Woman stunned by cancer diagnosis after attending concert – but dog helped her cope

Her best pal Stitch came into her family when she was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Courtney says he has transformed her life.

“We got him in August. I think it was a month after I started chemo, and my hair was just falling out, and I was just so upset about it,” she says.

Courtney’s mother Mary first suggested that they get the maltichon puppy. “Mum was like: ‘We’ll get you a dog’. He’s nine months old now. It was the best thing we ever did. I couldn’t have gotten through without him.”

Now Courtney and Stitch are backing the Daffodil Day campaign to raise funding and awareness for the Irish Cancer Society.

The young woman, from Rhebogue in Limerick, is especially keen to highlight her symptoms of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma after being diagnosed last year. The cancer of the lymphatic system occurs when lymphocyte white blood cells grow in an abnormal way.

Courtney had been unwell for months when she couldn’t stop coughing and struggled to breathe while at an Ed Sheeran concert in Thomond Park last year. She had been unwell for months and had sought medical treatments — but the incident prompted her to go to her local health clinic.

“I was on an inhaler at the time, and everything was going fine till the smoke bombs started going off, and I could not breathe,” she recalls.

She attended the health care clinic and following a chest x-ray, was advised to have a CT scan of her thorax, chest and abdomen. The following day, she was contacted and asked to return to the clinic as soon as possible.

“They closed the door, and you knew when they were closing the door, something wasn’t right. They said: ‘You have Hodgkin’s Lymphoma’. They said it was cancer.”

Courtney was referred to chemotherapy treatment in University Hospital Limerick. Prior to beginning her chemotherapy treatment, she attended another clinic in Dublin for pre-treatment egg retrieval.

She has completed her treatment and will be having follow-up tests in May. She has returned to work in a local bowling alley and is also supplying social media services to businesses in her area.

And she had words of advice. “If you don’t feel like your body is right, get it looked at. Listen to your body if you don’t feel OK.”

To donate, go to cancer.ie/daffodilday