I’m Orla, partner to Paschal and dog mammy to Bella. In 2023 life was busy, complicated and messy. I was working as a social worker and wedding videographer and I was overworked and overwhelmed. My calendar was full and I didn’t know how I was going to make it to the end of the year. Then in June of that year everything stopped. My world as I knew it stopped. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The things that had been worrying me stopped! I had bigger things to contend with.

My story isn’t unusual, but it is a story affecting a lot of people; male, female, young and old. Cancer doesn’t have any bounds. Most people will have experienced, or are experiencing cancer either directly or indirectly. Statistics show that one in two of us will have a cancer diagnosis in our lifetime. Therefore, for me, this is something we need to be talking about, we need to make it a conversation piece. After all our health is our wealth and should be our priority.

I learned a lot as a result of having cancer and the treatment was a huge education to me. As someone who had never been hospitalised for any reason and who had never really been sick, this life experience taught me a lot. One of the biggest teachings was when push comes to shove the stress we live under, for whatever reason, is not worth it. Looking after and caring for ourselves is worth it. I want to live a simpler life and each day I’m learning to do so. I hope that by sharing my story it will help start a conversation about taking are of ourselves. If my story can help one person it will have achieved what I want. This is not just an account of a cancer journey, it is also about life continuing alongside, and after, a cancer diagnosis. You can decide if it’s something you want to read.