PHILIP CONLAN said he had never seen his wife looking so good. She had just started an aerobics class and was cycling six miles each day to her job in Donnybrook. On a January afternoon she went into hospital for a routine operation. Less than 48 hours later she was dead.
In evidence to Dublin City Coroner's Court yesterday, Mr Conlan said that his wife had been "in the best of health" apart from the discomfort of a prolapsed womb, which followed the birth of their second child. He saw her at about 7.45 on the evening of January 12th, 1995, shortly after the routine hysterectomy and repair operation. "I brought it to the nurses attention how pale she was. They said that was to be expected."
Fifteen minutes later she told him she was very sick, he said. The nurse told him this nausea was to be expected after an operation. He went home to the children and at 2 a.m. got a call from the hospital.
"It was a very panicky call. They told me to come down straight away." The staff told him his wife's heart had stopped, but they had revived her. "Somebody said she lost a lot of blood during the operation."
Mr Conlan returned home to "sort out the children". He "drove like a lunatic" to the family home in Tallaght and as soon as he opened his front door the hospital rang again. "My thoughts were still with going to work and sorting things out because death never occurred to me." He got back to the hospital at about 5.40 a.m. and they told him Marian was dead.
Mr Conlan was asked whether he had talked to his wife after the operation. He said she had told him she felt sick, but those were her only words. "She spoke with her eyes. She was in and out."
Cross examined by his counsel, Ms Maureen Clarke SC, Mr Conlan said that his wife had had two difficult pregnancies and wanted to get the prolapsed womb "sorted out". The hospital had advised her to wait until their youngest child was over a year old, as she would not be able to lift him for some time after the operation.
