I feel lucky... I got to enjoy my children. But I don’t feel lucky for them
Everyone is worried about the kids, which is great
EMMA MHIC Mathuna always wanted lots of children. Growing up as an only child, she dreamt of having brothers and sisters to play with. Her childhood, although happy, was tinged with a loneliness that she filled with writing stories and playing with imaginary friends.
She had her first daughter, Natasha, when she was just 21. Four years later Seamus was born, a year after that she gave birth to another son, Mario. And he was followed by two more boys, Oisin, six, and two-year-old Donnacha.
Her dream of having a big family was certainly fulfilled. Yet given half a chance, the 37-year-old believes she would have had more.
‘Oh I wanted more kids,’ she insists. ‘I became infertile because of the cervical cancer but I would have been the woman with the 14 kids, baking soda bread and raising chickens. I’m an only child and it’s lonely. That’s how I got into writing and using my imagination to cope with the loneliness.
‘But being an only child also made me resilient and that’s where I got my strength from. You see my mam raised me on her own. Back in the 1980s being a single parent was not the done thing and she was working fulltime... You needed to be tough.’
It’s a week to the day since Emma learned from her GP that the cervical cancer she was diagnosed with in September 2016 had not only returned but had this time spread to her lungs. The doctor cried as she told the mother-of-five that this time there was nothing they could do. It was terminal.
She had been told only a few days earlier that she was one of the 209 women whose smear tests had been read incorrectly. And that a routine cervical check exam in 2013, which had come back clear, had in fact shown signs of abnormalities.
It’s been a whirlwind seven days to say the least. Emma immediately decided to go public with her devastating diagnosis and threw herself into a media blitz of interviews and appearances. There was a heartbreaking interview on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland show, which was subsequently mentioned several times in the Dáil.
And an appearance on The Late Late Show, where she received a spontaneous standing ovation from the audience. There were also several interviews with this newspaper, where she spoke about her anger at the HSE and the Government, who she believed were dragging their heels in dealing properly with the cervical cancer scandal.
At one point she asked that the President of Ireland intervene, saying he was the ‘only person who could do something’.
Much to her surprise, a day or two later President Michael D Higgins told reporters that he planned to travel to Kerry to meet with Emma and offer his ‘moral support’.
It’s just a couple of hours since the President and his wife Sabina flew by helicopter into the tiny townland of Ballydavid in west Kerry to talk to Emma and her five children.
Reclining back into a large comfortable sofa in one of the sitting rooms of O’Gorman’s guesthouse, where their meeting took place, Emma is struggling to digest what has just happened.
‘All I seem to be saying over the last couple of weeks is: “I can’t believe it,”’ she says laughing. ‘I can’t believe the cervical checks went wrong, I can’t believe it was me, I can’t believe I’ve had a biopsy, I can’t believe I have cancer.
‘I can’t believe the President has come to visit me — I can’t keep up.’
Although noticeably tired, Emma is in remarkably good form. The presidential visit has meant a lot to her and her family, at a time when they are trying to come to terms with a prognosis that will leave her five young children without a mother.
Estranged from her husband, it’s up to Emma to now try and sort out what will happen to her daughter and four sons once she is gone.
‘I’ve a few things in place,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to wait until next week before I can talk about it, but I’ve a really, really good idea in the pipeline. I’m just waiting to get things in place.
‘Everyone is worried about the kids, which is great. I’m determined to make everything positive and that they really will have a good life. And now they’re friends with the President of Ireland, sure what more could you ask for?’
Emma’s tendency to throw in a joke or two while discussing her heartbreaking predicament has been striking over the last week. For instance, on The Late Late she revealed that the gynaecologist dealing with her case was very handsome.
‘Oh the sexy gynaecologist rang me this week to let me know when my PET scan is,’ she says. ‘And I said to him: “Do you know the amount of women outside my house looking for your number?”
‘It’s always good to keep a sense of humour when you’re going through something like this. Because if you don’t, you start fretting and that’s not good for your health.
‘It’s acceptance. I believe that if I’m positive and happy and funny, and making a difference and making sure that my death is not meaningless, then the children will be okay.’
It all comes back to the kids. In between calling for accountability within the HSE, and for Cervical Check to be overhauled so that her situation cannot happen again, she has been taking care of Natasha, 15, Seamus, 11, Mario, 10, Oisin and Donnacha.
While her youngest son may not understand what is going on around him, she says he can ‘sense something is up and is being very clingy’. The others are all dealing with it in their own different ways.
‘I’m wrapping up doing interviews and media to focus on the children now.’ she says. ‘I needed to do the interviews to drill the message back to Dublin. It had to be done, and I did that with my kids in mind.’
Have they minded all the attention?
‘They love it,’ she exclaims. ‘It’s comforting for them because they know they’re not on their own and that’s the best thing. As they say: it’s secrets that keep us sick. By being so open about it, they talk about it with their friends, they’re all in it together. You’re better off telling them what’s going on, otherwise they’ll sense it.’
Born in Dublin, Emma’s family lived on the northside for several years before her parents’ marriage broke up and she moved to Leixlip, Co. Kildare, with her mother when she was eight years old. Her father subsequently moved to England, where he is still based and runs his own business.
‘My parents were quite young when they got married,’ she explains. ‘My mam worked in the Department of Education, where she was a civil servant, so I went to school in Scoil Chaoimhin, which is on the grounds of the department, that’s where I got my Irish.’
Before moving to Ballydavid, a Gaeltacht area that is about a 20minute drive west from Dingle, at the end of last summer, Emma had been living in Edenderry, Co. Offaly, for seven years.
She had returned to college but after being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016, had to drop out to
She’s the extraordinary mother whose courage in the face of her cervical cancer misdiagnosis moved the nation – and forced out the head of the HSE. Now, though, Emma Mhic Mhathuna is focusing on her young family – and trying to ensure that they are as well-prepared as possible for life when she’s gone...
concentrate on her treatment plan. This is not the first time she has faced personal tragedy. When she was 23 her mother died suddenly. Her demise was recorded as ‘death by misadventure’.
‘Because she died so suddenly, I have the experience of how to deal with this with my children,’ she says. ‘If you are prepared for anything, you can overcome anything.
‘With my mam, it was like, there she was, there she wasn’t. And it was very hard trying to get used to that fact.
‘With my children, I’ve got the chance to gradually prepare them for the transition. And they will be okay. I’ve done the best I can with them so far and if you get the foundations with children right, then after that it’s their own decisions. But they do know right from wrong.’
Although clearly exhausted, Emma says she is drawing strength from dwelling on the positives rather than the negatives.
‘You know, I feel lucky,’ she says. ‘I got to enjoy my children. But I don’t feel lucky for them. They’ll be the ones left with this problem, they’ll be the ones growing up without a mother.
‘When I’m dead, I’m dead, it’s not going to make a difference to me but it’ll make a difference to them, so it’s my job to protect them as much as I can, which is what this [campaigning] is all about.
‘It’s been about helping my children in the sense that I have taken the burden off them. If they grow up in an environment where their mother was killed and she didn’t need to be, that’s a hard thing to grow up in. And they could turn that into hatred. It could affect them psychologically.
‘But that’s completely gone now because the changes will be made and it won’t be their responsibility to send off complaints or campaign.’
She also draws comfort from the fact that they will continue to live in Ballydavid.
‘This is their home for definite,’ she says. ‘I think part of my journey was to bring them here. They’re settled in a great school and there’s a feeling like we’ve always been here. They settled in very well from the start, all the kids are fluent in Irish, so there’s one barrier gone.
‘And then when you’ve loads of children you always get to know people pretty quickly.
‘You know, everything happens for a reason, I do believe in synchronicity and I do believe in the afterlife and that we’ll see each other again, although I’m not totally sure whether that’s religious or spiritual...
‘I mean, I’m dying and I’ve never felt as calm. You often hear from people, when they talk about someone who has died: “God they were great craic, they never looked as well.” I have a sense of peace and calm because I’m not afraid of death and I have my beliefs.
‘There have been a few times that my mam has come back to me. Just after Christmas I was walking down the road and I felt like I was getting a hug from her.
‘The last time I felt that was when I was diagnosed the last time. And it’s almost like the next life, whatever that might be, it’s a way of letting you know that everything is going to be okay, you just have to let go.’
Although she looks well today, her hair and make-up flawless for her presidential visit, Emma admits to being in some pain. She is still undergoing tests before her doctors determine a course of action.
‘I’m sore,’ she says. ‘But I’m not on medication yet. We’ll see what happens, the doctors will sort something out, they’re working around the clock and these things take time.’
The bright evening sun is streaming in through the windows of the guesthouse, which overlooks the majestic Three Sisters, a group of peaks at the end of the Dingle Peninsula. Emma falls silent for a while, stretches slightly and stares out at the incredible view.
‘God, I could fall asleep right here,’ she says eventually. ‘It’s so strange that you’re sitting here with me now and it was only last week when I rang you, when you were on your way down to interview me, to tell you that the cancer was back and it was terminal.
‘It feels like a month ago, so much has happened.
‘I needed to be vocal and aggressive, I needed to fight to get the message across that this isn’t okay.
‘I am an example of what happens when people don’t do their job right. When they forget about patient focus and cut corners. But I think they’ve [the Government and the HSE] got the message. I’ve done all I can now and I think they’ll remember me.
‘Now it’s time for me to sit with the kids and watch Netflix. And just chill out.
‘But it shows you the power of voice. Here I am in Ballydavid, which is so far away from Dublin, but by letting your guard down and sharing what’s really going on, it can make a difference.
‘I’m proud of myself. I fought back as hard as I got. There was no way I was going to let it lie. My life was worth too much to me and my children for me to go quietly.’
I’ve done all I can now and I think they’ve got the message