‘I was determined not to let cancer take my husband’
Lisa Mehigan had it all - a family and high-flying career- when her husband received a devastating diagnosis. Here she reveals how happiness finally prevailed ....
AFTER a traumatic few years, Lisa Mehigan truly thought she had come out the other side. After losing her dad to a malignant brain tumour, just three months after her uncle also died of the same disease, herself and her family were working through their grief. Lisa and her husband, Dave, had their first child, Elizabeth, followed a year later by little Matthew. Lisa had thrown herself into a new job setting up a health communications agency and things were finally back on track — or so she thought, until Dave started to become ill.
‘I was, like, “Oh my God, this can’t be happening again” — I was so scared,’ she remembers. ‘After getting married, it’s not where you think you’ll be at that stage.
‘One day Dave had pains in his tummy — he couldn’t digest food properly and was very tired,’ she says. ‘It went on for a couple of months. He thought it might be a stomach ulcer so he went to our doctor, who decided to send him to St Vincent’s hospital for a scope.
Dave’s scope came back clear but astute medics decided to probe further and perform an ultrasound. After a shadow in Dave’s abdomen was detected, he was given a CT scan; within an hour, doctors knew there was something seriously wrong.
The couple went home, and put on their best faces for baby Matthew’s first birthday and christening, but a few days later, Dave and Lisa were back in hospital for his results.
‘They said there was a blockage but
Live, and be happy, and make others so MARY SHELLEY
didn’t know what it was — we had a long meeting and they mentioned tumour and transplant in the same sentence. I was so terrified,’ says Lisa. ‘Afterwards in the car we cried and tried to make sense of it.’
Dave returned to St Vincent’s, where doctors continued tests and after four biopsies came back clear, the fifth one finally confirmed what doctors suspected all along — Dave had cancer of the bile duct. Yet they were baffled.
Cholangiocarcinoma is a very rare cancer in a young, healthy fit man like Dave. It usually strikes men over 55. Ireland and France are the only countries that treat it, but only in exceptional cases. Usually the only option for older men is palliative care.
‘It was so scary — we didn’t know if they would treat him,’ recalls Lisa.
After two weeks of meetings, Dave’s team of consultants decided if anyone was physically able for the raft of treatments — a complicated series of brachytherapy, twice-daily radiotherapy, as well as infusion and oral chemotherapy — then it was Dave.
Once the cancer was clear, he’d be eligible for a new liver. He was placed on the liver transplant list. All he had to do now was beat the cancer and stay healthy and cancer-free until a suitable liver was found. But nobody knew when that would be.
Meanwhile, Lisa, who’d worked in health marketing all her life, kept the show on the road, juggling work and family. She had recently started a new job and often worked at Dave’s bedside, all the while looking after the children.
‘My boss, David Kyle, was amazing. He wouldn’t let me quit and said my job was there no matter how long it took to get back,’ recalls Lisa. ‘I couldn’t have done it without his support.’
NORMAL life ticked along but it wasn’t doing Lisa any favours. Elizabeth got the mumps and then pneumonia. One day in crèche, she broke her arm.
Lisa shrugs off questions about how she kept going.
‘I couldn’t believe what was happening but you push on — you just do it,’ she explains. ‘I watched my mother do it when my dad was dying and she did it with such grace and dignity and ridiculous strength.
‘Women are amazing. We just roll up our sleeves and we do it. I’d have been wondering about another mother “How did you do it? — I wouldn’t cope,”, but in that situation you roll up your sleeves and get stuff done. It was fiercely challenging, at the time my head was still all over the place with the one-year-old.
‘Mom stayed over with me a few times when Dave was in hospital and one night I was in the depths of despair, thinking “How the hell is this happening to us?” Mom stayed in the bed with me. I was crying and I asked her, “Mom, did you think you’d be here with me so soon after you came through all this with Dad?” She just shook her head and said no. It was mad.’
As for whether she ever thought Dave might not make it, she insists: ‘Parts of my brain went there but mostly, I was like, “This is not going to happen. I won’t live on my own, I won’t raise my kids on my own. We will grow old together.’’
‘I didn’t let myself go there — it was too dark a place. I’d two small children to get up in the morning, to get dressed, and get ready. If I thought of that I’d have been floored. I couldn’t let it happen.’
Meanwhile, it was a waiting game for Dave on the transplant list.
‘It [the liver] had to be the right blood type, tissue type, similar body size... the stars really had to align and they did, right at the last minute.’
Over the summer, as Dave’s health deteriorated, Lisa decided to take time off work. He lost weight, contracted infections and was receiving blood transfusions. Septicaemia left him critically ill and dependent on 22 hours of infusion daily. Time was running out.
Then, at the 11th hour, late one night in August 2017, Dave phoned Lisa from his hospital bed, where he’d been for two weeks, to say a suitable liver had been found.
At 1.30am, after a battery of tests, Dave was wheeled down to theatre.
The nine-hour operation was a success, but afterwards Dave’s consultant, Mr Justin Geoghegan, explained to Lisa that the procedure was much more complex than they had anticipated and told her just how close to death Dave had been.
‘If Dave didn’t get the liver when he had, the infection would have gone into his gall bladder,’ she says. ‘He would have then been taken off the transplant list. The surgeon said it was a mess in there — if we hadn’t got the liver, we dread to think what would have happened.’
After 24 hours in an induced coma, Dave came around. Ten days later he was home with Lisa and the children.
Dave soon started rehab and, once he was able, got back training with a personal trainer. Overwhelmed with gratitude for his donor, he set himself a challenge and rowed 1,000km to honour his donor and the family who had given him a second chance at life.
Lisa says: ‘That’s why we will