My cancer was like a game of whack-a-mole - it kept popping up and we kept knocking it down

Shortly after the birth of her third child, Cork's Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon started to lose a lot of weight and get night sweats.  She put the symptoms down to stress, but medics soon discovered she had metastatic cancer  

Sarah Fitzgibbon, at her home in Ballinlough, Cork. Picture: Jim Coughlan.

About five months after she gave birth to her third child, Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon noticed she was losing weight. “I lost a lot quite quickly without intending to – nearly 4kg in the space of a month.”

It was early autumn 2014 and she was working in a busy GP practice on the Northside of Cork City, and had a young family.