'Everyone is working to save your life', judge tells young woman suffering from anorexia
By Was And Wish Expressed To The Saved Intervention Heard Not Die, Life Could Be Suffered Court Had Medical She Since Her The Anorexia She 14 Believed Had Woman From A Saying
A High Court judge on Friday pleaded with a young woman suffering from anorexia to help him and her medical team save her life.
Mr Justice David Nolan, before making life-saving orders permitting her force-feeding by doctors and nurses, spoke personally with the woman, who said she wants only to be allowed to die.
Judge Nolan, speaking to woman, who is in her mid20s, in her Dublin hospital bed, addressed her by her first name and said: “You know I’m placed in a very difficult position.”
The woman replied: “I know.”
When the judge told the ill and dangerously underweight woman he had a constitutional obligation to look after her in circumstances where it was clear she lacked capacity for making decisions for her own health, she said: “Yeah.”
She told Judge Nolan while she could not see him, she could hear everything he was saying, and had been listening throughout to the in-camera court proceedings.
After hearing evidence of the woman currently being force fed, Judge Nolan told her: “I know you are going through an awful lot of pain and all I can do is empathise with you.”
He said the orders he was going to make, permitting sedation and physical restraint if necessary to allow continued feeding through a gastric tube, were, while extremely intrusive, for her benefit.
Judge Nolan told the woman, now weighing only 37.5kg (under six stone), the court had heard in evidence she had been treated in hospital in 2023 for refusing to eat, and she had got well.
“I have no doubt if you listen to the doctors and psychiatrists, and everybody who loves you so much, you will get better again,” he said.
He said he had to vindicate her constitutional rights to live and would make court orders for as short a period of time as possible.
“Everyone is working to save your life and before I made any orders, I wanted to talk to you personally,” Judge Nolan said.
The judge told barrister Sarah McKechnie, who appeared with Byrne Wallace Shields Solicitors for the hospital where the woman is being monitored and cared for, he was satisfied on the evidence it was appropriate to make the orders which the hospital sought.
The court heard the woman had expressed a wish to die, saying she had suffered from anorexia since she was 14 and believed her life could not be saved by medical intervention.
She required a minimum of 1,400 calories a day but had simply refused to eat anything orally and would die within several weeks if not fed by gastric tube.
She felt the treatment she was undergoing was a waste of time and a waste of HSE money. Her disease was telling her she could not survive her illness and did not require a weight-gain plan.
Judge Nolan was told only on one occasion since being admitted to hospital had she to be gently restrained by hospital security.
The matter will return to court before Judge Nolan on January 28 for review.
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