CANCER CRISIS
SLIGO MUM OF TWO BRENDA MCARDLE IS SHOCKED AND ANGRY AT HSE SCANDAL
IT was during a routine examination before giving birth to her second child that a doctor in Sligo University Hospital discovered ‘something was wrong.’
Within a few days 31-year-old Brenda McArdle was told she had an agressive form of cervical cancer. It was not localised and was spreading to her lymph nodes.
Brenda considered herself a perfectly healthy young mum who crucially ‘ had no symptoms whatsoever.’
“All of my previous smears were clear,” she explains. So with this shocking diagnosis in 2011, Brenda was left with more questions than answers.
“My baby Grainne was born by normal delivery thankfully. I had a 17-month old girl at home and a newborn and I was in a state of shock and stress,” recalls Brenda who lives in Strandhill.
Initially the prospect of losing her fertility was the biggest blow as Brenda says: “I knew I was going to lose my fertility. I had always wanted lots of babies. I did not even hear the word cancer,” she says.
But then the very harsh realisation set in: Brenda was ‘fighting for her life.’ The battle against cancer took its toll as Brenda embarked on an intensive treatment programme of chemotherapy and radiation.
She says: “It was very painful. Physically there were so many side effects, chronic diarrhoea, vomitting and chronic exhaustion.”
If it was not for the support of close family and friends, Brenda says she would not have coped: “I was not able to look after my children. My mother had to move in with us for a year. My husband had to give up work. We had no income. I went from being a healthy 31-year-old woman to feeling like a 90-year-old, physically and mentally I was not able for anything like a normal life.”
As a cancer survivor, Brenda stresses the importance of looking after your mental health. Fortunately her treatment was successful but the enormity of what had happened didn’t just disappear.
“I tried to be normal again and act as if nothing had happened but I hit a deep depression,” she explains. Following ‘a lot of therapy’, she has got through her cervical cancer journey and come out the other end.
Fast forward to today and Brenda is now seven years clear from cancer and recently opened her own make up studio in Strandhill, Blush Beauty. by Brenda. “It took me at least 3 years to feel normal again, but I’m enjoying life now.”