![\"Karen](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4823970_1_articleinline_DSC06889.jpg\" "\\"Karen")
Karen Murray (centre) who has recovered from breast cancer with her son and daughter Calum and Niamh Funnell. Pic: Noel Sweeney<\/p>\nFifteen years ago, the rollercoaster began. Having just turned 40, with two children under six, cancer came crashing into my life like a tornado.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No warning signs, no family history, no genetic predisposition. Even the GP wasn\u2019t overly concerned about the lump I\u2019d discovered while in the shower, believing it was probably a harmless cyst or fibroid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like me, she thought I was too young to have breast cancer. But I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
A chunky 7cm tumour. Grade 2 invasive lobular carcinoma \u2014 I remember a consultant saying those words, and trying to take them in.<\/p>\n
All a bit of a blur, sitting there in panicked silence. Fear is the worst feeling at the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be your job for the next year,\u201d the consultant said at one point, and I remember thinking \u2014 what about my other jobs, working full-time and being responsible for two smallies?\u00a0<\/p>\n
At that time, I was still married, but we relied on two salaries to make ends meet. How would we do it all?<\/p>\n
And so the journey began. One step at a time, they told me. Easy for you to say, I felt like retorting, as I tried to stay off Google.<\/p>\n
The first step was three months of hormone medication, prompting a premature menopause and all the hot flushes and achy joints that come with it.<\/p>\n
Chemotherapy followed when the chunky tumour did not shrink enough. The hot flushes caused by hormone meds soon paled into insignificance as the fatigue, nausea, and brain fog set in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight sessions in all, three weeks apart, so the best part of six months was spent in a virtual \u201ctunnel\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then three operations \u2014 two lumpectomies and a mastectomy \u2014 followed by five weeks of daily radiotherapy.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a sort of comfort during treatment, though. You are in a little bubble, a cocoon where you are kept \u201csafe\u201d.<\/p>\n
The care I received from the staff at CUH was amazing, and I had great support from family and friends. People can\u2019t do enough for you when you have cancer.<\/p>\n
But when the treatment ended, it was still very challenging, even when I was told \u201cwell\u201d again.<\/p>\n
Surgical scars heal, hair grows back, and I eased my way back into the other jobs that had been put on hold, trying to get back to normality.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that simple though, because it\u2019s a different kind of \u201cnormal\u201d. Life has changed, and it took me time to realise and accept this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karen Murray (centre) who has recovered from breast cancer with her son and daughter Calum and Niamh Funnell. Pic: Noel Sweeney<\/p>\n
There were some dark days, and plenty of tears, and much of this I kept private, feeling almost embarrassed to feel this way. Surely I should have been over the moon to be finally cancer-free?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when you need to find a support network, and it\u2019s not necessarily family or friends who have not gone through the same experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I discovered a local group called Cork Cancer Care Centre (since renamed Iris House Cork Cancer Support), which offers counselling, holistic wellness, and group therapies, and is always available for a chat and tea.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, that\u2019s all you need. Strangers can become friends with the common bond of cancer.<\/p>\n
I am still affiliated with the group and give them a share of my annual Daffodil Day coffee morning fundraiser to help them keep the show on the road. Because survivors are lost without the support such groups provide.<\/p>\n
There is always the nagging \u201cwhat if it comes back?\u201d, but I have learned to shrug it off. Otherwise, every headache becomes a potential brain tumour.<\/p>\n
I try not to let bad thoughts live \u201crent-free\u201d in my head. I have hit the milestones \u2014 five years, 10, and now I\u2019m approaching 15 \u2014 so I am at no more risk of recurrence than any other woman my age. And it\u2019s out of my control anyway.<\/p>\n
Life has changed a lot. The six-year-old is now in her third year at university, and the toddler will be 18 next year. This year, we added a rescue dog \u2014 the loveable Yager \u2014 to the mix.<\/p>\n
My bond with my children has deepened as they\u2019ve matured into young adults, not least because I have raised them solo for the past nine years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They were too young to remember me being sick (I recall my son asking me to \u201cmove my hair\u201d when I accidentally left the wig on the kitchen table), but I have always been very open with them about my journey.<\/p>\n
Someone once asked me, \u201cDo you never think \u2018why me\u2019?\u201d My response was: \u201cWell, why not me?\u201d<\/p>\n
The disease is frighteningly commonplace. One in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. It\u2019s the most common type of cancer, and cases are rising.<\/p>\n
According to the Marie Keating Foundation, every year around 3,616 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, 753 of whom die. But, if caught early, it has the highest five-year survival rate of all cancers \u2014 85.1%.<\/p>\n
So while cancer continues to take our loved ones \u2014 my father, aunt, and two friends have passed away since my own diagnosis \u2014 it doesn\u2019t have to be a death sentence. People are surviving \u2014 and living with \u2014 cancer.<\/p>\n
Iris House uses the term warrior rather than survivor to describe people using its services. I\u2019m proud to call myself either, because it\u2019s a privilege denied to many.<\/p>\n