Ain’t no mountain high enough

PEAK PERFORMANCE Deirdre Ruane (left) pictured with her sister Noreen Smyth as part of a group climbing Carrauntoohil this month, one month and one day after going into remission from cancer

Foxford woman Deirdre Ruane has been climbing mountains – actual and metaphorical

Edwin McGreal

Earlier this month Foxford woman Deirdre Ruane led a group of 28 climbers up Carrauntoohil. Climbing Ireland’s highest peak is a daunting enough challenge at the best of times but even more so when you consider where Deidre was in 2018.
Friday, January 19, 2018, is a date the 35 year old will never forget. On that day, she and her family were brought into a private room in The Mater Hospital in Dublin and told she had a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, essentially an aggressive (fast-growing) chest tumour. Its location – behind her breastbone and between her heart and lungs – made it dangerously close to inoperable.
So fast growing was the tumour that she had to start chemotherapy that very same day. There was no time for hanging around.
To illustrate the urgency, one of the side effects of the treatment is a high risk of a loss of fertility. For most people there is time to allow them to save their eggs before treatment begins. Deirdre had no such luxury.
“My consultant, Dr Faye, said, ‘There obviously are side effects to this treatment. One being your fertility, but we have no time to harvest eggs; this is not an option. We need to start immediate chemotherapy’. I signed a consent form, and within half an hour, chemotherapy started,” Deirdre told The Mayo News.
“Fertility is still an unanswered question for me and an extremely difficult subject for me to deal with,” she added.
It had been a whirlwind eight days since alarm bells had first gone off while she was in a gym class.

Peak condition
Deirdre, who is from the townland of Rinnaney on the banks of the River Moy, was a renowned soccer player on a trailblazing Straide & Foxford United team. She also played soccer for Mayo and Connacht in her younger years. She had kept herself in good physical condition, and at the end of 2017 high-intensity interval training (HIIT) had her as fit as she had ever recalled.
However, during the October of that year, Deirdre had started to experience a ‘frightening’ tightness in her throat when she would lie down in bed at night. She was coughing a lot and would lose her voice with no explanation.
Trips to the doctor and various tests showed up nothing.
She started a strength programme in January 2018 but an upper body session on Thursday, January 11, heightened her fears that something was drastically amiss.
“I did a shoulder press and when I lifted the weights over my head, I started coughing and was finding it hard to breathe. We were doing it with partners and I was partnered up with a girl I didn’t know, and she was asking me was I okay and saying I needed to get it checked out.
“When a random stranger like that in the gym shows concern, it kinda forces you to do something about it. On Friday though I woke up and I felt like I had just smoked 100 fags. I was out of breath and knew something was wrong,” she said.

Life stops
Two trips to the doctor saw her referred to The Mater Hospital the following Tuesday. Still, no panic from the medics.
She waited eight hours before a doctor saw her. He wanted to discharge her but she stood her ground, explained about her throat at night. He agreed to send her for a throat and chest X-rays.
He changed his tune after the chest X-ray, but Deirdre was not overly worried when he said to come back on Thursday.
Thursday came and she knew things had changed. Medics whispering about her, and then she was told to phone someone to come in. They kept her in while they waited for results. The next day the extent of the situation revealed itself to everyone.
“I remember being told, and then being given booklets on cancer and lymphoma, but I couldn’t read for days. I was in shock, and I had motion sickness,” recalls Deirdre.
The course of chemotherapy was gruelling. Every 21 days, she would undergo four days of constant chemo, 96 hours straight, day and night.
“The whole episode, it was like your life stops for a year. You are like a robot in and out of hospital. It becomes routine. This is your life. Everything else stops. I never felt like myself during it. I felt like a different person. I do think my fitness was a big help with the treatment though.
“I lost every hair on my head, my eyebrows, eyelashes. People were telling me I looked great. I felt shit and looked bad. I was piling on the pounds. I didn’t want people to recognise me, but now I’d be saying, why did I give a shit?
“I was one of the youngest people in the ward. There were a lot of elderly people. I wish I had someone my own age with a similar diagnosis who I could relate to. Like if I saw someone climbing mountains a year after the treatment like I am doing now, it would have given me a bit of a boost, to have a role model.”

Breakthrough
After changing her dosage to a more aggressive treatment, the first breakthrough came after the third round, when a scan revealed the tumour had reduced to less than half its original size.
The pressure on her throat started to ease. The treatment ended in June and, with a few bumps along the road, she was given the all-clear on September 13, 2018. Her cancer was in remission, she was on the road to recovery.
“The relief was something else. It was great news to get,” she recalls.

Long road
Deirdre works as a social care worker in Dublin, but she was advised not to return to work. She agreed, reluctantly. She returned last April and is phasing back in, on a three-day week.
“The journey after cancer is extremely hard. When I was going through treatment I had a set plan and when all that stops, you have to go about trying to get your old life back on track. For me, that’s when I found the journey got tougher,” she said.
That void was filled when the target of climbing mountains came about. It began in January with the scaling of Croagh Patrick and modest plans to raise €500. She ended up raising €4,000.

Mountain a month
Both she and The Mater Foundation knew there was more potential there. The idea of doing a mountain a month was mooted. It took hold, and it grew, and now more and more people continue to join her on her ascents every month. By now Deirdre and her fellow climbers have raised over €12,000 for St Vincent’s Ward in the Mater – and they’re still going, hoping for €15,000 by year end.
They scaled Carrauntoohil the week before last – one year and one day after Deirdre went into remission. It timed to mark this momentous milestone. Three more mountains remain, starting with Slieve Donard in Co Down next month. All monies raised will go to the St Vincent’s Ward at the Mater.
“I am so grateful to my consultant Dr Faye, the Haematology team and all staff on St Vincent’s Cancer Care Ward in the Mater,” she said.
The funds raised will be used to buy better equipment. When getting treatment, Deirdre was often unable to go for walks because the leads on the chemotherapy machines would keep coming out. She was very surprised by how in need of basic equipment the ward was.
Plenty of locals down by the Moy have been getting on board. The Foxford Ramblers club has joined Deirdre for some of her climbs, while her old club, Straide & Foxford United, is holding a fundraising Rock Night this Saturday in Cruisers’ Bar in Foxford, starting at 9pm.
“I’m delighted with what they are doing. It is completely different to what I am doing. I was told that because I’m climbing rocks, they are going to rock out! I loved that. I haven’t had a night out in Foxford in ages, so I am really looking forward to it.”
And if there was one piece of advice she could give from her journey? “My advice for people is, if you feel something isn’t right with you, follow your instinct. I was told I was fine, different scans showed up nothing. The Tuesday before I was diagnosed, the doctor said I was fine and wanted to send me home, but I wasn’t happy and, eventually, I got the chest scan and it went from there.”
Following your instincts could save your life. Deirdre is living, thriving proof.