THE loving wife of a Southsider suffering from a debilitating brain injury is appealing to the public to help her to raise the
?¬100,000 needed to fund treatment that could improve his condition.
In October 2011, Robert Bolton underwent an operation at St James’s Hospital to remove cancer in his oesophagus.
The day after the operation he suffered a cardiac arrest, which resulted in a reduction in the supply of oxygen to his heart and brain and left the 66-year-old with a debilitating brain injury known as Hypoxia.
The condition can cause coma, seizures and sometimes brain death and the prognosis for patients can be difficult to predict.
Before the operation Robert lived with his wife Angela in Aungier Street where he worked as a night porter at a local funeral home. He was also still enjoying a successful career as a musician before he was hospitalised.
Angela explained that Robert has been in a bed in an acute ward at St James’s since the operation and said her husband is minimally responsive to stimulus and is described by doctors as suffering from
“disorder of consciousness
?.
“He is doing well; he’s now in a wheelchair,
? Angela said.
“He can’t walk and he can’t talk. He is being fed through a tube. He has got a catheter and he has to be changed. Everything has to be done for him. We don’t know if he understands what we are saying to him and we are just going on instinct with him.
?
Angela said doctors initially told her that her husband’s prognosis was not promising but she refused to accept their opinion. She has since fought to secure the best possible treatment for Robert in a bid to increase the chances of improving his condition.
“We were told that the most we could hope for was that he could make enough recovery to get into a wheelchair and be pushed around the place and maybe be able to communicate through a device,
? she continued.
Shortly after the operation Angela applied to have Robert seen under the Treatment Abroad Scheme but her application was rejected because the HSE decided that treatment for Robert’s condition was available in Ireland.
Angela claimed that Robert’s situation has been complicated by the fact that he was precluded from being treated at any of the neuro-rehabilitation centres in Ireland. Consequently his only alternative was to be treated and cared for at a facility for the care of the elderly.
She said she didn’t want her husband languishing in a facility for the elderly and she decided to leave Robert at St James’s Hospital until she could secure more suitable treatment elsewhere.
In October last year Angela applied to the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dun Laoghaire to have Robert’s condition assessed under the hospital’s SMART (Sensory Modality Assessment and Rehabilitation Technique) programme.
There is currently a 12 month waiting list for one of the three SMART assessment beds at the NRH. After an almost year-long wait Angela is hoping Robert will be admitted to the hospital in the coming weeks. She has also been told that he can only stay in the hospital for a maximum of three months.
As a result she is trying to raise the
?¬100,000 she needs to send her husband to the Oxford Centre for Enablement in England where she hopes the specialised treatment there for brain injury patients would improve Robert’s condition and prolong his life.
“If I raise the
?¬100,000 needed I will get him over to England to the clinic there,
? she explained.
“If I don’t raise enough money I will use whatever I get to buy therapy somewhere for him in Ireland.
“The programme in the UK will be tailored for his own personal needs. If he goes into some of the hospitals here he would go into the care of the elderly facility rather than the neuro-rehabilitation or the consciousness disorders ward and this would not maximise his chances of recovery.
?
Angela is raising awareness about Robert’s condition and the fundraising campaign to send him to the clinic in the UK on the www.robertbolton.org blog, which also has a link to www.sponsor.ie/charity/robertbolton where people can make credit card donations.
Alternatively, anyone who wants to make a donation to the fund can call the sponsor.ie telephone number at 01-8848020, call Angela at 087-9013476 or contact her by email at bolton rob@eircom.net