My companion walked into hospital after feeling faint… 48 hours later she was lifeless: How tragic mum-of-two died instantly after medical doctors ‘tried to ship her dwelling’

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, a mother of two young children from the Ravenscliffe area of Bradford, died at 4am on Monday 16 December, barely 48 hours after she was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary feeling faint and nauseous. 

Ambulance crew called to O’Mahoney’s home on Friday 13 December expressed concern that her blood sugar levels were ‘dangerously low’, said the family.

Yet at 5.30 am the day after her admission to hospital, her father was allegedly contacted by staff at the hospital, 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 ‘quite a shy girl’ who did not like to draw attention to herself. 

Terry said the family remain deeply concerned by the circumstances surrounding the tragedy, which has devastated the family. 

O’Mahoney’s partner, Brandon Tetley, has been forced to quit his job in order to care for the couple’s children, six-year-old Charlie and Rosie, aged four. 

‘It’s really difficult for them,’ said Terry. ‘Brandon has had to change his entire life, give up work. Charlie is autistic, which adds to everything, and his life is going to change completely. 

‘The kids are very young, so they don’t really understand; in a way, it’s better that they don’t understand this sadness, I suppose. But they have to try and understand that mummy is not coming back, and that’s very difficult.’ 

More than £7,000 has been donated to an online fundraising campaign for the family – ‘We are so grateful, it’s been very heartwarming,’ said Terry – but while that will go some way to covering funeral costs, she remains fearful about the challenges that lie 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 herself a nurse. ‘She was a young 30-year-old. The hospital didn’t know what was happening with her. We’re still waiting to hear from the coroner about what about their findings are. 

‘We don’t know whether the hospital missed something. The fact that they were trying to send her home on the Saturday morning is a major concern to us, and very confusing.’

The situation was further complicated by the fact that O’Mahoney’s father, Pat, who received the early-morning call asking him to collect his daughter from hospital, lives in West Sussex, some 250 miles from Bradford. 

Efforts to contact O’Mahoney by phone proved fruitless, said the family, with staff claiming she was asleep after being admitted to the high dependency unit later on Saturday morning, where she received glucose intravenously. 

‘I got through to the BRI, who told me: “She is just sleeping, she will ring you later,” Tetley, O’Mahoney’s partner, told local press. ‘So I thought, “No worries.”

‘Her dad then rang me the next day and said, “Someone needs to be by her side,” and he was panicked.

‘I went down to the hospital as quickly as I could. I was just in shock when I saw her.’

As Pat O’Mahoney and his partner Christine Graveson began the long drive north from West Sussex, Terry made a string of phone calls to the hospital in a desperate attempt to establish what was happening.

Meanwhile, O’Mahoney was admitted to intensive care. 

‘It seems that they did bloods and they were fine, so they wanted to send her home,’ said Terry. 

‘So it’s almost like, what could have caused this to happen, where at one moment they felt her bloods were fine and she could go home, and then it was about 24 hours later when they rang and said the bloods were all over the place, you need to get over 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 awaken. 

‘It has not fully hit me yet,’ he said. ‘I still have dreams where she is still alive. I have just been focused on the two children, I have got these two to look after now.’

‘It is very touching,’ he said of the money raised. ‘I have never asked for anything. Everyone has been quite generous. [But] we want to know what happened to her.

‘For the full time [O’Mahoney] was in there, they said they did not know what was wrong with her, which is worrying.’

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Tetley explained O’Mahoney’s absence to the couple’s children as best he could, said Terry. 

‘Maegan had just turned 30 years old; she should have had her whole life ahead of her,’ she wrote on GoFundMe. 

‘Brandon had to tell their children that mummy wasn’t coming back, and now, Charlie, six, and Rosie, four, will have to learn to live on without her. 

‘Brandon told them that mummy is helping Santa in the north pole this year, and that she turns the sky pink for them. 

‘Maegan adored her children and had fears of ever having 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 condolences to the family and confirmed the death would be referred to the coroner.

‘Maegan was a patient with us for a short period of time,’ said a spokesperson. 

‘As with any unexplained death, we have referred her death to the coroner, and [O’Mahoney’s] family has been informed of this.’