The 31-year-old woman whom the National Maternity Hospital has admitted was treated negligently when she died there five years ago, was "poisoned to death", her husband has said.
In the High Court on Wednesday, the hospital apologised to Mr John Gleeson and his wife's family, and acknowledged it was negligent in its diagnosis and treatment of Mrs Geraldine Gleeson.
Mr Gleeson, from Carlow, said yesterday his wife had "died of a burst bowel which led to multiple cardiac arrest. She was poisoned to death while in the care of a major hospital."
The hospital's secretary manager, Mr Michael Lenihan, said he had not yet received a transcript of similar comments by Mr Gleeson on the RTE Pat Kenny Show yesterday. The Master of the hospital, Dr Declan Keane, was due to return from abroad tonight and the matter would have to be discussed with him. Until then he would not be able to add to the hospital's High Court statement. He was not able to say of what Mrs Gleeson had died. Mr Gleeson said yesterday that he and his wife - who had been sweethearts since their mid-teens and had married in 1985 - had, in the early 1990s, undergone courses of IVF treatment to try to have a child. After two unsuccessful courses at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, they had gone to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
After the first treatment there his wife's ovaries had become over-stimulated, leading to her being hospitalised in Kilkenny with a gangrenous ovary, which had to be removed along with part of her other ovary.
Some time later they were persuaded to go back to the Royal Victoria for "one last go" at IVF treatment. However, during this course Mrs Gleeson developed pains in her lower abdomen.
In July 1993, while they were on holiday in Wexford, she experienced severe stomach and back ache and went to a local hospital. Mr Gleeson said the local hospital, conscious it was not expert in IVF treatment, transferred her, as a public patient, to the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dublin.
There, she was put in a virtually empty gynaecological ward, said Mr Gleeson. She was in considerable pain and on his daily visits from Carlow to see her, he expressed concern at her deteriorating condition. However, she did not want him to create a row that might antagonise the hospital staff, he said.
He discovered later that in her first eight days in the hospital - she died on the ninth - she had been seen by four junior doctors but no consultant.
On the fourth day her abdomen had become "hugely distended, ironically just like a nine-month pregnant woman" and she needed a gastric nasal tube to drain the fluid from it. Then she started "vomiting up faeces".
On the fifth day she had vomited up most of the fluid and felt a little better. He was told by staff she was suffering from a kidney infection.
"However, there was evidence from the medical records that they had known there was a bowel problem early in her stay at Holles Street," Mr Gleeson went on. On Tuesday, August 3rd, "her bowels literally exploded. If you know what septicaemia does to somebody, you'll know it's not a pretty sight.
"However, she was so strong it took three heart attacks to kill her."
On the morning of Wednesday, August 4th, he said the hospital phoned him in Carlow and told him that his wife would probably have to have an operation on her bowels, but that "she was OK, so take your time". He drove to Dublin, arriving at 10.20 a.m. to find that his wife had died five minutes earlier.
"They had left her on the bed, half-covered, with her breasts exposed, one eye open, and her body black and blue from the septicaemia inside her."
Mr Gleeson said a few days later he had met the then Master, Dr Peter Boylan, who told him his wife's death had been "nobody's fault - there was nobody to blame".
The same week he received a bill from the hospital, which he refused to pay.
His wife's mother and sister - both nurses - then demanded a meeting with Dr Boylan. The Master and a senior nurse showed them Mrs Gleeson's charts "to support their theory that her death was nobody's fault". His wife's mother threw the charts back at them, saying she "didn't believe such a load of rubbish".
Some time later, Mrs Gleeson's personal belongings were returned to her sister. "They were in a torn black plastic bin bag with the contents spilling from the sides. They were filthy and dirty, covered with the issue of her death," Mr Gleeson said. "A couple of months later they sent me another bill."