A MAN who spent four days in "excruciating pain" on a trolley in the emergency department of University Hospital Limerick has spoken of how he attempted to take his own life during the ordeal.
The patient, who suffers from a rare and complex form of Crohn's Disease, told The Limerick Leader that he attempted suicide during a horrific ordeal in August 2019 where he was forced to lie on a hospital trolley for 104 hours.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, told the outlet that he was left on a trolley while suffering from a superbug infection, and was forced to empty his colostomy bag into a biohazard bin due to risk of cross-infection if he used the public bathrooms.
He claims he suffered for hours in severe pain when he was given inefficient pain medication which would not stay in his system due to his condition, and says that he received an apology from staff because of this.
At one point, the man was on a trolley in the emergency room close to the nurses station, and says it is here where he attempted to take his own life to end the pain he was in.
“I actually tried to kill myself inside there, I was in that much pain," he told The Limerick Leader.
He explained that because of the constant pain of living with Crohn's Disease and being constantly in and out of hospital with his condition, his ordeal in the emergency department was "the straw that broke the camel's back".
When Minister for Health Simon Harris visited the hospital several days later, the man says he was put out of sight and placed in a room which he described as similar to "an old storage room".
After four days, the man finally underwent a CT scan, where his GI tract was found to be covered in ulcers. Though he has praised his consultant surgeon, the nurses at University Hospital Limerick and other medical staff, he has issued a handwritten complaint regarding the way in which he was treated.
The Limerick Leader report that the man received a letter from UL Hospitals Group in January in which a consultant agreed that his accommodation "in an overcrowded emergency department" for four days "was not appropriate to deal with your complex clinical rare type of Crohn's disease".
When approached for contact by the outlet, UL Hospitals Group said they could not comment on individual cases "for reasons of patient confidentiality".
