Meet the people helping women feel like themselves again after a cancer diagnosis

A network of ancillary carers including medical tattoo specialists, wig experts, and acupuncturists can help women cope with the toll of a devastating diagnosis, writes Jonathan deBurca Butler

It often takes an unaffiliated network of carers to give women back their sense of self when a cancer diagnosis threatens to pull it apart.

When a woman in Ireland is diagnosed with cancer, treatment inevitably becomes a battle on many fronts. Not only does she have to grapple with the realities of the treatments and the overwhelming questions of what the future holds, but there is the emotional toll of losing her hair, her energy, or even parts of her body.

Away from the hassle of appointments, the bleeps and beeps of hospital machines, and the slog of chemotherapy, there is an unaffiliated network of carers whose sole purpose is to give women back their sense of self when the illness threatens to pull it apart.