Fiona takes to the skies to aid breast cancer research!

by Geraldine Grennan

Fiona Healy, readily admits that a skydive was “never on the bucket list” but on October 4 next, the brave Baylin woman will take to the skies to raise funds for Breast Cancer Ireland after she was diagnosed with the disease in March of last year.

To date, Fiona has raised almost €4,000 through a fundraising drive on her GoFundMe page and, while she had initially planned to do the skydive on May 31 last, Covid intervened and she had to reschedule the event to October 4.

“I am either brave or mad,” she laughs “but I just really wanted to do something to raise funds for breast cancer treatment as it is so common, and contrary to popular belief it can affect men too.”

Prior to her own breast cancer diagnosis in March of last year, Fiona, a mother-of-four, was busy juggling family life in Ballyboran, Baylin, with travelling to her job in Dublin five days a week. “Life was certainly busy,” she says “but my world very quickly fell apart when I found a small dent on my left breast, you couldn’t even call it a lump, and I decided to get it checked out after thinking about it for a couple of days.”

She was sent for a mammogram by her own GP, but it took six weeks to get the appointment as there was a nurses strike on at the time. “I went to the Mater and I had eight mammograms and three biopsies done on the same day, and when I saw the Consultant and the Oncology Nurse they said I would be referred for a Pet Scan and an MRI, but I think they already knew more than they were telling me.”

When Fiona and her husband, Austin, returned to the Mater a couple of weeks later they received the devastating news that she had not one, but two types of breast cancer. “I had one standard cancer and also an aggressive form of cancer which had spread to my lymph nodes, and I was told I would have to undergo a double mastectomy followed up by chemo and radiation.”

From the outset Fiona Healy said she decided to face her diagnosis “head on.”

She adds that while it was a huge shock, there was “no other option but to face it, I couldn’t run away from it, and I had to stay strong for both myself and my family.”

Fiona and Austin had the unenviable task of sitting down with their four young daughters and telling them that their Mammy had cancer.

“We were advised to be straight up with them and tell them the truth, so we did, and while it was very hard, I think it was the right way to approach it” she now says.

All four girls, Emma (20), who was studying for her Leaving Cert at the time, Ellen (15), Ciara (13) and Adele (12) were very upset initially, but they took the news in their stride and adapted very quickly to the new reality in the Healy household.

“I told them we could all sit around and cry all day about it, but I said I was going to fight it with everything I had and was going to remain positive and I needed them to be with me on the journey,” says Fiona.

That journey only finished before Christmas, and while Fiona Healy says she “flew through surgery” she describes the chemotherapy as “horrendous, there’s no other way of saying it.” However, she says she had “another little family” among the other patients who were on the chemo ward in the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore.

Having survived her own battle with breast cancer, the brave Athlone mother decided to raise funds for Breast Cancer Ireland through a GoFundMe page, and she set a fundraising target of €2,000, which was quickly exceeded.

She is planning to undertake her skydive in Birr Airfield, but admits to getting “more nervous” as the date approaches. “I went on the zip line in Castlecomer Discovery Park a couple of weeks ago and my legs were like jelly, so I don’t know how I’ll cope with a skydive,” she jokes.

Fiona paid for her own skydive, so all donations received will go directly to Breast Cancer Ireland for further research into all types of breast cancer.

She has thanked everyone who donated to her fundraising drive and to remind people that donations are still being accepted at: https://ie.gofundme.com/f/skydive-for-breast-cancer-ireland