Stella McDonagh dreams her family will soon be able to “run carefree into the sea” on a spontaneous day out in Co Clare. She wants her 11-year-old to worry about “school, friends and sleepovers” rather than “hospital wards, surgeries and dialysis machines”.
For now, her family’s life is structured around haemodialysis due to Alport syndrome, a rare genetic kidney condition carried by her husband Garry Davis and daughter Saoirse.
Four days a week, McDonagh drives Saoirse 3½ hours from their home in Co Clare to Dublin’s Temple Street children’s hospital for dialysis. The treatment takes four hours, and then they drive home.
Most days father and daughter hardly see each other, as Davis has to travel three times per week for dialysis in Limerick.
“Both sick, both exhausted, both fighting the same illness,” says McDonagh. “This is not living.”
