‘Don’t go anywhere Mammy, do you not love me?’

“I’m dying. I don’t even know if my little baby is going to remember me.” These were the words of mother-of-five Emma Mhic Mhathúna yesterday.

Emma, 37, raising her young children alone in west Kerry, has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer having been incorrectly given the all-clear after a cervical smear test in 2013.

The 2013 smear test said that I was healthy when I wasn’t and because of that then I actually developed cancer and now I’m dying. If the smear test was right and I was told this by my gynaecologist, who is over three hospitals so he knows his stuff — he told me himself that if my smear test was right in 2013, I wouldn’t be where I am today and this is what makes it so heartbreaking,” Emma told Morning Ireland yesterday.