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Woman Battles Locked in Syndrome

By
APRIL DREW,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 1:24 AM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:00 PM

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For a young Corkman life is nearly always sad these days.

Shane O'Leary, who has been living in New York for five years, wakes up every morning thinking of his sister back home.

His sister Catherine, a beautiful 31-year-old mother of one, was diagnosed with what doctors call Locked In Syndrome in February.

Shane, 33, when not bartending at the Mean Fiddler in Times Square, spends his time trying to figure out ways to raise money in a heartfelt effort to bring his beloved sister to the U.S. so "she can get the best treatment in the world," he told the Irish Voice recently during an interview about his sister's condition.

The young Cork woman's sad story began when she was 28.

Catherine, who worked in a Subway sandwich bar in Cork, got a dose of the hiccups. Not unusual, but when they wouldn't go away she got worried.

"She found it very difficult to catch her breath and just couldn't stop hiccupping," recalls Shane, who grew up in Ballincollig, on the outskirts of the city, with Catherine and three other siblings.

Her hiccups lasted three years.

She visited countless doctors to try and determine what was wrong with her. They said it must be an ulcer.

It wasn't an ulcer. The hiccups continued, causing excruciating headaches and vomiting spells.

Catherine found it harder and harder to swallow food. She lost weight, finally dropping from a healthy 133 pounds to a mere 84 pounds.

Doctors said she was anorexic."I'm not," she told them.

"Then you must be bulimic," they said. "Not that either," she said.

"Well then it must be depression that is causing all this," they finally decided.

Shane is furious at the doctors. "One doctor said it was all in her head, and although he didn't mean the tumor, her sickness was in her head," said O'Leary.

It was finally Catherine herself who had to beg the doctors in Cork to give her an MRI brain scan. They finally agreed.

Catherine's seven year old son Brandon, who made his Communion without his mother being present, kept asking his dad and Catherine's partner Nigel Herlihy why his mother was going into hospital for hiccups. "Brandon just couldn't understand why his mother was so sick from hiccups," said Shane.

"Catherine worked right up to the week before she was going for brain surgery. Can you believe that? She is just so strong."

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