Ciara Mageean has opened up about her stage four bowel cancer diagnosis, embracing gallows humour as she continues to fight the illness
Irish Olympian Ciara Mageean has opened up about her experience coming to terms with a stage four cancer diagnosis.
The athlete received the devastating news last year that she had bowel cancer, with a consultant delivering the heartbreaking prognosis on Christmas Eve that she may only have two to three years left to live.
Since undergoing chemotherapy, the Portaferry woman has received more positive updates, with the majority of her cancer cells found to have become inactive. Having recently completed a further six cycles of chemotherapy, Ciara is resolute that the illness will not consume her entire life.
“Stressing and worrying about it isn’t going to change it,” she told the Irish Times. “You’re so entitled to those emotions obviously. But you could lose yourself to it.
“I don’t know what this journey is going to look like. I don’t know at what point I’m going to get sick. As soon as I got that diagnosis, I felt like the grim reaper was on my shoulder and I didn’t know if I was going to be dead in a matter of months.
“[Her long term partner] Tommy and I are engaged but we’ve never had any rush on the wedding. But now I was like, ‘Do we need to get a move on here?’”.
“Because I don’t want to be that girl who looks like a skeleton on her wedding day. Or having to be in a hospital bed with Tommy beside me and me in a wedding dress in the hospital bed. I want it to be a normal day.”
While Ciara continues to come to terms with the harsh reality of her situation, she has also found a way to use dark humour to help her through the toughest of times.
“I’ll be sitting on the couch and I’ll be like, ‘F**k. I might be dead in two years.’ I certainly won’t … well, I don’t want to say certainly but I probably won’t make my 40th birthday. Like, that’s f**king rough,” she said.
“But we’re planning this wedding and I can’t help but think, ‘The poor lad’s going to be left a widower in his 30s.’ And then I’m like, ‘Sure then he’s going to be a bit old! It’s going to be hard for him to find a new partner!’ I say to him, ‘Here, you can’t move on from me too fast …’”.
“People probably are like, ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that.’ But I need to make light of it. It helps cope with the genuine worry that I’m going to leave him on his own.
“We’ve been together for 13 years and you think that you’re going to have your whole life together.”
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