A FORMER nurse has been reunited with a patient she cared for as a baby 66 years ago.

Margaret McInroy, 91, worked on the children’s ward at a hospital in Dundee during the 1950s where she cared for baby Bill Douglas, who had an undiagnosed illness, for four months.

Mrs McInroy today met up with him at Fairmount Park residential complex, in Nab Wood Drive, Shipley, where she now lives.

Mr Douglas took just eight hours to track down Mrs McInroy, then known as Sister Ansell, after finding a picture of her in a newspaper article about her wedding day at his parents’ home, after his father died in April last year.

He then got in touch with a former neighbour who remembered the McInroy and Ansell families. She was able to put Mr Douglas in touch with Mrs McInroy’s sister-in-law, who gave him the former nurse’s phone number.

The two spoke on the phone for the first time in June last year and met for the first time today when Mr Douglas travelled from his home in Edinburgh to see her.

Mr Douglas had been transferred from a maternity home in Montrose to Dundee Infirmary the day after he was born, in December 1950, to be treated - but his condition remained a mystery to hospital staff.

Mrs McInroy, who is due to become a great-grandmother in May, said: “I feel emotional. It’s exciting and I feel as if we have always known each other.

“He was somebody I really cared for and I’m glad that I lived to tell the tale. He is now like the son I never had.

“I remember him because I cared for him for a long time. It was exceptional for us to have a baby for that time. We did all the investigations that we could on him at the time.

“We did not cure him because we did not have the equipment available to us like they have now.

“To hear of a patient after more than 60 years is very special.”

Mr Douglas, who now lives in Edinburgh, said: “It is very emotional meeting Margaret. Finding her was the highlight of last year.

“Finding Margaret, and then being able to meet her, has been wonderful. I always had the feeling I had to see Margaret. 

“I was sent home from hospital to die as there was nothing more they could do for me. But when I was two I had a stomach haemorrhage that cleared out whatever was wrong inside me.”

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