I survived brain op... but surgery may have left me with CJD

A HOSPITAL has told a mother of three she may have been infected with deadly incurable brain disease CJD by contaminated surgical tools.

Lorraine Walsh – one of 34 potential victims – was sent a letter saying she had been operated on with equipment previously used on a male patient who later died of Creuztfeldt- Jakob disease.

The warning comes six years after the potentially fatal error during surgery to stop swelling on her brain.

But the NHS said it was not known then that the man had ‘sporadic’ CJD, and that while the instruments were cleaned to advised standards, they could still have been contaminated when used on Miss Walsh.

Sporadic CJD is different from vari-

‘Feels like a death sentence’

ant CJD – the human form of mad cow disease – but is similarly lethal, killing 60 people a year.

Those affected have been banned from donating blood or organs, and told they should inform their families and dentists to avoid any risk of the disease spreading further.

Miss Walsh is understood to be the first potential victim to threaten legal action against University College London Hospitals NHS Trust for negligence. She told the Sunday People: ‘This feels like a death sentence.’

The former shop assistant collapsed at her west London home in 2008, two days after a holiday with then boyfriend Paul Allen and their two children. She said: ‘The last thing I remember was going to the loo and just collapsing.

‘Paul … said I was fitting, vomiting and my eyes were in the back of my head.’ She was taken to St Mary’s Hospital, London, and then transferred to the National Hospital for Neurology, where she had an operation for an aneurysm two days later.

Miss Walsh claims her personality has changed since the surgery, leaving her suffering from anxiety, confusion, impaired memory, and depression – all possible CJD symptoms.

‘Before this happened I was so happy,’ she said. ‘I loved being a mum. I used to go to all the school activities … My partner and I had a wonderful life, two amazing children and a beautiful home … Overnight it all changed.

‘When I woke in hospital I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t see and one side of my face was just a big, swollen lump. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive but within ten days I was free to go. After I came out of hospital I was someone else. I didn’t want to go near Paul, or even the kids. My family kept asking, “Who are you now?”’

A few weeks after leaving hospital Miss Walsh cancelled her engagement to Mr Allen, after 14 years together. Their two children, Laura, now 14, and Harry, nine, left her to live with their father because she was often incapable of caring for them.

She has since had a third child by a school friend with whom she shares custody.

She added: ‘I don’t know who I am any more. This has left me in limbo … I don’t want to leave my kids behind. I’ve already written letters to them in case the worst happens.’

The letter, received in February, said the surgical tools were ‘decontaminated using the standard guidelines’ but that there is ‘a small risk this infection could be transmitted to the first few patients on whom the instruments were subsequently used’.

Last night a Trust spokesman said risk to patients was ‘extremely low’.