Woman from Mullingar missing hospital appointments due to lack of transport

Síofra Grant

Three years ago Patsy Gorman walked into hospital for a standard knee operation. What was expected to be a straightforward procedure then led to several further operations leaving Patsy unable to walk and using a wheelchair full time.

A year after Patsy moved into a nursing home where she has since remained. She is 72.

Tracy Gorman, Patsy's daughter has been doing her best ever since to provide support to her mother by helping her to her appointments and bringing her to visit family.

The only problem is, because of the way Patsy's leg is extended, she can't access standard wheelchair accessible vehicles. And the only one in the entire county that could accommodate her is now off the road.

“She hasn’t walked since, everything and anything that could go wrong went wrong.”

Since Patsy lost her ability to walk she has been using a manual wheelchair. While it's essentially a standard chair it does have one alteration in that her leg is extended.

“Basically she has no knee,” continued Tracy, “So her leg has to be kept straight at all times in the wheelchair.”

As said before, it’s the leg that has brought the two so much difficulty in terms of transport, even cars specifically made for wheelchairs cannot take Patsy simply because her leg is extended.

“There’s not enough space in the back, they can’t strap her in so they can’t take her in those taxis.”

In all of Mullingar and it seems all of Westmeath there is only one taxi capable of transporting Patsy. ‘Was’ is more apt as according to Tracy the taxi is no longer available.

“The only one that could take her was Begley’s, they have the big taxi with the lift on the back. But it is gone now,” lamented Tracy, “It was off the road so we couldn’t take mam down to the house or anything like that.

“Seemingly it’s gone off the road again.”

At the time of this interview Tracy was struggling with a problem she had become quite familiar with over the last three years. How will she get her mother to her appointment? Sometimes there’s only one answer, she can’t.

“My problem is that Mam had an appointment this morning for Mullingar Hospital and I had no way of getting her there so I had to cancel it.

“I have no problem paying for a taxi, obviously they’re expensive but it’s a short journey and that’s not a problem. But I can't get a taxi.”

Tracy has reached out to every HSE resource, every charity, every community group has found nothing: “I went to the community nurse, the ones that call out to people and they couldn’t help me.

“I tried the Irish Wheelchair Association and they couldn’t help me. Someone suggested the Order of Malta but they’re obviously a volunteer association and can only help when there are volunteers available.”

As well as losing her mobility Patsy suffered a stroke shortly after all her surgeries and was left paralysed on her right side. While she has since recovered some movement in March Patsy had a medical emergency due to the damages of the stroke.

“The reason we had to go to the hospital is because she was hospitalised in March. She has trouble swallowing from the stroke and it causes her to vomit a lot.

“But she ended up in hospital for two weeks in March where she had a clot in her throat so she was going back for the six month follow up today," she tells.

“Now, am I supposed to wait until my mother is sick enough again to call an ambulance and then they’ll transport her to the hospital rather than have her go, have her appointment and stop that from happening.”

Tracy says the Mullingar Hospital transport service said it, "wasn’t feasible" to send an ambulance for an outpatient appointment.

“What am I supposed to do?” pleaded Tracy, “And literally no one can help me.”

A representative from the Irish Wheelchair Association who was kind enough to speak on this issue revealed that the problem of transport is not just isolated to Westmeath. The IWA believe Patsy is facing is not uncommon. Depending on the extended leg it can be incredibly difficult to find a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

Should the extended leg be on the left side the user can be accommodated by any wheelchair vehicle. However if it is on the right side, like Patsy, it’s another story. But the representative also explained that more often than not it’s not just the type of vehicle that hinders people from accessing transport but the unwillingness of certain taxi companies to accommodate wheelchair users.

“I can tell you, if you’re in a wheelchair and you want a wheelchair accessible taxi in this country you will find it very hard to get one. The problem is I can’t get people with disabilities to ring or email or contact the NTA and make a complaint.

“They have to get onto the NTA, put their complaint in writing and then the NTA will do something about it.”