Madam, – Reality struck even harder for me as I read Orla Tinsley’s brilliant article (Opinion, April 3rd). I am a cystic fibrosis patient of St Vincent’s hospital and have experiences similar to those that Ms Tinsley described in her articles. I have had sleepless nights worrying about cross-infection while listening to patients in the room cough; cried while an elderly cancer patient died beside me during the night; and tiptoed into countless toilets afraid of what I would find.
What kept me going during all my hospital stays in these six-bedded rooms was the hope of a single-bedded room with en suite, my version of heaven on Earth. This is not a luxury for people like me as we are so prone to infection that our lives are at risk in the current conditions. If the CF unit is postponed for even one year it will not be available in the lifetime of some of us.
I, along with other people with CF in Ireland, have spent the last 10 days writing to TDs, phoning radio stations and writing to newspapers. We are all exhausted from this campaign, but cannot give up. Does Mary Harney and the HSE want us to fight so hard that we will all be hospitalised? I am sick of hearing excuse after excuse. I am sick of the Government putting a price tag on my life and the lives of all people with CF. This decision must be reversed. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Ireland has something to be ashamed of. It’s not that we’re ending up with a dysfunctional economy, having participated, along with the rest of the developed world, in the excesses of the Noughties. It’s not because we’re now wallowing in an orgy of self- pity because the chickens have come home to roost. It’s not even because we cannot seem to get our priorities right in an economic downturn.
It is because we came through an era of plenty and, during that time, we did not do our duty, as a nation, to the vulnerable and the people with little power in our community. We did not do enough for education, particularly primary education. We failed to provide adequate support for the people in our midst who are the carers of dependent relatives. And head and shoulders above all else is the reprehensible manner in which our cystic fibrosis sufferers have been treated.
How a nation treats its minorities and its defenceless citizens is what determines its right to call itself civilised. The Republic, in this generation, is found seriously wanting in this regard. – Yours, etc,