr Cush said had Ms Surlis been appropriately and promptly diagnosed and treated, she would not have suffered the injuries.
This was a “very sad case” involving acquired brain injury, he said.
Ms Surlis, then aged 57, went to the Sligo General Hospital on November 3, 2013, complaining of headache, vomiting and dilated left eye pupil, but was triaged as category three and left waiting for three hours.
She was investigated for glaucoma and discharged but re-attended the following day when the seriousness of her condition was “appreciated for the first time”.
She was transferred to Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital on November 5 th as she had suffered haemorrhage and severe and permanent injury, counsel said.
She spent the following year between hospitals and later in the National Rehabilitation Centre.
After months of intensive treatment there she was then moved to the nursing home.
The consensus among the medical experts is that Ms Surlis will need full-time care for the rest of her life.
Ms Surlis is aware of her condition and has difficulties communicating but can do so with her family’s assistance, counsel said.
In her proceedings, Ms Surlis claimed she woke up on November 3, 2013, with a severe pain in her head and a swelling left eye and had lost a little of her balance.
She went to a doctor who thought she might be having a stroke and referred her to Sligo Hospital.
She arrived at the hospital at 4pm with an acute enlargement of a posterior communicating artery aneurysm but was not treated as an emergency and was left waiting for three hours, it was claimed.
The aneurysm had not ruptured at that stage and, had she been moved to Beaumont that day, she would probably have made a full recovery, it was alleged.
A settlement of €5m was secured in the High Court.