A woman has told the High Court how she felt she was “being ripped open” and was in “terrible, terrible pain“ during a day procedure to insert a pacemaker in her chest under local anaesthetic at the Bon Secours Hospital, Cork.
Mother of three, Eileen Tynan, said it “was like hell on earth” and she was hoarse from asking the consultant cardiologist to stop but nobody listened to her during the procedure which lasted over 50 minutes.
“I could feel pain immediately. I was really, really crying. I was hoarse from asking him to stop. He said I needed to relax, that my veins were small, and he needed to do the procedure,” she told Mr Justice Paul Coffey.
She added: “I felt he was not listening to me or my pleas for help. I felt I was shouting. I know the difference between pain and pressure. It was pain I would not like anybody else to go through what I went through that day.”
After the procedure, she told the court, the cardiologist “said ‘well done’ when he was finished, and the nurse wiped my eyes. I asked her why he didn’t stop and she said ‘I don’t know’.”
Ms Tynan was giving evidence in the first day of her action over the procedure carried out at Bon Secours Hospital, Cork on July 25, 2018.
The 68-year-old woman, her counsel Dr John O’Mahony SC instructed by Vincent Toher solicitors said, is claiming she suffers from PTSD and adjustment disorder as a result of the 53-minute day procedure under local anaesthetic.
Eileen Tynan (68) from Tivoli, Cork, has sued Bon Secours Health System with registered offices at College Road, Cork, and consultant cardiologist Heiko Kindler with an address at The Cork Clinic, Western Road, Cork, over the procedure carried out at the Bon Secours Hospital, College Road, Cork in July 2018.
It is claimed that there was an alleged failure to provide adequate anaesthesia or analgesia for the pacemaker and there was an alleged failure to respond to Ms Tynan’s complaints of pain and an alleged failure to cease the procedure when it was allegedly clear she was in pain and acutely distressed.
All of the claims are denied and the High Court heard that it will be contended by the hospital and cardiologist side that the pain alleged is not possible and that Ms Tynan had been given adequate painkilling medicine during the procedure. It is further claimed that Ms Tynan expressed pain once and was promptly given painkilling medication.
In her evidence, Ms Tynan said straightaway after the cardiologist started the procedure she felt pain.
“I told him I could feel it and he said OK, take a deep breath and he said my veins are very small and I had to relax.” She said she was in the hospital until 6pm.
She broke down in the witness box as she told how her three daughters afterwards returned home to Cork to be with her.
“Today is very important to me. Why didn’t he listen to my pleas? I was vulnerable in that room, it was terrible, terrible pain. I felt I was being ripped open and nobody listened to me,” she told the judge.
She said she had nightmares afterwards and “went downhill”. “l would wake up screaming,” she said.
The case before Mr Justice Paul Coffey continues next week.
