In September 2019, Catherine Kiely from Limerick found a lump in her breast. At the time, she thought nothing of it. “I thought it was lumpy breast tissue,” she says. “Little did I know what was to come.” Then in January 2020, she met with her cousin, who was visiting a relative in the hospital where Catherine works as a clerical officer. Over a coffee in the canteen, she told her cousin, who had just finished treatment for breast cancer, about the lump. “She said, Catherine please go to the doctor. I didn’t go in January because my own dad was ill and ended up in hospital. But I went to my GP in February and she was concerned straight away and sent an urgent referral to the breast clinic,” Catherine says. 

In March, following an examination, mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy, Catherine received the devastating news that she had triple negative breast cancer. It was the start of the pandemic, and her partner wasn’t with her when she received her diagnosis “My world turned upside down. I just burst it into tears and I was hysterical,” she recalls. 

Two weeks later, she had a lumpectomy and a 4-5cm tumour was found, but the cancer hadn’t spread further. Six weeks afterwards, she began the first of eight sessions of chemotherapy. 

“It was very hard. Again, it was something you had to do by yourself because nobody was allowed in with you. I went for the first one, and when I went for the second session, I cried outside the building because I just didn't want to go in. I knew how sick I was going to be, in order to get better,” she says. “It was a case of getting treatment on the Wednesday and by Friday, it would just hit me and the effects of it would last for several days. You start getting better, and then you're getting ready to go to your next chemo. Obviously, my hair started falling out from everywhere, so it's a lot to deal with, feeling sick, losing your appetite. Why is this happening to me? You just question everything. But I accepted what I had, and that treatment was the only way forward.”

Catherine then had 23 sessions of radiotherapy every day, Monday to Friday. “I managed it very well. I got a little bit of blistering, all right, but nothing that I couldn't handle with the right moisturisers,” she says. 

She was able to return to work in April 2021 on a part-time basis, and has been in a new role since 2022. From her perspective, she would have liked more guidance, post-treatment. “The day when you finish your chemotherapy or your radiotherapy, it’s like, off you go now. Enjoy your life. We’ll see you back in six months or a year,” she says. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the right advice in relation to the bra I should be wearing and wasn’t informed I shouldn’t wear an underwire anymore.”

She developed mastitis four times and was hospitalised twice, before coming across a Limerick company who specialise in bras for women who have had breast cancer surgery, and who fitted her with a bra and prosthesis. “I felt like a new woman when I came out of I thought, my gosh, if I didn't know in all this, chances are I wouldn't have gotten mastitis, and certainly not four times.” 

Her advice to anyone else who has been diagnosed is to not overthink things. “Don't use Mr Google because you'll actually drive yourself insane,” she says. She also says it’s important to have your family and friends around you, but to put yourself first. “Try not to have any stress in your life. Even after the treatment has finished and you return to work, some days it still hits you,” she says. “Just accept it, think about it, and move on again and say, I'm okay. When it comes into your head again, oh my God, I had breast cancer, which you can do even four years later on, just go with those thoughts and then just park them and say, I'm still here now.”