“My motivation for getting through it was that my wife had just died, and I already had enough on my plate trying to handle that mentally, I had a family, with no siblings and being reasonably active I wanted a good quality of life in the future.”
Des Redmond, 74, was diagnosed with muscle invasive bladder cancer just six months after his beloved wife Mary passed away from the disease. In late 2021, Mary began to experience some discomfort on her left side. She went to a doctor to find out what was causing it, which led to her diagnosis.
“We were lying in bed one morning, just talking, when Mary said she felt a stitch on her left side,” says Des. “She went to her doctor then hospital and had an ultrasound and CT scan. They found out she had a tumour in her bile duct, and it was inoperable and incurable with a timescale of about 6 to 9 months.
“Mary’s job was in healthcare, she was a PA to the head of the Disability Federation of Ireland, so she’d confronted a lot of difficult things in that job, and I had been a senior manager both here and abroad, so we were reasonably strong and rational about it because of our work background. Mary was lucky insofar as she did not encounter any pain during her illness and I learned to drain her stomach every day from her bile duct, which was initially dreadful, until I got used to doing it.”
In July 2022, Mary passed away in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. Des says the conversations he had with his wife before she passed away have offered him some comfort.
“We had a lot of conversations after Mary was diagnosed, and she said her biggest fear was leaving me and she was worried about how I’d cope. But I’m very thankful for the discussions we had before she died as these would prove beneficial later on.
“She wasn’t in any pain at any stage, and she passed away with me and our children around her in Vincent’s. She died at 1.30 in the morning. I drove back to Wexford and stopped off at a garage on the way at about 3am to get coffee. When myself and Mary were courting, we had a song we always listened to, ‘Our House’ by Crosby, Stills & Nash. That song came on the radio, and it blew me apart. It was like I turned into a plate of jelly.”
As Mary’s illness progressed, Des noticed he had some unexplained weight loss. He had arranged an appointment with his doctor to find out what was causing it, but decided to cancel it as Mary’s condition worsened. Des got another appointment in December 2022, and his GP referred him to hospital.
“I was sent for tests, and they told me I had bladder cancer. They said it could be treated with chemo. They set out a plan of eight sessions of chemo, two weeks on and one week off. At the start, you’re saying to yourself, ‘This chemo is great!’, but your mood changes as you go through the process, and you start to wonder what this stuff is as the effects accumulate.”
Halfway through his treatment, Des became unwell and was admitted to hospital to the High Dependency Unit as his immune system had crashed. He was told he was just steps away from developing sepsis. After he recovered, he underwent radiotherapy along with chemotherapy
“I’d had radiotherapy before, because I had testicular cancer when I was 30,” says Des. “I remember I had it in St Luke’s in Rathgar around the time of the Stardust fire. This time, I did 20 days of radiation in conjunction with four more sessions of chemo but on a lower dose.
“In January 2024, the consultant said he looked at my scans and he had nothing to
show me – I was all clear. I didn’t feel euphoria or anything like that when he told me. I was partly thinking, ‘I hope this guy’s right’. There was a doubt there, and that’s a doubt that I’ve learned to live with as circumstances can change over time.”
While he was cancer free, Des still had to manage the side effects of his treatment for months afterwards.
“A while after I finished radiation, I had problems with urination. It was painful, and it was as if it was blocked. That July, I started urinating blood. It was more like a burgundy than a rosé, and it frightened the life out of me. I called my oncologist, and he said he knew it seemed very dramatic, but it was a normal side effect of the radiotherapy I had.
“That October, the bleeding got really bad. I went to Vincent’s, and they did a cystoscopy and inserted a catheter that was there for two weeks. It looked like I was emptying bottles of blood. They did surgery and cauterised my bladder internally during a cystoscopy. After that, it was all great, except for the incontinence initially, but I’m on tablets for that now and it is improving.”
Post-treatment, tiredness and lack of energy were major side effects for Des. “I would’ve played squash into my late 50s, but now I can hardly run down the road. It’s been debilitating, and it’s taking me a long time to try to get my fitness back. But I travel a lot to Spain now, looking at the architecture and old cathedrals, and I’ve been volunteering to maintain interest.”
The months leading up to and after Des’s diagnosis passed by in a whirlwind for him, and it was only after he finished his treatment when he had time to reflect on everything that had happened.
“In April last year, I was in Spain and I was walking on the beach when I suddenly stopped in my tracks. I just said to myself, ‘Redmond, you nearly died last year’. It was like I’d just hit a brick wall. I said it to my doctor, and he said I’d been living on adrenaline for the last few years, and everything had only just caught up with me. But since that, everything’s been a lot better, and I went back to Spain again recently.”
Throughout his experience of supporting someone with cancer, and experiencing a diagnosis of his own, Des says he learned that cancer affects everyone differently.
“I met a lot of people when I was in Vincent’s,” he says. “I met a chef who had lost his sense of taste and smell. I met a lady who was on her 50th chemo session, who only wanted to live so she could see her grandchildren grow up. But all of our experiences are different, and all of our cancers are different, there is no ‘one size fits all’. Yet we have to acknowledge the advances made in diagnostics, drug availability, advances in medical procedures and highly professional staff.
“One of the hardest things I had to do when going through treatment was to just focus on me. I treated it all nearly like it was a management project. I approached each element like it was a slice of a big salami, and I compartmentalised other things. I treated it rationally like a project throughout and refused to become a victim of the issue.
“And I’ve had very frank discussions with my kids. I decided to get all of my affairs in order while my treatment was going on, and once I did that, it was a great relief. At some stage, I know I’ll have to go, but hopefully not for a while yet.
“Should my current status change negatively in the future it will be a case of dealing with whatever happens in a rational manner again.”
