The best Christmas present ever for Anne
A WOMAN whose brave battle against cancer captured the hearts of the nation got an early Christmas present last week - and it was the best news ever.
Charleville woman Anne Herlihy has been battling terminal cancer since 2014 but just days before Christmas she received the most amazing news when doctors told her that she was in total remission.
Anne was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in September 2014 and received a terminal diagnosis. Back then, in 2014, Anne was advised to ‘ bring Christmas forward’ as she was not expected to live to see it.
However, two and a half years of “doing it my way from start to finish; not cancer’s way” Christmas 2017 did, in fact, come early when she got the good news by text message.
Speaking on C103’s Cork Today last Friday, Anne told presenter Patricia Messinger the good news.
She said when she received the text message she immediately handed her phone over to her husband, PJ, to read because she “didn’t know whether she was seeing things or not”.
“The two of us were looking at each other. We were standing in the middle of the kitchen and we didn’t know how to react,” said Anne.
A WOMAN whose brave battle against cancer captured the hearts of the nation got an early Christmas present last week - and it was the best news ever.
Charleville woman Anne Herlihy has been battling terminal cancer since 2014 but just days before Christmas she received the most amazing news when doctors told her that she was in total remission. The news was all the more amazing as Anne had been feeling particularly unwell of late - but this was due to the side effects of her medication, not the cancer itself.
Anne was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in September 2014. She received a terminal diagnosis and never expected to be told she could be in remission.
Back then, in 2014, Anne was advised to ‘ bring Christmas forward’ as she was not expected to live to see it.
However, after getting over the initital horror, Anne determined: ‘I was doing it my way from start to finish; not cancer’s way.’
Speaking on C103’s Cork Today last Friday, Anne told presenter Patricia Messinger that she began taking a new HSE-funded drug last month to battle her cancer.
Those taking the drug can get up to 30 side effects. She told Patricia that she ended up very ill after beginning the new treatment, suffering from up to 15 side effects.
She was sent for a scan following a month of poor health.
However, on Monday she received the results of the scan – and to her surprise it revealed that she is now in total remission.
“It was the very last thing I was expecting to hear because my cancer marker had been rising slowly. I wasn’t feeling very well at all and this is why the scan was performed,” Anne said on-air.
She received the good news from her oncologist via a text message. In total shock, she immediately handed her phone over to her husband, PJ, to read because she “didn’t know whether she was seeing things or not”.
“The two of us were looking at each other. We were standing in the middle of the kitchen and we didn’t know how to react,” said Anne.
She has stayed positive throughout her battle with the disease and has kept a bucket list which she has been making her way through. One item on her bucket list was to renew her wedding vows with her husband, which she has already done.
Another was to sing with singer Tommy Fleming, who she performed with twice on ‘Saturday With Miriam’ (O’Callaghan) on RTÉ One TV. After their duet, of ‘ The Contender’, last August Miriam presented Anne with two tickets to see Ed Sheeran concert in Cork next year.
Tommy and Anne have stayed in touch and, to Anne’s surprise, Fleming joined in on the on-air conversation on C103 last week. “I’m shocked in a lovely, brilliant way,” Fleming told Patricia Messinger. “Ann was never defeated and she was never going to be.
“It’s a gift that money can’t buy.”
Anne was planning to have a quiet, simple Christmas at home with her family – celebrating the best bit of news she’s had in years.