A Lucan woman noticed a rare cancer on temple of her head after taking selfie with her newborn baby boy.
Donna Marie Cullen has always embraced the good things in life, but now she makes sure to enjoy every moment with her family after being diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma in September 2020.
Donna dealt with constant headaches after having her beautiful son Max.
And one day she took a picture with him - and she noticed that she wasn’t looking great.
She said: “I didn’t really have any pain. I had some headaches and we thought it was an effect from an epidural because my baby was only a couple of weeks old.
“I took a selfie of myself and the baby and something didn’t look right. I showed my partner Colin the picture and he put his hand to my head, he actually felt a lump.
“We went for an ultrasound and the doctors were just baffled. It was a random tumour in my temple region, it was really bizarre."
Donna suffered from headaches, but she says the worrying "might’ve made them a bit worse".
She was referred to St James’s for a consultation before undergoing a number of dangerous preceedures.
"Then I’d to deal with biopsies, they were actually taking an incision into my head and taking chunks of the tumour itself," she remembers.
“There was a fear that there was a cluster of veins and arteries so they didn’t want to proceed in case I would bleed heavily and then Covid hit, everything shut and i ended up doing virtual consultations.
“So it was 11 months after I discovered the tumour that they managed to do a successful biopsy. Everyone was floored, they did not expect it to be cancer.”
Donna and her family were heartbroken to find out that she had cancer, but they stayed positive thanks to her great medical team and the Irish Cancer Society.
“We were devastated, Max had just turned one, I was homeschooling [her other 11-year-old son] Sean because of Covid,” she added.
“We were in a lovely little bubble to be honest, we were all at home enjoying the baby bubble.
"It was rewarding to see Sean getting on so well in school.
"We were going on walks, doing meditations, having new ways of fun in the house but then we were shocked by the news.
“It moved very fast, the HSE moved very quickly when we got the diagnosis, the next day we met the oncology team and then I started chemotherapy.
“I was away from the family for one week out of every three, when I came home after each chemo cycle it was an overwhelmingly happy cycle.
"We’d one more chemo ticked off. We struggled to find a surgeon to remove my tumour and we knew it had to be removed, but it was very complex as to where it was.
“It was touching my eye, close to my cheekbone, close to my ear, it was against my skull, it was touching the surface of my skin so my oncologist had to reach out globally and surgeons were unwilling to take it on the surgery to remove it.
“Eventually a surgeon from Beaumont came forward and consulted with a North American team. I had the surgery in February and it was eight hours, there was a vast team of surgeons.
“I was so lucky to have the top surgeons because it was so complex. They had to remove part of my head, they couldn’t pull the skin back together so they’d to take a part of my wrist away to replace it.
“There was talk of taking one of my ribs to replace my cheekbone but they were able to shave it down in the end. I’ve screws and plates in my head at the moment.”
After the successful surgery, Donna was back in chemo three weeks later.
Then she had 30 sessions of intense radiation treatment over six weeks.
She said: “When I was given a diagnosis I contacted the Irish Cancer Society, they gave us reliable, trustworthy information that was researched and true.
“I'd like to tell my 11-year-old son the news. They were helpful on how to do it and how to take the shock out of everything.
"They were so well trained, they were calm and sympathetic, they knew how to deal with it.
“I think when you hear the word cancer, it brings a barrel of devastation, but we stayed positive and stayed focused. They helped us stay calm, we’d the freedom to express our fears with them and they listened. They helped take the loneliness away, because you're’ not alone.
“Even now, we celebrate the small things because i was away from the family, every little small milestone.
"On Wednesday, it was a year since my surgery so we went to the beach to watch the sunrise.
“We celebrate the little things because they make big impressions. The 30 minute phone calls to the Irish Cancer Society could’ve been only a few minutes but they made big impressions.”
Daffodil Day takes place on Friday 25th of March. Go to cancer.ie/daffodilday to donate, visit the Daffodil Day shop, or to host a Daffodil Day event.
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