'If something is not right, get it checked out'

When Anne Callinan was diagnosed with lung cancer in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, it taught her many life lessons. One of the most important lessons she learned is to seek medical advice at the earliest possible stage if you are concerned about symptoms that may indicate cancer.

“Nobody wants to hear bad news, I know I didn’t want to hear it” says the 58-year-old mother-of-three from Curraghaleen, Drum in south Roscommon. “But I knew there was something not right with my health, so I decided to go to my GP and get it checked out.”

HSE data shows that the number of suspected cancer cases referred through the Healthlink e-referral system dropped by more than 50% after the first wave of the pandemic. This startling figure has prompted the Irish Cancer Society to launch a nationwide campaign to increase awareness of the importance of early detection.

As a spokesperson for the ‘Your Health Matters’ campaign, Anne Callinan says she thought she actually had Covid-19 when she developed “shortness of breath and a wheeze” last April. She contacted her GP and was sent for a Covid test which came back negative. “My symptoms seemed to go away for a couple of weeks” she recalls “but then in May I just knew something was not right, so I was back onto my GP again and she gave me an inhaler for a week, which didn’t sort the problem either.”

In early June, the Drum woman was referred by her GP for an x-ray in the Primary Care Centre in Coosan, and from there she was sent to University Hospital, Galway for a series of further tests, including a pulmonary function test, a brain scan, and a PET scan.

Although she recalls being “stunned” when she was eventually told by her consultant that she had lung cancer, Anne Callinan said she knew there was “something wrong” given that she had undergone so many tests over such a short period of time.

“As soon as I got the diagnosis, on June 18 last year, I was admitted into hospital straight away and I started my chemotherapy the following morning,” she says. “The rug was quite literally pulled from under my feet and I didn’t even have time to digest the news that I had cancer when I started on chemo.”

One of the biggest downsides of the coronavirus pandemic is that Anne Callinan has had to face all her cancer treatments and hospital appointments alone. “My husband, Tom, was with me when I got the diagnosis, but since then I have had to face all my treatments on my own and it’s hard, but I just have to take it on the chin and get on with it,” she says.

Research carried out on behalf of the Irish Cancer Society last year found that three in five people didn’t feel confident that they would be able to access health care if they needed it, as they felt the healthcare system was under too much pressure.

Anne Callinan says at no stage was she ever made to feel that she was making a nuisance of herself or that she was taking up the time of the medical personnel.

“I have got the utmost care and attention from everyone I have met so far on my cancer journey and I have always felt completely safe while in the hospital environment getting my treatments as everyone wears PPE and the whole sanitisation procedure is second to none.”

Having undergone chemotherapy every three weeks from last June until October, as well as ten rounds of radiotherapy on both her lungs and her brain (the radium therapy on her brain was “a preventative measure”) Anne is feeling “very positive and hopeful” about the future.

She is now on immunotherapy every two weeks, and has scans at three-monthly intervals, and she is “immensely grateful” for the support of her husband, Tom, and family, sons Cormac who is 29, Cathal (25) and her 23-year-old daughter, Aoife, who last November raised over €7,000 for the Irish Cancer Society when she organised a ‘Cupcakes for Cancer’ fundraiser in South Roscommon.

“I have huge support, thank God, from both my family and my friends, who keep in touch with me over the phone, so I take every day as it comes and hope for the best,” she says.

Anne Callinan has one clear message. “If you feel something is not right, please please contact your GP and get it checked out, as ignoring it doesn’t mean it will go away. It might be nothing, and that’s great, but at least if you get it checked out you will be putting your mind at ease.”