Gareth O'Callaghan: My wife’s cancer battle opened my eyes to another disease in Ireland: hate

Gareth O'Callaghan reflects on his wife’s cancer diagnosis — and the compassion, courage, and hypocrisy it revealed in Irish life

Within a few days of the diagnosis, it dawned on me that I was now the husband of a cancer patient. My heart was breaking for her. File photo

Life has an uncanny way of reminding you that all you have ever learned and succeeded in achieving will never prepare you for what you have no control over, until it happens — whatever ‘it’ might be. 

‘It’ happened to us one afternoon last December. Cork City traffic was typically heavy. I had just dropped my wife Paula close to the main entrance of the hospital for what we hoped was a normal review of some routine blood tests. In the time it took me to find a place to park, she was told she had leukaemia. 

Shock is a strange thing. It’s like a sharp prod between the ribs, as though your heart misses a beat; but then it quickly spreads outwards, consuming every one of the senses. Disbelief floods your mind. “Maybe it’s a mistake,” I hear myself saying. But it’s not. 

Thinking becomes staccato. Your legs start to wobble and the sweat glands go into overdrive. There were a lot of tears. “It’s good to let it out,” I heard my voice say as I hugged her — careful to choose my words as I reassured her, mostly because I didn’t know much about leukaemia. 

It was blood cancer, which was about all I knew; but my wife didn’t look sick. All the while, I tried to suppress the panic. 

After the appointment, we had planned to go for a bite to eat in our favourite restaurant — one of those rare treats. It only occurred to me two days later that I had forgotten to cancel our booking. Cancer narrows your focus on every aspect of life. 

It resets the brain clock as though you’re living in a different time zone. And you are. Within a few days of the diagnosis, it dawned on me that I was now the husband of a cancer patient. My heart was breaking for her. 

I can’t speak for the patient, only from my own experiences of what I’m watching unfold. Googling healthcare issues happens without a second thought. On a need to know, I’ve been learning as much as I can about what’s happening. 

This invader affects the blood and bone marrow by overproducing abnormal lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) that don’t function properly, which eventually start to crowd out the healthy blood cells. 

My wife is an extraordinarily strong woman — far stronger than I am, but that hasn’t stopped her from asking the obvious question: Is this going to kill me? I reassure her categorically — Not on my watch, it won’t. 

Empathy is the greatest support, I have found. Those moments when you share and respond to the other person’s experiences. It’s a sacred space that allows for anxiety to play out, for the fear to be seen for what it is, and for the gentle reminder that none of us, whether we have cancer or not, knows what lies ahead. 

Our lives are slowly adapting to a more medicalised state of mind in our new time zone. My wife’s illness has become central to everything in my life, whether it’s connected or not. It’s just always there, like a walk-on part in every scene. 

As the partner of someone with cancer, everything becomes somehow rawer. You offer support, but you don’t expect any in return. Until you experience it through the eyes of someone you love, you have no idea how depersonalising it is for them. 

The cancer in our society

It’s impossible not to be angry at its cruelty, which in turn highlights other forms of inhumanity you see around you every day. Cancer resets your tolerance level to zero. You’re a guard dog waiting to pounce. Hypocrisy has become a red rag to this bull. 

Eventually, we rescheduled the booking at our favourite restaurant. I had planned to travel back to Cork that Saturday for a date night. But I missed my train. An anti-immigration protest had brought Dublin city centre to a standstill. Public transport ground to a halt. 

I felt trapped and furious. I stood on O’Connell Street and watched thousands of angry marchers, hundreds of them waving tricolours they had hijacked — many of them defaced with slogans like ‘Ireland for the Irish’, and ‘Get them out’. 

I watched young children in the shifting crowd, some of them in buggies, as they watched their parents jeering onlookers of different skin colour. 

I knelt to help a woman who had collapsed on the footpath. She was from Estonia on her first visit to Ireland, her friends told me. She had cancer, but had mislaid her medical bag somewhere between Tallinn and Dublin. 

She was having a seizure, but no one parading past cared. They just stared at her and chanted. She was a foreigner who inadvertently found herself at the heart of a mob that was spewing hate at foreigners. 

I stood on O’Connell Street and watched thousands of angry marchers, hundreds of them waving tricolours they had hijacked — many of them defaced with slogans like ‘Ireland for the Irish’, and ‘Get them out’. File photo: Sasko Lazarov / © RollingNews.ie

An ambulance arrived on a side street and took her to hospital. What none of these protestors realise is that a different type of cancer is eating away at their lives, and the soulless society they are intent on building — one that shows no compassion, not even to a gravely ill tourist, just hate. 

Last week, I found myself within minutes’ walk of City West Hotel, which is home to over 1,200 refugees, most of whom are Ukrainian. Many of the children attend schools in the area. 

Steel barriers now block the main driveway, as a result of the recent riots. I couldn’t help wondering how many of its residents are being treated for cancer, and trying to deal with it so far from home. Are they getting the love and support my wife gets? 

The violent protestors who filled that laneway two weeks ago don’t care about their medical needs because, as they see it, Irish healthcare should be exclusively for Irish people. 

These are the same people who expect treatment in a Spanish hospital when they collapse after drinking too many shots in Alicante. 

They ignore the fact that it’s graduates from abroad who keep our hospitals functioning. Without foreign doctors and ward staff, the system would collapse. 54% of our nurses come from India, the UK, and the Philippines. 

Almost 40% of our doctors come from Pakistan and Sudan. A significant portion of the oncology workforce is also from abroad. Their expertise saves the lives of Irish people with cancer. If Ireland was strictly for the Irish, then the cancer death rate here would tell a whole different story. 

But even our doctors aren’t safe. Asif Iqbal, a 31-year-old Pakistani doctor, was assaulted and told to “go back home” while in his scrubs on his way to the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick last September. The vicious attack took place in broad daylight. 

Doctor Taimoor Salman, a medical registrar at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, claimed that a group of children as young as 10 shouted racially abusive remarks towards him “in a broken Indian accent” last August. Salman was born in Ireland. 

Of all those who want to rid Ireland of its immigrants, how many will be treated some day for cancer by a man from Punjab or Kandahar, or a woman from El Salvador? What if they knew that their chemo treatments were manufactured in Riyadh, or Mumbai? 

Of all those who want to rid Ireland of its immigrants, how many will be treated some day for cancer by a man from Punjab or Kandahar, or a woman from El Salvador? File picture: iStock

I wonder if they will feel humbled as an IV line is passed into their vein by a cancer nurse from Chennai. Or when their blood pressure is monitored by a doctor called Diwata from Manila. We don’t know how lucky we are to have these graduates living among us. 

As I write this, my wife is feeling well, and that makes it a good day for both of us. Our health truly is our wealth. I’ve come to know that, now more than ever. 

Cancer is indiscriminate — a reminder that those we choose to discriminate against might someday be the ones we need to help us when we can’t help ourselves.