BEAUMONT Hospital Foundation hosted its annual ‘Honour Your Heroes’ reception, last week where former patients of the hospital were given the opportunity to return and thank the staff they believe went the extra mile in helping them in their recovery.
One of the former patients was Fran McDermott, from Artane, who was treated for testicular/lung cancer in 2001 and thyroid cancer in 2013. Fran was thanking Peter Walshe, consultant ENT surgeon.
In 2001, Fran McDermott, then aged 20, was attending college in DCU studying accounting and finance. He noticed a lump on his testicle that felt like a small orange while changing for football one evening and hoped it was sports-related. He did nothing about it for a few weeks until he realised it wasn’t going away and he needed to see a doctor.
Fran went to his local GP who advised him to go to the A&E at Beaumont Hospital where he underwent an ultrasound scan and other tests. A few weeks passed and he received a call from the hospital asking him to come in and bring a parent with him. Fran knew it would not be good news. He subsequently underwent surgery and a course of chemotherapy. However, further scans showed shadows on his lungs and Fran then had open chest surgery where a further number of small tumours were removed from his lungs.
While recovering from these operations, Fran had a chest drain inserted which required him to sleep sitting-up and then experienced a pneumothorax or collapsed lung which meant he couldn’t breathe and he had to have an emergency procedure on the ward in which an incision was made underneath his rib cage and a tube inserted to re-inflate his lungs.
Over the next 10 years Fran attended Beaumont Hospital for six-monthly check-ups. In 2012, he was given the all clear and told he didn’t need to be seen again.
However, only months later, in January 2013, Fran was shaving when he noticed a shadow on his neck caused by a golf ball size lump.
“I instinctively knew that it wasn’t something that would go away,” he says.
He went straight to Beaumont Hospital to have it checked. A biopsy was taken and Fran was given medication to take for a few weeks in the hope that the lump was caused by an infection rather than cancer.
Unfortunately, it was thyroid cancer and Fran underwent two operations, performed by consultant ENT surgeon, Peter Walshe, firstly to remove the lymph nodes in the right hand side of his neck and a second a few weeks later to remove the thyroid gland altogether.
Fran described Mr Walshe’s care and support during his surgeries for thyroid cancer as “extraordinary”.
“I really felt like we were in it together and he always went that extra bit in my care, using humour to lighten the mood, walking me back to the ward after minor surgery and the empathy he demonstrated on many occasions,” he said. Despite his brush with cancer on two occasions, Fran has continued to maintain his fitness and positivity. He has run the Dublin Marathon, completed the Wicklow 200km Cycle and is planning to get married in 2017.