Carrie back doing 1-2-3s after breast cancer journey

by Stuart Holly editor@clareecho.ie

ENNIS woman Carrie Donnellan was stopped in her tracks in August 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when she received her cancer diagnosis.

The mother of two wasn’t a drinker, didn’t smoke, ate a balanced diet and led an active lifestyle which includes helping her son Michael Donnellan run his Irish dancing school. Born and raised in St Michaels Villas, Carrie worked in the Ennis General Hospital and later in the outpatients’ department.

Recounting her ordeal, she says, “I was very healthy and very active and working up until 2019, and then Covid hit and because I was in my 70s it wasn’t feasible for me to continue working.

“All hell broke loose then.”

Carrie found a small lump in her left breast and under the treatment of Prof Michael Kerin in Galway, a second lump was discovered. “I had a lumpectomy and it had gone to one lymph node. They removed that and then I had four lots of chemotherapy and 30 lots of radium. The only treatment I’m having now is I’m on a hormonal tablet.”

Carrie’s treatment concluded on April 6, 2021, some eight months after it began. What made her journey all the more difficult was the arrival of Covid-19 restrictions, meaning she would have to face much of her recovery in isolation.

“It was a shock. Unfortunately, the word cancer frightens people and what people don’t understand is that, when you’re told that your body completely shuts down, you’re in denial, you don’t believe it. Then when you start your treatment, I couldn’t have anyone with me because of Covid.

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“My husband Michael would just drop me off. He sat for four hours outside the hospital in Galway while I was being treated because he couldn’t come in. I have great family support, my husband and the two lads were brilliant, and my colleagues in the hospital rang me every day, they were brilliant.”

Carrie believes that her positive outlook has been key to her progression, “If I was to give advice to anybody, I would say roll with it. Don’t fight it. You will be very sick with chemo and you won’t eat, you won’t sleep. For four months all I did was drink iced water. I went down to seven stone and I was 10 stone. I lost my hair. But you just get on with it, there is light at the end of the tunnel, treatment will finish, and then you start picking up. Thank God my hair is back now, I’m back helping Mike with the dancing class, I walk, I’m just lucky at the moment.”

“It was my family that suffered,” she insists. “I have two boys, they couldn’t come into the house because I was on treatment because Covid was rampant at that stage. That was tough. Michael, the crature, I had to hand his Christmas dinner out the window to him because he couldn’t come in and have it, that was tough times.”

While Carrie’s thoughts were with her family members during her treatment, she says she refused to feel sorry for herself, “An odd time you might feel a bit down and you’d weep a bit, but no. It happened, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t change it. I only just hoped I could get through my treatment and that things would be good for me. It’s no use sitting feeling sorry for yourself.”

Carrie is back helping young dancers with their

1-2-3s and is as active as ever. She admits that cancer has changed her outlook on life. “I’m grateful that I can get up in the morning and go, and do what you have to do. You can do two things, you can either accept it, go with it and get over it or you sit and look at four walls and feel sorry for yourself”

Carrie is encouraging all women to get checked to ensure early diagnosis and treatment. “My advice to young girls and women, no matter what age they are is to please, please get checked out no matter how trivial it is, it may be nothing but it may be the start of something and if it’s caught in time, you’ll be treated.”

Carrie is a regular attendee of Relay For Life in Ennis, noting that she started attending with her husband who had cancer of the tonsil some 30 years ago.

“It’s absolutely wonderful. The comradery, the closeness. People are in great form, they’re walking around thanking God for everything. They’re a wonderful group.”