The death of a 30-year-old woman whose condition deteriorated within hours of hospital staff declaring her medically fit for discharge has been referred to the coroner.
Maegan O’Mahoney, mother of two young children from the Ravenscliffe area of Bradford, died at 4am on Monday, December 16, just 48 hours after being taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary, feeling faint and nauseated.
Paramedics called to O’Mahoney’s home on Friday, December 13, expressed concern that her blood sugar levels were “dangerously low,” the family said.
But at 5:30 a.m. the day after her admission to hospital, her father was reportedly contacted by hospital staff, who said O’Mahoney had been cleared to go home but was in an agitated state and refused to leave .
It was unlike her, said Sammy Jayne Terry, O’Mahoney’s stepsister, who described her as “a pretty shy girl” who didn’t like to draw attention to herself.
Terry said the family remains deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding the tragedy, which has devastated the family.
O’Mahoney’s partner, Brandon Tetley, has been forced to quit his job to care for the couple’s children, six-year-old Charlie and Rosie, four.
“It’s really hard for them,” Terry said. ‘Brandon has had to change his whole life, give up his work. Charlie is autistic, which makes everything even bigger, and his life is going to change completely.
‘The children are still very young, so they don’t really understand it yet; In a way it’s better that they don’t understand this sadness, I think. But they have to try to understand that mommy isn’t coming back, and that’s very difficult.”
Maegan O’Mahoney, left, with her daughter Rosie and partner Brandon Tetley, who is pictured with the couple’s son Charlie. O’Mahoney’s sudden death has been referred to the coroner
O’Mahoney, 30, was declared medically fit to be discharged from Bradford Royal Infirmary the day after her admission, according to her family
More than €7,000 has been donated to one online fundraising campaign for the family – “We’re so grateful, it was very heartwarming,” Terry said – but while that will go some way towards covering funeral costs, she remains fearful of the challenges ahead for her stepsister’s children.
No less pressing are the unanswered questions surrounding O’Mahoney’s death.
“We just don’t know what happened,” said Terry, who is a nurse herself. “She was a young thirty-year-old. The hospital didn’t know what was wrong with her. We are still waiting to hear from the coroner on their findings.
‘We don’t know if the hospital missed anything. The fact that they tried to send her home on Saturday morning is very concerning and very confusing.”
The situation was further complicated by the fact that O’Mahoney’s father, Pat, who received an early morning call asking him to pick up his daughter from hospital, lives in West Sussex, about 250 miles from Bradford.
Attempts to contact O’Mahoney by phone proved fruitless, the family said, with staff claiming she was asleep after being admitted to the high dependency unit later on Saturday morning, where she was given intravenous glucose.
‘I reached the BRI who told me: ‘She’s just sleeping, she’ll call you later’, O’Mahoney’s partner Tetley told the local press. “So I thought, ‘Don’t worry.’
“Her father called me the next day and said, ‘Someone needs to be by her side,’ and he panicked.
‘I went to the hospital as quickly as possible. I was just in shock when I saw her.”
Maegan O’Mahoney, left, is seen with her stepsister Sammy Jayne Terry, right. Also pictured are Pat O’Mahoney, Maegan’s father (back row, second right) and Christine Graveson
As Pat O’Mahoney and his partner Christine Graveson began the long drive north from West Sussex, Terry made a series of calls to the hospital in a desperate attempt to establish what was happening.
Meanwhile, O’Mahoney was admitted to intensive care.
“It looks like they did a blood test and everything was fine, so they wanted to send her home,” Terry said.
“So it’s almost like, what could have caused this? At one point they felt her blood was fine and she could go home, and then it was about 24 hours later when they called and said the blood was everywhere. , you have to come here.”
Terry was eventually informed by intensive care staff that O’Mahoney’s organs were failing and she was being placed in a medically induced coma.
Tetley was told by a doctor that O’Mahoney was unlikely to wake up.
“It hasn’t fully sunk in yet,” he said. ‘I still have dreams where she’s still alive. “I’ve just been concentrating on the two children, I have to take care of these two now.”
“It’s very moving,” he said of the money raised. ‘I never asked anything. Everyone has been quite generous. (But) we want to know what happened to her.
‘Maegan had just turned thirty; She should have had her whole life ahead of her,” her stepsister Sammy Jayne wrote on a GoFundMe page set up to help the family
“While O’Mahoney was there the whole time, they said they didn’t know what was wrong with her, which is concerning.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Tetley explained O’Mahoney’s absence as best he could to the couple’s children, Terry said.
‘Maegan had just turned thirty; she should have had her whole life ahead of her,” she further wrote GoFundMe.
‘Brandon had to tell their children that mum wasn’t coming back, and now Charlie, six, and Rosie, four, will have to learn to live without her.
“Brandon told them that this year Mom is helping Santa at the North Pole, and she’s turning the sky pink for them.
‘Maegan adored her children and was afraid she would ever have to leave them. But they are not alone; they have a loving father, grandparents and many others who will love and support them.”
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust extended its condolences to the family and confirmed the death would be referred to the coroner.
“Maegan was a patient with us for a short time,” says a spokesperson.
“As with any unexplained death, we have referred her death to the coroner and the (O’Mahoney) family have been informed.”