My name is Adrian Tansey, I’m from Garching, County Sligo. My mother was Phyllis Tansey, and my father is Sean Tansey. There were five of us in the family. My mother passed away 18 months ago. She was in Northwest Hospice before she passed.
My mum was born in Crewe in Cheshire, England. She met my dad when she was 19 in Crewe, and they moved to Ireland in the 1960s. I was also born in Cheshire as well. They lived in Garching and they ran a shop just 100 yards from here. She had health issues for the last 20-30 years of her life as she only had 1 and a half lungs. That led to health issues, so she had a tough time for the last 20-30 years of her life, to be quite honest.
My mum underwent many treatments across various hospitals, and she had several consultants in Dublin, Galway, Sligo, etc. But in the last number of years, she was in and out to Galway a few times and the consultant there felt that there was nothing more they could do for her. They suggested we consider further care at a hospice. That’s when we contacted Northwest Hospice, and we were very lucky that they got us a bed for her.
When the consultant first tells you that there is nothing more they can do, that’s a big shock to us all as a family. And then you must proceed to the Northwest Hospice stage and you’re having very difficult discussions because we’re talking about end of life. That’s not easy. There’s a lot of emotion involved. But when we got there, it was wonderful the way we were all together and how the staff and the doctors discussed everything with us in such a nice manner. It made it a lot easier on us. When she went into Northwest Hospice, our daily routine would be, rather than crowd her, we took shifts. So, a member of the family was always down there during the day with her for a couple of hours and then we would leave it to the next person to come in.
I have to say, the way the staff treated us made it so comfortable for us to be there. This went on for a couple of months and while we knew that the result would be that our mum would be passing, they made it so wonderful. We can never forget it. When my mother first went into palliative care, obviously my father was very worried how things would turn out, but once she was in there, his mind was put at rest because of the wonderful treatment she was receiving.