| Caption:
A family photograph of the late Sarah O’Leary taken on holidays in Thailand with her family last year. | ||
Father tells of sorrow on losing Sarah
Gorey Echo, Ireland - 1 hour ago
... Her parents, Ray and Mary O’Leary, refused because of their religious beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses to give permission for her to have a blood transfusion ...
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Patrick O’Connell
The father of a 15-year-old girl who died earlier this month, after sustaining fatal injuries as a result of a car accident, has broken his silence for the first time on the reasons why he and his wife opposed a blood transfusion for their critically ill daughter.
15-year-old Sarah O’ Leary of Farnogue was made a ward of the State following an emergency application by Wexford General Hospital to the High Court just hours after she sustained, what were ultimately, fatal head injuries in a road traffic accident.
Her parents, Ray and Mary O’Leary, refused because of their religious beliefs as Jehovah’s Witnesses to give permission for her to have a blood transfusion.
They consented at the time, however, to all other treatments for their daughter, but their stance prompted the hospital’s legal team to obtain a court order allowing doctors to administer the transfusion.
Speaking this week with the The Echo, Ray, a Garda attached to Wexford’s traffic core, said the decision was the most difficult any Jehovah’s Witness family could be faced with.
“She was our world,” he said, speaking in the sitting room of the O’ Leary’s family home on Friday last.
“She was such a loving kid. She used to love hugging people and was friendly and kind to everyone.
“I might be watching telly here and she’d come in and lift my arm up over her shoulder and snuggle up to me.
“She’d change the channel, of course, like any teenager and then look up at me and say: “well, you weren’t really watching that anyway, were you?”
“She was so affectionate, always kissing and hugging people. You just have to look at her face in the photographs to see what kind of a child she was.
“I miss her incredibly. We all do. Even though she was 15, she somehow had managed to stay that bit more affectionate and loving than the normal teenager her age. At the funeral, that was something that struck me, the amount of her friends who came and said that she always used to throw her arms around them.
“It’s hard now, especially at certain times of the day, when you’d be looking around and expecting her to come in to do something. She was a wonderful, wonderful person.”
On the day that Sarah was knocked down, Ray and Mary were called to the hospital where staff told them how seriously their daughter was injured. It was an horrific moment for the O’ Learys.
And it was made worse by the fact that their own beliefs regarding the use of blood transfusions meant that they were unable to grant permission for blood to be used in their daughter’s treatment.
“When the doctors asked us for permission to administer a blood transfusion,” Ray said, “we responded that we couldn’t authorise it.
“As a Witness, I was bound by my beliefs to say: ‘No, you must try anything and everything you can to save my daughter but I cannot authorise the use of blood.”
“They understood our reasons and they were respectful and kind in their attitude to our beliefs.”
Nevertheless, having informed the O’ Leary’s that they would have no choice but to seek a court order allowing them to carry out a transfusion, hospital management contacted a solicitor acting for the South Eastern Health Board. Within hours, Carlow District Court made Sarah a ward of the State.
“In any such case in this country,” said Ray, “where parents refuse to allow a blood transfusion to take place, they (the hospital), because they have their own ethical standards, take this course of action.
“We understand that and we understand that their primary duty is to look after the child’s life.
“It is always a difficult decision to make for any Witness family but, for us, it wasn’t a great test of our faith because we knew that the doctors would have to do this.
“At the same time, I would hope, because of my faith, that I would have made the same decision. However, the current legal position as it exists on this is such that I won’t ever know that for sure.”
After the court order was granted, Sarah did receive a blood transfusion at Wexford General Hospital. Shortly after, she was transferred by ambulance to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.
“She didn’t receive blood until they decided that her blood count was low,” Ray recalled. “They wanted to transfer her to Dublin and they felt that a blood transfusion would stabilise her condition.”
“After that, there was no further reason for transfusions to be used in her treatment.”
The fact that hospital management felt obliged to seek a court order in advance of administering a transfusion never impacted upon Sarah’s chances of survival in any way. She had been made a ward of the court prior to doctors ever feeling she urgently needed a blood transfusion.
Why?
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in Almighty God, known as Jehovah, and their beliefs are based on a literal understanding of the Bible, except where the expressions or settings indicate that they are symbolic.
They believe that taking blood into the body through the mouth or veins violates God’s laws.
“We had to exercise our conscience by saying that we could not authorise a transfusion,” said Ray. “They (the hospital) exercised their conscience and authorised it for what they saw to be the protection of her life.
“We understand that. We’re human beings and they are human beings and they did what they thought was right. We don’t recognise it as such because of our beliefs.”
The National coordinator of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ireland, Arthur Matthews ,said last week that blood transfusions are the equivalent of battery to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“It is like an assault on the body,” he said. “It is a particularly difficult situation when it is taken out of the hands of the parents after they have stated they don’t want a blood transfusion.”
“Blood isn’t just blood for us,” Ray says. “It’s sacred. For us, the primary issue is the biblical issue. To put it in basic terms, God created a perfect earth and he decided he’d like a physical being on the earth that could appreciate it the same way that he did.
“When God was creating man, he made him and then he breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils and he came to be a living soul.
“Until that moment in time, he was just a piece of meat on the surface of the world but when God breathed the breath of life into man and it went into the lungs and the red blood cells, then man became a living soul. For that reason, the blood became sacred. There is an inherent logic to our belief. “
Transfusion
Despite media reports which seemed to indicate the contrary, the issues surrounding the use of a blood transfusion in Sarah O’ Leary’s treatment did not impact upon her chances of survival.
And indeed, the way the issue was reported by another local newspaper left the O’ Leary family hurt by thei apparent lack of sensitivity.
“Once the ward-ship of court was granted, the medical profession was free to do whatever it thought necessary,” said Ray “They did so and I would say with a great deal of deference to how we felt.”
“But Sarah’s chances of survival were never impacted upon by our refusal to allow her to receive a transfusion. When the doctors felt that she needed a transfusion, because of the law in this country, they were able to administer it.”
Mr. O’ Leary continued that reports that the family had refused their daughter ‘treatment’ were both wrong and upsetting.
“There was an apparent lack of care and I was surprised by that,” he said. “We never refused our daughter treatment. We loved our daughter and wanted the doctors to do whatever they could to save her. We never refused treatment. We refused blood because of our beliefs but every other avenue of saving her was open to and used by the medical staff.
Tragically, in the early hours of Friday, November 11th and with her family by her bedside at Beaumont Hospital, Sarah died of the injuries she sustained in the accident a little less than a week after it had occurred.
Ray dismisses, however, suggestions that there was ever any conflict between either of the hospitals involved and the O’ Leary family.
“We received nothing but the height of consideration from the consultants and the staff in Wexford,” he said. “There was such a feeling of sadness because there was a child involved, especially one as pretty as Sarah.
“She had pouty lips, a tiny nose, big eyes and that lovely expression. And that reaches the hearts of people who would normally hardened by experiences like this.
“All of the Gardaí and the nurses were there for us and gave us all the support that they could. Since Sarah died, people have been very kind but then I think people can tell for themselves the truth of what occurred.
“She was so much like my mother and my father’s mother. We all miss her dreadfully but if one thing can be said about the accident, it’s that at least we got a chance to say goodbye. And as Jehovah’s Witnesses, we believe that she is at rest now until the day of the Resurrection when we will see her again.”
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