I had to have chemo while pregnant – my new baby needed a mum
The inspiring story of how RTÉ’s Evelyn O’Rourke was treated for breast cancer while expecting
EVELYN O’Rourke sailed into St Vincent’s Hospital in June 2010, riding a wave of elation after discovering just four days earlier — to her delight and utter shock — that she was pregnant with her second child.
The RTÉ presenter and her husband, then head of 2fm John McMahon, had welcomed their first son just seven months earlier, and she had only taken a pregnancy test before using a medication that warned against ingestion by expectant mothers.
She and John were on a high from the good news, and she didn’t give much thought to her appointment in St Vincent’s with a consultant who was investigating a pimple-like mark on
her breast. Convinced it was just a cyst or something equally benign, Evelyn was distracted by her pregnancy, thrilled to welcome a brother or sister to her firstborn, Oisín.
But John was looking around, noticing that they were kept waiting while other patients were seen. He began to suspect the meeting with Dr Denis Evoy might not yield good news. When they entered the doctor’s room, and were gravely informed there was a problem, John collapsed in his chair. Evelyn had cancer. ‘This was brand new news to me, whereas John was going: “Oh my God, the worst has been confirmed.” They also said that it’s not uncommon for men to collapse,’ Evelyn says.
Today, she’s sitting in the Radisson Blu St Helen’s Hotel in Stillorgan, tucking into a salad and remarkably calm as she recalls the chaotic scene.
THEY told me it’s not uncommon for the men, when their wives or partners get this news, and I think it probably taps into just the whole male thing about protecting this person and loving this person and suddenly all that is removed from them.
‘And what do you do? What can a man do at the moment you just realise all the power has been taken out of their hands? It’s the most romantic thing he’s ever done.’
While John was composing himself, Evelyn seemed to go on auto-pilot, immediately thinking only of her infant son and the life growing inside of her.
‘I literally went: “Oisín and the new baby.” They were my two thoughts,’ she says.
‘And the thought that kept stalking me that whole first while was, how can my body be creating life and destroying it at the same time? That was a really difficult circle to square, a really difficult thing to work out — because your womb is going, “we’re creating life, we’ve done the most amazing thing we can do, we’ve created a body here, a life here”, and then a few inches away in my breast, I’ve got cancer cells.
‘I asked: “Is this terminal? Because I have huge responsibilities. I’ve a baby at home and I’m now pregnant and I need the truth right now.”’
Evelyn was assured the cancer was not terminal, and when she later met with oncologist Professor John Crown, she and her husband felt even better.
She could undergo chemotherapy while pregnant, he explained, but he recommended she delay radiotherapy until after her child was born.
‘He said: “We can do this; I’ve done it for years. I’ve photographs of children on my desk. Be assured I can do this.” He was just amazing and a genius. You couldn’t but leave the office going: “That’s fine, that’s the plan.” So we just closed our eyes and went for it.
‘To be perfectly honest, I was 38 and I wanted my second baby. Once John Crown said, “We can do this”, I went, “You know what? I trust you”. I wanted my baby. I know people make their own decisions, but for me, there was just no decision.’
Evelyn underwent a lumpectomy and had lymph nodes removed, later succumbing to an infection so severe that doctors had to operate to clear it. She hated the thought of undergoing multiple general anaesthetics while still so early in her pregnancy, but they were necessary to save her life — and that of her baby. So too was chemotherapy, which Evelyn began in August because the drugs do not breach the placenta wall after 12 weeks. She had to steel herself for losing her hair, cut- ting it short before her sessions started to prepare for when i t would definitely fall out. And all the while, she worried about the baby.
‘I hadn’t drunk caffeine when I was pregnant with Oisín,’ she says. ‘I took it so seriously. I had my book of foods you’re not allowed to have — not eating prawns, taking all that advice. To throw all that up in the air and walk into the oncology ward and get chemotherapy pumped into you was a shocking jump to have to make.
‘I wanted to do the best for my children, of course, and here I was walking into a room and voluntarily putting chemo drugs into my system. And that was abandoning everything I believed in. We’d gone beyond unpasteurised cheese here, your extra glass of wine.
‘This was a whole other world that I was having to negotiate competently and confidently, and that was just really a nightmare so cruel. No one should have to bear it.
‘What panicked me at every stage was: “God — how much more?” Nobody anticipated three general anaesthetics at the start. It was this feeling that the ball just kept rolling.
‘We never got calm time. There was another element each time, and then we’d go into Holles Street hospital and Ross [her then unborn son] would just wave at me from the womb.
‘And I would just be floored by him. I didn’t know it was a he; we didn’t find out the sex of the baby, so I’d just be floored by them. I think that’s what was really tough. There’s such romance around being pregnant and having your baby and it’s such a beautiful moment. Everybody loves a pregnant woman and we’re all excited by it — and I had to have this whole other journey. ‘I wasn’t doing antenatal pilates. I was walking around the place trying to work out if this medication would mesh with that, would it make me nauseous. It was really horrendous, actually.’ She first felt Ross kick just after starting chemotherapy and any sign of movement encouraged her and gave her strength.
‘That was reassuring, because every time they do a little disco dance, you’re like: “OK, you’re still there, that’s great.” He was a really helpful companion actually, because whenever I needed him to kick, he just seemed to go: “Yeah, I’ll give you another kick. We’re fine, go back to watching TV.”’
Evelyn was particularly terrified when going for baby scans — worried that, despite all assurances that her baby would be protected, something still might have gone wrong. ‘I knew that I was dealing with a tricky situation, so every time before a scan, I’d find the intellectual arguments I’d made would get wrapped up in panic,’ she says. Every time, however, things were fine. The baby reached every developmental mark and the pregnancy itself progressed exceedingly well.
33 The percentage of people in Ireland who will develop cancer in their
lifetime
BIZARRELY, it was a very calm pregnancy, in terms of the baby side of it,’ she says. ‘Ross did very well, and we never had a worry… The issue was the cancer, not the pregnancy.’ She struggled through chemo, relying on her friends and family to support her and help care for Oisín.
Another godsend came in the form of Brigid Mulqueen, whom she had met while working on The Gerry Ryan Show on 2fm.
Brigid contacted Evelyn after reading about her in a newspaper. Brigid was also pregnant while being treated for breast cancer and, despite all the medical assurances, hearing about Brigid’s healthy, now eight-year- old son was a significant turning point for