A Belfast taxi driver was praised after comforting an Omagh woman in distress after picking her up from hospital.
Fonacab driver Patrick McLaughlin picked up the distraught woman and her husband from the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast after they had dropped their teenage son off to have emergency surgery on a brain tumour.
The Co Tyrone woman had been in ‘a terrible state’ before Patrick managed to calm her down, having gone through a similar situation after his father got a cancer diagnosis.
Patrick told Belfast Live : “I work for Fonacab, and they phoned a wee taxi, and I picked them up at the Royal.
“The woman was in a terrible state, and I just asked what was wrong - and she said her teenage son had gone through major surgery.
“She told me her son was having dizzy spells, and he went in to get it checked out, and they found out he had a tumour in his head and had to go for surgery straight away.
“She was breaking her heart crying - my own dad suffered it, so the more I told her about my daddy, the more she started believing in being happy and looking to the future.
“She started smiling then, and I said I would say a wee prayer for her and was just being nice to her.”
The taxi driver said he then received a message from the woman thanking him for looking after her, and he said it made him feel like he had “won the lottery”.
“At the end of the journey, she gave me a big hug and said she’d never felt like this in her whole life, that she was feeling better even though it was the hardest time of her life.
“She sent me such a lovely message afterwards when her son was out and on the recovery. It makes you feel like you’ve won the lottery when you get sent something like that.”
The woman, who did not wish to be named, said she was blown away by Patrick’s kindness.
“Our 17-year-old son underwent brain surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital. The surgery was expected to take 4 hours and 2 hours in recovery,” she told Belfast Live.
“We are from Omagh, but our eldest daughter and her partner live about 10 or 15 minutes from the Royal, so as we left the hospital to wait at theirs for the hospital to ring and tell us when we could come in and see him, I was in a terrible state, buckets of tears.
“Straight away, the man’s kindness was unbelievable. He talked to me, reassured me and told me not to worry as it was all in God’s hands.
“He calmed me down, even made me laugh in one of the hardest times in my life. His energy and real genuine kindness was just amazing.
“I can’t even put into words how much he helped me that day, just that I will be forever grateful of such genuine kindness from a complete stranger.”
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