A two-year-old child with no serious previous medical problems became suddenly ill and was dead 36 hours later from a rare congenital malformation of the bowel, an inquest has heard.
Shannon Canny, from Kilkisheen, Co Clare, was rushed to Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick by her mother when "she looked at me with the fear of God inside her" and complained of severe stomach pains.
"She was saying 'my belly, my belly'," her mother, Sharon Canny, told Dublin City Coroner's Court yesterday. She said her daughter's legs went blue, her lips became discoloured and she began vomiting soon after they arrived at the hospital early on January 6th, 2005.
Ms Canny said she was left waiting for more than 40 minutes after being asked questions about her daughter's condition before a doctor examined her. She added that she was not kept up to date on her daughter's condition.
A senior house officer saw Shannon at 2am and made a diagnosis of possible acute obstruction of the bowel and a decision was then made to transfer her to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin.
But her condition became critical in the intensive care unit in the coming hours and she suffered four cardiac arrests. It was decided that surgery should go ahead before her transfer.
"The child had a kind of abdomen catastrophe . . . Unless we did something with the abdomen problem we felt she wouldn't survive," Prof Pierce Grace, a consultant vascular surgeon at Limerick hospital, told the court. A verdict of death by natural causes was recorded.