Parents campaign for their little girl
CAMPAIGN TWO-YEAR-OLD JOY HAS A HOLE IN HER HEART
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THE parents of a seriously ill twoyear-old girl from Carlow have launched a nationwide campaign to save their daughter who is waiting for open heart surgery at Crumlin Hospital.
Gemma Lawlor and Mark Doyle from the Millstream, Blackbog Road, have written to the Minister for Health pleading for a bed for the vital surgery as they fear their daughter Joy might die as she has become more ill in recent days.
Gemma, a guidance counsellor at Carlow Vocational School, and her husband Mark adopted Joy from Vietnam in April 2008.
She is their only child and she was 'hard won' after a typically protracted adoption process.
Joy suffers from a hole in the heart and the narrowing of a heart valve and has been turning blue in recent days as she desperately needs the open heart surgery.
Gemma voiced her frustration after speaking with the cardiac surgeon at the hospital who said the team could only operate on one patient a day as the necessary beds in ICU are not available.
She is on a waiting list at Crumlin behind, her parents believe, more than 150 other children.
'She has a fever the last two days,' says Gemma from their home in the Millstream. 'It is all very scary but we are determined to make this a national topic. It is fixable and I know if she has the surgery she will live a strong and healthy life.'
On September 1, Joy was booked in for a keyhole operation but it had to be cancelled because of the lack of staffing in Crumlin. Two weeks later she had the surgery but they found that the hole in her heart was too big and her heart was too small.
'She has to have open heart surgery in the next few weeks, but the surgeon says he can't tell when it's going to be,' she said. 'It's the staffing of those beds that the Government is not funding at the moment,' she added.
Joy's crèche contacted her parents this week over their concerns for her increasing symptoms and indicated that as her health deteriorates they will not be able to meet her needs nor take responsibility for her.
'This will mean that I will have to leave my job to care for her at home,' added Gemma. ' If this happens I will not be replaced. My students will be without a teacher for the foreseeable future and my family will be without its main wage.'
The family contacted the Ray D'Arcy Show on Today FM to highlight their plight. They are now launching a nationwide campaign called Save Joy, which is calling on everyone to download a poster from savejoy.org and place it in their car window or house window, in order to get the Government to listen.
- Lynda CONNOLLY
