‘I’ve cried every day since Raychel died’

Marie was in Banbridge on Monday to attend the opening of the oral hearings stage of the public inquiry into Raychel and four other children’s hyponatraemia-related deaths between 1995 and 2003.

Raychel was given the wrong level of fluid required to treat dehydration and died from hyponatraemia - a disturbance caused by a shortage of sodium in the body - in the Royal Victoria Hospital after being treated in Altnagelvin

The hyponatraemia inquiry was adjourned until March 1 to allow time to consider fresh evidence pertaining to one of the deaths, but Marie hopes answers will finally be forthcoming when the oral hearings in Raychel’s case get under way in the summer.

She told the Sentinel the current delay - to allow time for consideration of a new report into the death of Adam Strain, who died at the age of 4 years in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children in 1995 - was not a massive blow and that she understood the need for it.

“It’s not that much of a setback given the length of time we have waited. If the shoe was on the other foot we would want the same and the Strain family need to know what happened,” she said.

During Monday’s hearing Marie heard Senior Counsel to the inquiry Ms Anyadike-Danes raise some of the questions that have tortured the Ferguson family for over a decade.

Why, for example, just 14 months after the hyponatraemia-related death of Lucy Crawford in Fermanagh was a surgeon’s decision to treat Raychel with a sodium-rich intravenous solution overruled due to it not being “consistent with common practice” in the Altnagelvin children’s ward and a weaker sodium mix administered instead?

It is a question the inquiry will eventually consider. Ms Anyadike-Danes explained that the investigation will “involve the reason for and justification of the change from Hartmann’s solution that had initially been prescribed for her during her surgery to Solution No.18 that was administered to her on the ward.

“The difference between those two intravenous solutions lies largely in the level of sodium, which for Hartmann’s is 131mmol/l whilst for Solution No.18 it is 30mmol/l.”

For Marie - who lost her only daughter in June 2001 - this is just one of many questions that need to be answered by the inquiry.

In a moving statement to the Sentinel she said she will always regret taking Raychel to Altnagelvin on June 8, 2001, after the St Patrick’s Primary pupil took unwell upon return from her school sports day.

“As a mother I will regret till the day I die that I took Raychel to hospital that day. I blame myself that she died there. I was her mother and I should have protected her. Any mother will understand my feelings.

“My guilt wasn’t helped when some-one at her inquest asked me, ‘Why did you leave Raychel there and go home if she was so sick?.’ A cruel question for a grieving mother,” she explained.

But Marie counters this query with legitimate questions of her own: “My answer to that question is, ‘Why should I have worried about leaving my daughter in hospital with doctors and nurses who are there to save lives?’

“Why should I have doubted them when they said the way Raychel was feeling and reacting to her operation was normal, that I should go home, get some rest and not worry?

“Even though I expressed my concern to the medical staff that day about Raychel being very unwell, I was reassured when they told me she was fine.

“Who was I to argue with them? I had never had a child in hospital before and so placed my trust in the professionals. If the staff weren’t concerned then why should her parents be?” she asked.

Before Monday the oral hearings into Raychel’s death where due to commence on June 11, 2012, almost 11 years to the day since she passed away.

It is unclear whether this latest adjournment will affect the current schedule but the Ferguson family remain commited to their fight for accountability.

Marie insisted: “Myself, her daddy, her brothers Stephen, Jason and Jamie will carry the pain of Raychels death for the rest of our lives. Our lives were devasted the day we lost Raychel.

“Not a day has gone past where I haven’t cried for the daughter I lost. Our pain is intensified by the knowledge that Raychel’s death could so easily have been prevented. I visit Raychel’s grave every day and have vowed to get justice for her and answers for the family who love her.

“We can never bring Raychel back but we owe it to her to make sure that the way she died cannot be repeated.

“The path to this inquiry has been a long and agonising one for myself and my family but we will not rest until we have fulfilled this promise to the daughter we love and miss to this day.”