Promises to Keep by John Gleeson

John and Geraldine Gleeson, teenage sweethearts in Carlow, had only one wish in life after they got married: to have a child.

Promises to Keep is John Gleeon’s heartrending account of this couple’s quest to conceive, of the serious physical damage Geraldine suffered as a result of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and of her tragic death in the National Maternity Hospital in 1993, which led to the hospital’s historic admission of negligence in the High Court. It also tells of how the experience of losing Geraldine, and of feeling abandoned by the medical profession, drove John Gleeson to an emotional breakdown from which he is still recovering.

Promises to Keep is the story of one couple’s medical nightmare. It makes for bracing, absorbing reading at a time in Ireland when such nightmares are all too common.