They have to go... they’re not capable of minding us

THE full transcript of the Morning Ireland interview Emma Mhic Mhathúna gave to Audrey Carville, bringing many listeners to tears yesterday.

Emma: I learned this week that I’m dying and that the cancer, it’s covered my bones and everything, so I have a test on Friday [today] to see exactly how long I’ve left.

Audrey: Who told you this devastating news?

E: My GP.

A: And Emma, did you think you’d be clear, did you hope you’d be clear?

E: I hoped I’d be clear but I had a feeling that I was, I had a feeling I had cancer again because I’d had it before but I didn’t think it would be terminal.

A: Have you told your children?

E: I have, yeah.

A: And how are they? You’ve a very young family.

E: Devastated. I was crying thinking about it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do because, as a mother, it’s my job to protect them and to keep the bad news away from them. We’d such a good day on the Confirmation like, my results were ready on Tuesday but I didn’t want to get them because it was their Confirmation, and then I had to collect them from school early and tell them that I’m dying and it’s just a horrible thing... to be honest, there’s so much pain in the house.

A: Is there any treatment, anything left that you can do?

E: They’ll know more when they get the results on Friday, but all the doctors, the gynaecologists, the oncologists, my GP, I’ve such a fabulous team, I’m in good care in that sense you know. So if there’s anything available, they’ll find it.

A: And Emma, you had just found out that you had a smear test in 2013, which you thought was normal, but it wasn’t, but you never knew that?

E: No. The 2013 smear said that I was healthy when I wasn’t, and because of that then I actually developed cancer and now I’m dying. If the smear test was right and I was told by my gynaecologist, who is over three hospitals so he knows his stuff, this guy is amazing, and he told me himself that if my smear test was right in 2013 I wouldn’t be where I am today. This is what makes it so heartbreaking. I’m dying when I don’t need to die, and my children are going to be without me and I’m going to be without them. I tried to do everything right by, you know, breastfeeding and being a full-time mum and sacrificing, you know, my own life for them. I didn’t see it as a sacrifice and now I’m going to miss out and I don’t even know if my little baby is going to remember me.

What makes this situation so sick is that the Government aren’t doing anything about it. When it first broke out I was like, OK, well the HSE are surely going to do something and they didn’t. Then I looked to Simon Harris and I was thinking, well surely the Minister for Health is going to step in and do something, that’s why we give these people powers, and he didn’t do anything. So then I was like, surely the Taoiseach is going to do something. He just seems to be sticking up for them and they’re in the Dáil and they don’t see what I see.

There’s women that are dead and they’re not just any women, they’re people’s daughters and their mammies, and all the children are in so much pain and my stance on it is, I think the only person that can do something now is the President, and I never actually thought I’d say something like that in 2018 in Ireland, because the Government need to go, they’re not actually and I’m not being insulting, it’s genuine, they’re not actually capable of minding us, and that is their job, to make sure we’re OK. I’m dying and I didn’t even need to die and I’m only 37. Last night I was in bed and I was having this really bad dream. I dreamt that I was dying and I wasn’t ready because I hadn’t said goodbye to my children and in my dream I was trying to ring 999 but I couldn’t pick up my phone. So in my dream I had gone into Natasha, she sleeps across the landing, and I was trying to wake her up so I could say goodbye because I hadn’t said goodbye and then I woke up and I was like, thank God, I haven’t died yet because I want to say goodbye to them and this isn’t fair, and no amount of money can replace this.

I know which of my children likes butter and which of them needs time out when they’re getting tired and all the fun stuff we do together, we have such good fun the six of us. I moved all the way down here to Ballydavid and it’s such a fantastic place because all my children are boys and it’s really like Enid Blyton here. They go climbing on the rocks and they go camping in the fields and they’re so safe and they build sand castles and that’s all been taken away from them.

Yesterday, I had to sit down with the teachers and I was like, what are we going to do? You understand what I mean?

A: I do, Emma, there’s nothing I can say. I’m so, so sorry.