In 2016, Carolyn, a mother of two from Cork, noticed a lump on her breast. “I had met a cousin of mine who works up in Achill for a cup of tea. She was telling me about some breast check demonstration they were given in work. So I went home and felt around and felt something unusual on my breast and I got straight onto my GP for an appointment.”
Without that conversation Carolyn, then aged 36, feels her breast cancer would have been caught much later. “It wouldn’t have been on my radar at all, and I wouldn’t have known how to check my breast until we had that chat.”
After seeing her GP, he referred her to Cork University Hospital where she had a mammogram, an ultrasound and then a biopsy. “Everything moved so quickly. The tests and the scans and then you’re left waiting for the results. A couple of days later, I got the call to say that I had cancer.”
The diagnosis floored Carolyn whose first thought was her young children and how she was going to explain it to them. “It was April 2016 when I went to the GP, so you’re talking April/May when all this was happening and my eldest son Josh, he was 7 and making his communion that year. Ellie must have been in senior infants, she was only 5.” Carolyn’s aunty Mary had already been diagnosed with a brain tumour and would later pass away towards the end of the year. “She was brilliant with me and the kids, looking after them when I was in work, so I worried about the impact losing their gran-aunt and then me going through this was going to have on them.”
Carolyn was informed she had triple negative breast cancer. This is a less common breast cancer and typically represents 1 in 8 breast cancer diagnoses in Ireland. “While all the tests and scans were happening and we were waiting to find out what my treatment would be, my mind was racing. I was having conversations with my GP and then the doctor in CUH and eventually, I was told I’d need surgery to remove the lump, we’d then go into chemotherapy and finish with radiotherapy.”
“My brother was getting married the December and when I heard I was going to have chemo, I said ‘we better cancel the hairdressers’. If you don’t find ways to laugh about these things, sure all you’ll do is cry.”
“My brother was getting married the December and when I heard I was going to have chemo, I said ‘we better cancel the hairdressers’. If you don’t find ways to laugh about these things, sure all you’ll do is cry.”
At the outset of her diagnosis, Carolyn says she and her family found managing things financially to be difficult. “I worked in a pharmacy and had to leave to go on sick and that impacted what was coming into the house. We had to manage on one income basically. We had great support from friends and family.”
After initially applying for a medical card and being refused, it wasn’t until 2 months into her treatment with the support of a local politician that Carolyn secured a medical card, meaning she no longer had to pay for day patient charges the days she was having her chemotherapy, but she still had to pay for carparking. “The carparking charges were ridiculous. It’s like adding insult to injury on top of all the lost earnings and expenses you already have. At the start, with all the scans and tests, I had to pay full whack for carparking, but during chemo then, they stamped your ticket and you got it for a fiver day, but the fivers add up – it should be totally free for cancer patients.”
“I remember the day I finished chemo, I felt helpless – because you’ve been constantly getting attention from doctors monitoring you and now the medical team says ‘right off you go now’ and you don’t want to leave their care because you’re terrified something will go wrong or it will come back.”
After surgery to remove the lump from her breast and some lymph nodes from under her arm, Carolyn explains the initial round of chemotherapy was very challenging. “When I was doing the chemo at the start, it was 4 rounds every second week, I found that to be very difficult. You have the chemo, then you need the rest of the week to get your strength back up and feel like yourself again. You’ve a week of normality, sort of, and then you repeat it all over again. My hair was already starting to come out at that point. The next 12 weeks by comparison were much easier but still difficult. I never really vomited but I felt nauseated a lot of the time.”
“I remember the day I finished chemo, I felt helpless – because you’ve been constantly getting attention from doctors monitoring you and now the medical team says ‘right off you go now’ and you don’t want to leave their care because you’re terrified something will go wrong or it will come back.”
In January 2017, Carolyn began her radiotherapy. “Every day for 6 weeks. It was really draining, but you know what, we used to go in and sit on the ward and some of the machines would be broken down, so I would be with all these women waiting in the queue to get your treatment done, and we used to just chat and chat away. There were some people who were struggling, and they would come in and look at the floor, you tried to engage them in conversation, but most of the time they weren’t interested. My way of getting through it was to chat and hear about other people’s experiences and how they were getting on. When you think things are bad for you, you have to remember the Kerry bus which drove around and picked up people to bring them up to Cork for the radiotherapy – I only lived 20 minutes out the road, so no matter how bad your situation is, there’s probably somebody worse off somewhere.”
During her treatment, Carolyn attended ARC House in Cork for supports. “When I first attended, the lady who opened the door for me was Sr. Angela, my old primary school teacher who volunteers down there. At the time, I didn’t want to speak to anybody, counselling and that type of thing. I didn’t think I needed it, sure I had all my friends and family around me. I used their reflexology and meditation classes.”
After radiotherapy, Carolyn was given the all clear but she says she struggled with the anxiety and worry of whether her cancer would come back. In the years following her diagnosis and treatment, Carolyn says the worry and anxiety became worse. “I suppose when you’re in the middle of it, you’re not thinking about the overall impact. You’re just plugging away one day at a time. It’s only afterwards, when you sit with it for a while that you realise what you have gone through and I felt the cancer took its toll on me as the years went by – I had bottled everything up for three years. I was just gripped with worry about it, anxiety that my cancer would return.” To help her cope with this anxiety, Carolyn was prescribed sertraline, an anti-depressant medication.
At one of her regular check-ups, more lumps on her breast were found but these turned out to be cysts which doctors were able to drain and remove. Carolyn has also struggled with menopausal symptoms since her treatment concluded. “The menopause really shook me because I wasn’t able to take any of the supplements because of the side effects and risk of bringing back my cancer.” In 2020, she had a hysterectomy, but as that didn’t fully resolve her severe menopausal symptoms, in January 2023, she had a procedure to remove her ovaries. “Thankfully, this has put an end to those symptoms.”
Now, Carolyn continues to manage her mental health and her message to anybody reading this story is to check your breasts and if you notice anything out of the ordinary, get it checked. “I don’t shut up about it when I’m with my friends and family and anybody I meet really. I was on holidays there over the summer and chatting away to women by the pool and telling them how to check and what to do if you notice anything. We have to take care of ourselves and know what we’re looking for when you’re checking.”
Carolyn’s story highlights the impact a cancer diagnosis, going through treatment and the aftereffects can have on your mental health.
Every cancer patient is different, their cancer diagnosis is unique, their treatment regime is personalised to their disease and they have a different experience of treatment side effects. This was Carolyn's experience.
For anybody struggling or needing to access supports, you can call the Irish Cancer Society’s Support Line at 1800 200 700.
