‘Cancer was once a death sentence but thankfully not any more’

Mary Tobin is not only still standing but still laughing too, despite being in the throes of treatment for the latest in her six diagnoses of cancer.

“You have to be optimistic, otherwise you’ll just fall apart and I won’t anyway, so far,” she says in an interview from her home in Lucan, Co Dublin. It is the start of the “fortnight in good form” after “a week like a zombie in the bed” in her current cycle of receiving chemotherapy treatment at St James’s Hospital every three weeks.

“I find meditation helps me mentally. It gives me the strength to remain positive. Having hope is a guiding light for me.”

One of the participants in the Irish Cancer Society’s Still Here campaign, Tobin wants to give hope to others who are suffering from all types of cancer.

‘Maybe it’s the optimist in me. Dying never came into my mind’

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“I believe negativity destroys the soul, clouds the mind,” she says, acknowledging the support of family and friends, which gives her the confidence to stay focused and strong in challenging times.

Her first encounter with cancer was back in 1994, when she discovered a lump under her arm and had a lumpectomy. In 2010 she needed a mastectomy of her left breast; in 2011 she had surgery for thoracic cancer; and the following year she had her right breast removed. After every surgery, she underwent a programme of chemotherapy at St James’s.

Tobin had hoped she was finished with all that until, in early 2020, through a random CT scan, it was discovered she had pancreatic and liver cancer. Back on chemotherapy now, she regards it as an unwelcome necessity.

“I was really scared as this type of cancer is life threatening and incurable. But they say chemotherapy may control its spread to other organs in the body.”

Indeed, just before Christmas, she got the good news that the tumours had reduced considerably. That was the only time she cried.

“I never cried when I got the bad news. You just have to get on with it. I never drank or smoked and I have friends whose livers should be down near their toes with all the things they enjoy,” she says in jest.

“Cancer was once a death sentence but thankfully not any more,” stresses Tobin, who has seen how ongoing research has brought huge advancements in treatment and survival rates since the disease first came calling to her in the 1990s.

A retired primary school teacher, she also loved her “other life of dressing up and looking well and doing part-time modelling. I have many, many photographs of different places I went to and I also got a lovely trip to New York.”

The most inspiring person she has met is the late John Hume, who she says she was privileged to get to know through her involvement with the Humbert Summer School in Co Mayo, at which he was a regular speaker. Both her parents came from Co Mayo, but she grew up in Dublin and went to school in Scoil Chaitríona on Eccles Street.

A testament to the power of laughter, she says: “Comedy programmes make me laugh and help me to forget my diagnoses for a little while.”

Mrs Brown’s Boys and Father Ted are among her favourites and give “some lightness” from the documentaries and news she also likes to watch on television or listen to on radio.

Hearing three months ago that the tumours appear to be shrinking “has given me a great uplift”, says Tobin, who is due for another CT scan this week. “We will see what that brings.”

Meanwhile, she is determined to make the best of every day because, as she jokingly told one of the nurses at St James’s recently, “I really should be dead and buried.”

Read: ‘Maybe it’s the optimist in me, dying never came into my mind’

[ Irish Cancer Society Support Line ]