Ciara McGeehan

Cancer patients, we look like normal people and we feel like normal people on our good days, hopefully.

So, yeah, it's an interesting thing that I've heard a few cancer patients say, like, oh, people are like, I'm so surprised.

I'm like, ah.

I'm glad I'm like thanks she's telling me I look great wonderful but yeah it's tough I don't know where I am right now all I do know is that I am going to pursue second opinions I'm going to leave no stone unturned with regards to trying to

Definitely.

It's something that like I still find it hard and I find it hard to verbalize like that complete wave of emotions where you've got this massive tidal wave off the cancer diagnosis, but around it are also pretty significant waves on a normal day that would knock somebody for six.

Yeah, like that on its own, my experience of having to withdraw from Paris, that on its own is really tough.

Then coming back and going through my surgery and the recovery from that, that on its own was really tough, is really tough.

being told that you might not ever get to have a family.

That's soul crushing.

And I know so many people will resonate with that because as you get older and you're kind of thinking about starting a family, you're like, oh goodness, you know, it doesn't always work out for everybody.

And like that alone, like being told that.

And that I didn't really get to process that.

And

to even acknowledge it necessarily because straight into chemo and the main over overall thing is that you might die so it puts other things into perspective but there's only big things yeah it's only fair to to get to grieve them too and i will say that i think the book gave me an opportunity to do that right um

Cliona did such a good job of probably putting my voice down there like it's hard like reading my own story like I don't know it's my voice so whenever I read it I don't know if it sounds like my voice you know you don't have that ability to to necessarily know that yourself but the other people have said that I'm like okay that's that's amazing that's a testament to Cliona's writing ability um

But also I really feel for Glenna and if you read the acknowledgements at the back, like Glenna Godlover was like a therapist on the way through because we were talking about things and like talking about the highs and lows of my career, which are all things that

you know, I deal with them at the time, but like I was always very much next season, next race.

You just kept focusing.

So talking about the latter stage of my career, whenever it didn't go the way I wanted it to, breakdown of relationships and pulling out of Paris, that was really, really tough to verbalize and put down because I had actually barely processed it myself.