Victim's reaction: One of the last women to have had a Caesarean hysterectomy at the hands of Dr Michael Neary said yesterday she doubted she would ever get over what he did to her.
Niamh (not her real name) was 20 years old and pregnant with her first child when she presented at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital for a planned Caesarean section because her baby was breached in October 1998.
She had an epidural because she wanted to be awake for the birth. Her partner was at her side, and at 12.47 p.m. her baby girl was born. When the baby was taken away for the usual tests her partner went with it, and within minutes Dr Neary told her he could not stop her bleeding and he would "have to whip it out".
"I said is there nothing else you can do. He said if he didn't act I would be dead in 20 minutes, so I said do what you have to do," she recalled.
The Medical Council's report on Dr Neary said he had waited at most for eight minutes to conserve her uterus before making a decision to proceed to hysterectomy. It concluded it was carried out with "undue haste".
It was only when Niamh telephoned her GP to find out about having her child vaccinated two months later that she learned the awful truth, that Dr Neary was under investigation for allegedly performing unnecessary Caesarean hysterectomies.
"It was really only when I saw a pathologist's report that contradicted what he said - he said my womb was in such a state that it was a miracle I held a baby for nine months, but the pathologist said it was a normal healthy womb - that it hit me," she said.
"The North Eastern Health Board set up a support group. I went to a meeting and heard about 20 other women's stories, and 50 per cent of their stories were identical to mine," she said.
Now she hopes an independent public inquiry will be established into what occurred at the hospital. She would like, she said, to hear evidence from others who worked at the hospital with him.
The whistle was finally blown on Dr Neary's practices by two student midwives in October 1998. It appears Niamh's case was the final straw.
The North Eastern Health Board, which took over the running of the hospital from the Medical Missionaries of Mary in 1997, then began to assess Dr Neary's record, and his name was suspended from the medical register following a High Court application from the Medical Council in February 1999.