YOUR STORY

Your Stories

Hi, my name is Marian Mawhinney, I’m from West Belfast. I grew up on the Falls Road with my brothers and sisters. My Mum was the best person absolutely ever. She did everything for everybody. She was only four foot six. So she was actually quite small, but quite mighty in her personality….

My name is Jim Newman, 76 years of age, born in Dublin, lived most of my life here in Sligo. I’m married to a French lady, Josette. We have two children, a daughter living in France and a son living in Spain. And we have three grandchildren, our daughter has one eight year old and my son has a four year old and a two year old. They’ve been visiting me regularly, making sure that I’m happy and it’s great….

My name is Alan Bradley. I was born in a place called O’ Devaney gardens in Dublin. I got married over forty years. I have a beautiful wife. I have two lovely sons, Alan and John and I have three grandchildren. In 2019 I didn’t feel well when I was in Spain. I was kind of getting sick all the time when I was over there…..

My name is Carmel and I live in Monivea, Galway. I’m not from there, but I moved here about five years ago and about two years in, my mom had just passed away in February 2019 and I remember after her month’s mind mass I came back, I was feeling unwell and I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and my back was hurting me and I had MRIs and stuff on my back…..

My name is Aisling and I’m 47, I’m a mother of one and this is my husband Peter.
Peter: Hello there
Aisling: In 2019 I went into hospital with back pain and was diagnosed then with stage 4 breast cancer which had progressed to my spine, so I now have bone cancer as well as breast cancer.
Peter: We felt lost in the beginning.
Aisling: We were devastated, we were completely devastated, our world was upside down…

Well I’m Tony Lawlor from Killarney. Well I’m a Chief retired, I love sport, football, hurling, rugby, swimming, walking you name it boxing. I’m married to Agnes 45 years, 2 sons. One at 44 and the other one at 36. One in Germany, one in Australia, one granddaughter…

My name is Emir Murphy and I am a clinical specialist, speech and language therapist. And I work in the Kerry Specialist Palliative Care Service. We have an in-patient unit and an out-patient unit. Our in-patient unit is 15 beds. It was only built very recently in 2018 and then we have an out-patient service and we also have a home care service…

So I’m Anna Cleminson, I’m a consultant in palliative care medicine and I work here in Sligo, North West Hospice. We are based right next to the hospital, as a service we have 8 beds in the hospice and in this area we are able to provide care for people with very specialist needs that need focus but we also look after people in the Sligo Region and we have a community…

Hello I’m Mike Ross, I live in Omagh, Co Tyrone. I immigrated to Canada some 40 years ago. I lived you know, a good life in Canada, my kids have grown up there, my family is there and regrettably through life circumstance my wife was diagnosed with the same type of cancer as I was diagnosed with two years ago…

I’m Alison Craig, I’m an Occupational Therapist in the Macmillan Unit in Antrim. I suppose people come into the unit for all sorts of reasons so they can come in for end of life care but they also come in to get symptoms sorted and maybe to get back home to get on with managing things so I tend to look more at the practical everyday things so I’d be looking at maybe the things they want to do every day about the house, managing in their life and what sort of problems they have with that. What makes it difficult and can we make those things it easier for them…

My name is Karen Kelly I am one of the Senior Music Therapist here in Milford Care Centre. Music Therapy is beneficial for somebody who is going through palliative care in a number of ways…

Esther O’Brien, Clinical Nurse Specialist: My name is Ester, Esther O’Brien, Im a clinical nurse specialist and I’m a member of the specialist palliative care community service here in Milford Care Centre in Castletroy, Limerick…

Hi my name is Anna Lambert, Im a nurse, I work in Knockeen Nursing Home in Barntown in County Wexford. Knockeen Nursing Home was opened just over 20 years ago, it has 49 bedrooms and 2 of those bedrooms are funded by the HSE for palliative care. I think this nursing home is unique in that we have 2 self sufficient rooms that are there for those patients that are coming from a busy hospital setting.

My name is Dr Mathew Dore, I am one of the palliative care consultants and I work here at the Northern Ireland Hospice. Northern Ireland Hospice is one of the Hospices here in Belfast…

My name is Hayden, I’m 17 and I live in Clondalkin. When I was a baby I cant remember that much but I had numerous surgeries to see whats goin on with my heart, couldn’t fix it…

I started my career in technology and that was at a time when no one knew anything about technology. So I was kind of at the forefront, if I can be so bold, of things like computer programming and so on. So I had a very very interesting job. I travelled a lot of Eastern Europe and North America and it was all cut short when I was 50 when I had two…

Carmel and I was married for 43 years. I took her out for the first time on St Patrick’s Day 1977. I proposed to her in May 1977 and we got married on Boxing Day 1977. She obviously knew a bargain when she saw one (laughs). The best 43 years of my life. I was the luckiest man in the world she was a very intelligent, caring, determined woman, never…

My name is Louise Smith. I’m 68 years of age and I worked full time up to two years ago. I was diagnosed 12 years ago with COPD. I just thought it was asthma and then the last three years it got progressively worse in so far as my quality of life was going down all the time. Christmas of 2018 I was admitted to hospital with a thing called RSV,…

My name is John Joyce, I’m from County Mayo. Approximately eight years ago I was diagnosed with a tumour in the head. Brought into hospital had two operations which were successful for the time but, unfortunately, I then had to have 72 sessions of radiotherapy.So basically, after the radiotherapy then I went on to chemotherapy and the chemotherapy…

Well I worked as a caretaker up in the school in Raheny for 19 Years, I was 19 years up there and before that I was an upholsterer, so I worked at upholstery, like I worked all my life and then to get this was a huge shock to me.Vivienne McCann (Joe’s daughter): He’s very independent like you know, you have to kind of we’ll come over and we’ll do…