LEITRIM TEENAGER Meadhbh McGivern remains sedated at King’s College Hospital in London after a 14-hour liver transplant operation on Thursday, with doctors saying that her condition remains stable.
The operation took far longer than the five to eight hours expected, though surgeons, who perform 200 such transplants every year, are happy with the outcome, Ms McGivern’s father, Joe, said yesterday.
“It has been a long siege – a night, a day and a night. When you are sitting in an intensive care ward watching your daughter hooked up to a multiplicity of tubes all sorts of thoughts go through your mind,” he said, “but we’re happy”.
Doctors were expected yesterday to carry out an ultrasound examination of Ms McGivern, who remains sedated and intubated, to ensure everything had gone well with the operation. She is expected to remain sedated for another 24 hours.
She is now expected to spend up to six weeks at the south London hospital, before returning to Ireland, where she will either go to her home in Ballinamore or to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, depending on her condition.
“Five to eight hours would be the normal time for an operation like this, but I suppose there is no such thing as normal in cases like this. It took 14 hours. The lead surgeon, Nigel Heaton, said it was challenging,” her father said.
Last night, a spokesman for the hospital, which is an internationally regarded transplant centre, said there had been “no change” in her condition and that she remained “stable” in paediatric intensive care.
President Mary McAleese phoned Mr McGivern and his wife, Assumpta, to offer her good wishes: “She said that she had Meadhbh in her prayers and that she would continue to do so. It was a nice touch and very much appreciated,” said Mr McGivern.
Mrs McGivern, during a short break from their daughter’s bedside, paid tribute to the hospital staff: “They are just beautiful, they are so lovely and so dedicated to what they do. They really make you feel welcome.” Their daughter missed her first chance for a liver transplant in July after communication blunders meant that she was unable to travel in time to London, though a late-night flight on Wednesday went “seamlessly”.
Speedy transport in such cases, said Mrs McGivern, is vital: “We arrived here at 12.45am, but there is a huge amount that had to be done before she went into surgery at 7am: washing, bloods, X-rays. It all takes time.”
The couple and their second daughter, Ciara, who has remained for now in Ballinamore, had been overwhelmed by the good wishes that they have received “from so many quarters” in recent days, said Mr McGivern.
“It has really been unbelievable. It has been really touching to think that so many people have been thinking of us when there are so many other people in hospital suffering their own difficulties,” he added.