Patient Transported To Mainland For Emergency Surgery

A Memory of Bardsey Island.

I understand that an appeal for information about the doctor involved in this  incident appeared in the press some time ago. I can provide some of the details.  

A young man was taken ill on Bardsey Island one evening and a request for a doctor to attend the patient reached the mainland. The weather was stormy, but eventually a local GP was located on the Lleyn Peninsula. The doctor was transported across to Bardsey in a small rowing boat. He found that the patient was suffering from acute appendicitis, but there was only one way to get him to a hospital and that was to take him to the mainland. Doctor and patient made the journey back to the Lleyn safely in the rowing boat, in rough seas and in the middle of the night. The patient was taken to hospital, underwent emergency surgery, and made a full recovery.

The GP was the late Dr Tom John Ashley, who went on to practice in South Wales, eventually returning to North Wales. He spent the last twenty five years of his career in Y Felinheli.   

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