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On
29 September 2003, we got agreement from CRY that an ECG testing session
could be held for the young people of Ullapool.
We had six weeks to advertise, to obtain masters and copy the
necessary paperwork, issue packs and appointment times, arrange 2 ECG
machines to be sent from CRY, arrange for nurses from Stornoway, approved by St George’s
Hospital and CRY
to
work the machines, arrange ferry travel, accommodation, meals etc. I also had to go to Ullapool to see the facilities
available to us for the screening and meet various people including the Head
Teacher of Ullapool High School.
In order to be financially viable CRY asked us to have a minimum of
100 young people and a maximum of 200.
Arrangements for a follow up test by an echo technician and an
interview with a cardiologist were still to be finalised.
All expenses incurred had to come out of the Joanne F Fotheringham
Memorial Fund.
Where
is Ullapool?
Ullapool
is a picturesque village of 15,000 inhabitants on the North West of Scotland
in Ross-shire 626 miles from London. The nearest airport is 74 miles away, the nearest hospital is in
Inverness 65 miles away, the nearest train station at Garve is 32 miles
away. It is the ferry port for
Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. The
main secondary school for the area is in Ullapool and has just under 400
pupils. It is a new build,
community school and was first used 5 years ago.
As well as the normal school facilities it incorporates the Macphail
Centre which contains a community library, a community theatre, several
community education offices, a tea bar and full cafeteria facilities.
All this under the one roof. Pupils
travel to school daily – often on single track roads – from as far north
as Lochinver (37 miles), Gruinard on
the west (39 miles),and inland to Aultguish (30 miles).
Five doctors are based in the Ullapool medical centre – they moved
to the new premises the week before our screening – two others are based
in Gairloch, one in Scourie and two in Lochinver.
So despite the hospital being so far away, there is good medical
cover for the area.
Who was Joanne F
Fotheringham?
 Joanne
F Fotheringham was a 24 year old teacher in Bayble School in the Isle of
Lewis where I was Head Teacher. There
were 108 pupils between 5 and 14 years old in the school and Joanne taught a
composite class of 24 Primary 3 and Primary 4 pupils. During the Easter holidays in 1997, Joanne died in her
sleep. She was a fit,
healthy, enthusiastic young lady with no history of health problems.
Her parents – Alex and Fraser – along with the school pupils and
all who knew her, were absolutely devastated.
The staff and pupils in the school built a garden as a memorial to
her (see photograph) and her parents started to raise money in order to
screen other young people in Lewis and in Ullapool so that no other family
suffered the same trauma as they had done.
289 people were screened in Lewis in 2001 and we were now to fulfil
the Fotheringhams’ wish to screen people in Ullapool.
Although
we got the go ahead on 29 September 2003 for the Ullapool screening, we were
in a bit of a panic with the paperwork -
there are standard masters which we had to adapt to the rural area of
Ullapool. There was the 6 page
psychological questionnaire plus covering letter, the 2 page medical letter,
a 2 page introduction letter from CRY, a consent form, and a personal letter
from me stating that Cardiac Screening was being offered in Ullapool on 12
and 13 November financed by the Joanne F Fotheringham Memorial Fund.
The first job was to get 200 copies of these 13 pages printed, a
return envelope addressed to the Ullapool Library and all put inside another
envelope for issuing. These
packs were done in Lewis and then sent via Caledonian Macbrayne Ferry to
Alex Fotheringham in Ullapool who gave them to the Lochbroom Leisure Centre
in Ullapool, the Main Library in the Macphail Centre and to Ullapool High
School for people to collect.
We advertised in the local Ullapool News, had a front page article in
the Ross-shire Journal and a snippet in the national Press and Journal.
We did various interviews with the local radio (I had a 12 minute
slot the day I went to see the facilities in Ullapool) which was repeated in
their prime time on Sunday morning.
Other people did interviews and we had broadcasts on BBC Radio
Highland and also on BBC Radio Scotland.
There were posters distributed throughout the area and Alex
Fotheringham made sure that all who she saw knew about it.
Advertising is very important and Alex did a wonderful job.
We
had given a deadline of Thursday 6 November and 98 letters confirming
appointment times were posted out on the following day.
The times were basically ruled by the ferry timetable for the nurses
and myself to get to and from Lewis.
We got the Tuesday afternoon ferry to Ullapool and were booked to
return on the Thursday tea time ferry.
The forecast was for gales but we had two reasonable crossings. We met at the ferry terminal in Stornoway at
12.45 pm on the Tuesday and arrived in Ullapool at 5 15 pm.
We then set up the two ECG machines, one in the medical room of the
School and the other in a room in the Macphail Centre.
These rooms were interlinked by a short corridor and was very
convenient. We had a
table in the main school/centre entrance to do the administration. We were in full view of everyone who came into the
school or the centre. After
setting up the machines we went for a meal as neither of the two nurses had
had anything to eat on the ferry journey.
We returned to the school for our four appointments starting at 9 pm. We had asked four people who were working during the
day to come so that we could try out both machines to check that we were set
for the next day. What
a day Wednesday was!! We
started at 8.30am with a girl who had to be in Edinburgh for 1.30 pm.
Even the most speedy of drivers could not do it in under 4 hours.
(They did get there with 10 minutes to spare.)
By 9 am we were in full swing and constantly had new people coming in
to make appointments. Our
‘spare time’ soon disappeared.
Alex Fotheringham had been given the day off work and she kept us
going with food and refreshments.
We had a bowl of soup and a roll for lunch and then back to work.
We stopped at 5 pm and went for a stroll in the sun-shine.
We had a superb meal in the nearby Argyll Hotel and walked back to
start again at 7 30pm. We
should have been finished by 8.30pm but so many people arrived unannounced
that we had quite a queue to get through.
Three people travelled 64 miles from Gairloch just to get screened.
It had taken them 1˝ hours to get to us.
They had seen the article on the front page of the Ross-shire Journal
and wanted to be screened as there were heart problems in their family.
We eventually screened the last people at 9.30pm. It had been a long day and we were all wondering what
our total was as we knew we were near the 100 mark but were not too sure.
In the end we had done 99 people in the one day.
If we had realised that, we would have grabbed one more person to
make it the 100 !!
The
next day was not quite so hectic.
We had marvellous B&B accommodation at the Shieling Guest House
and a leisurely breakfast as our first appointments were not until 9 30 am.
Apart for just over an hour, all the people we screened on this day
were pupils in the school. There was a great atmosphere about the place and
everyone was so enthusiastic and interested in what we were doing. We had two remarkable coincidences. We had a young teacher being screened by one of the
nurses and they seemed to be a very long time.
Her colleague had screened two other people and still no sign of this
teacher. He eventually appeared
with the nurse to tell us that they had discovered they had been in the same
class at school and had not seen each other since.
Another teacher from Scoraig was talking to Alex and introduced me to
him only for us to discover that he was the son of a Scout Leader I had
known and worked with many years ago.
It is a small world.
We
finished the last of the screenings at 3 pm.
We said our thanks to many of those who had helped set everything up
for us and made our way down to the ferry for 5 pm. 146 people screened in the two days. We were very pleased with ourselves.
Fortunately
the postal strike had finished so all the results could be posted to the CRY
office in Tadworth and the two ECG machines sent there by Courtier.
By the end of November we had the names of 7 people that we needed to
re-call for a further ECG and an Echocardiagraph.
CRY had an echo technician in Edinburgh – Mrs Lynn Fenn - who we
were going to use. We arranged
for Lynn to travel up to Ullapool.
We also had Dr Jayesh Makan CRY's cardiologist coming up to us from London and the date
set was Tuesday 9 December. Flights
were booked for Lynn and myself to fly to Inverness on the Monday evening ,
hire a car and drive the 74 miles to Ullapool.
We were to do one person on the Monday night and arrangements were
made for Dr Makan to see her in Inverness on the Tuesday on our way back to
the airport. That was the plan.
Things did not work out anything like this.
I
had booked in for my flight at Stornoway at 4 pm on the Monday.
At 4 15pm it was announced that Inverness airport had been closed
because of freezing fog. Kinloss, Lossiemouth , Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow
airports were all closed but they could fly us to Prestwick in Ayrshire
which was still open. This was
of no use to me at all. A
desperate mobile call to Lynn who had also been told that her 4 10 pm flight
had been cancelled. She was in
a queue to see if she could get on the 9 am flight to Inverness the next
morning. She had better luck than I did as both Tuesday morning
flights to Inverness from Stornoway were fully booked. I went home wondering whether we would have to cancel
everything. My first
telephone call was to a friend who was a fireman at Inverness airport.
He said there had been no landings since 10 am that morning but they
expected the fog to lift about midnight.
He expected flights to be fine in the morning provided planes were in
the right place. I confirmed with Lynn that Fraser Fotheringham
would pick her up at Inverness airport on the Tuesday morning and I would
re-arrange client times so that she could start seeing people the minute she
arrived in Ullapool. In
the meantime I arranged to travel on the early morning ferry taking an ECG
machine with me. I
arrived in Ullapool just after 10 am, picked up a hired car, went to the
school to leave the ECG machine to be set up by Lynn as I had to travel to
Inverness airport to pick up Dr Makan at 11.45 am.
It was very frosty on the mainland and I saw four cars which had slid
off the road on the black ice, one of the cars had police and ambulance
people still in attendance. Somewhere
on the road, I must have passed Fraser and Lynn but neither of us saw each
other. I arrived at Inverness to discover that Dr Makan had been
delayed at Gatwick because of
fog in London. He arrived
at 12.40 and we drove the 74 miles to Ullapool arriving just before 2 pm. He immediately started to see those people that had had an
ECG and Echo taken by Lynn. Our
grateful thanks to those re-called and to those accompanying some of them,
for so readily accepting the delays we were having.
There
was one other major problem facing us that afternoon. Both Lynn and Dr Makan had to be in Inverness Airport
for checking in for 5 10 pm /5 20pm flights.
I had said we had to leave by 2.45 pm at the latest but we weren’t
finished then. Our last
client had only just gone in to Lynn at 2 40 pm.
It was 3.05pm when he was finished.
A mad scramble to pack machines, get them in the car and grab some
sandwiches for people to eat. It
was faster drive than I would like to have had.
We had no hold ups even at the 2 mile roadworks at the Kessock Bridge
leading into Inverness. We
parked – illegally – at the main entrance and were in the process of
checking in when it announced would any further passengers for Edinburgh
please report to the departure lounge.
Made it – but only just.
I phoned the Fotheringhams and the CRY Office to let them know we had
made the airport in time. Relief
all round.
Although the final results
have not been received yet, the Ullapool Medical Practice were asked to
refer three people to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness for further testing.
We have now screened 435 people in this area and would like to thank
all those who have helped in any way. We
would also like to thank all
those who have contributed to the Joanne F Fotheringham Memorial Fund over
the years. To Alex
and Fraser Fotheringham we appreciate all that you have done.
You cannot get over the loss of your only daughter but you can take
comfort in the knowledge that over 400 families know that their young people
will not be affected by sudden adult death syndrome.
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