My cancer journey: 'I didn’t have time to think or feel sorry for myself'
Neil O'Sullivan in Co Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane
It was a Saturday in 2014 and Ireland was playing Australia in the November series of rugby internationals.
Watching the game on TV, Cork-based dad of two Neil O’Sullivan just couldn’t get comfortable. The lower back pain he’d woken up with that morning had now migrated to his front left side and into his left testicle.
“The sharpness of this pain was different to anything I’d had before. Like somebody had a knife and was turning it and leaving it there,” says the now 47-year-old, a district supervisor with Cork City Council.
Neil phoned his wife, Joanne, who rushed home from work and immediately asked their neighbour, a nurse, to call over. “She took one look at me and said I needed to go to hospital.”
At A&E in Cork University Hospital, a dose of morphine dramatically reduced Neil’s pain and he underwent scans and blood tests. Called back to the hospital a week or so later, it never occurred to him that he might have cancer.
It was late November/early December and on their way into hospital, Neil and Joanne were discussing what they’d get their girls for Christmas. Kate and Louise are now aged 15 and 13 respectively. “I was looking at cancer information in the [waiting room] and it still didn’t click.”
The surgeon showed him his scans, told him his blood test results and diagnosed testicular cancer. “He told me I had two nodes – one by the left testicle was 8mm, the other by my kidney was 38mm. He said I was a perfect candidate for testicular cancer – because I was young, fit and healthy. That stuck.
Treatment was to be in three separate stages: surgery to remove his testicle, three months of intensive chemo, finishing up with further surgery by means of lymph node dissection. Within days of diagnosis, his doctor rang to say he’d pencilled him in for surgery, to take place a week before Christmas. “The surgeon asked if I was OK with this. I said ‘yeah’, but I wasn’t in my head, yet I knew it had to be done.”
The surgery was over in 90 minutes and he got home the same day. He declined prosthesis. “An hour after surgery I was trying to get out of bed and get the healing process started,” recalls Neil, who’d gone for a six-mile run the evening of his diagnosis.
His chemotherapy began in CUH in February 2015 and meant going to hospital on a Sunday evening, with treatment beginning early on Monday morning, continuing for five days until Friday evening, followed by two weeks’ rest, a regimen that went on for three months. Altogether, it comprised four cycles of chemo. “I was into sport, so I saw chemo as a challenge. They hit me intensively with it – each day I was on chemo, it was for 10 or 11 hours. One day it was 14 hours. I saw these cycles of chemo as mini-battles.
“I didn’t have time to think or feel sorry for myself. I didn’t cry until the last week of chemo when they couldn’t get a vein in my arm. I was strong for my children, my wife and my parents. They were looking at me, and if I was strong, they were equally strong for me. I just wanted to fight the cancer.”
He drew strength from different sources – his sense of humour re-framed the Sunday night hospital admissions as ‘checking into a hotel’; a photo of himself, Joanne and their girls on an October 2014 Euro Disney trip made him see he had “a lot going” for him; and he visited the church daily in CUH, finding solace in prayer.
But while he’d been able to continue going for runs during his first two cycles of chemo, this proved impossible during the last two. By the fourth cycle he was so weak he couldn’t climb the stairs at home. But he got through it, and his final surgery took place in July 2015 in Cork’s Mercy Hospital, with removal of the node attached to his left kidney. Complications with the 11-hour procedure saw his stay extended to over a month rather than the expected seven to 10 days.
Recovery came in stages. Within a few months, he felt physically good. He returned to work in late 2015 and resumed running in January 2016. Emotionally, he felt better around then too. But in the immediate aftermath of treatment, he felt flat. “You go for a shower. You see the scars. A year after the second surgery we were in France and I togged off at the pool. I got some looks when people saw the scar running down my body. These are all different stages you have to get over.”
Almost six years on, he feels great. In the years since, he’s run six half-marathons. Just before lockdown last spring he did the Kinsale 10-mile run. Living in Innishannon, he coaches underage camogie with Valley Rovers GAA Club.
He feels very fortunate to have caught the cancer, to have got through it and out the other side with the support of family, friends and work colleagues. But he wishes that, during his journey, he could have confided in men who’d gone through it too. “It was all men on the chemo ward and we had the craic there. But afterwards I didn’t have that and it would have been a great help and I’m available to listen to any man going through it.”
His advice to men? “Get checked out. Get your bloods done annually. I thought, because I was nowhere near 50, I’d be fine. These things happen to men of younger ages too.”
- Daffodil Day, supported by Boots, takes place on Friday, March 26
It’s the Irish Cancer Society’s most important Daffodil Day ever – because, due to Covid-19 restrictions, the charity can’t host its traditional on-street collections and fundraising events, for the second year running.
Throughout the pandemic, the Irish Cancer Society has continued to provide vital services and support, for exaple Freephone Support Line: 1800 200 700, remote counselling, Volunteer Driver service and Night Nursing, to anyone affected by cancer, ensuring nobody has to go through cancer alone.
Because of the additional anxieties a cancer diagnosis during Covid brings, cancer patients need the support of the public more than ever before.
Anyone wishing to support Daffodil Day 2021 can go to exa.mn/DaffodilDay
To donate, visit the Daffodil Day shop, or get involved by hosting a virtual Daffodil Day event.
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