Róisín Ingle on her bittersweet year after cancer diagnosis

Journalist Róisín Ingle has given a moving account of finding out she had cancer in what would prove to be a remarkably bittersweet year.

Recounting that moment she recalls how discovering rough skin around her nipple prompted her to visit her GP and subsequently the Breast Clinic at the Mater Hospital.

After rounds of mammograms and ultrasounds, she got the news no one wants to hear: they had found tumours in her left breast.

Amid her shock and fear, she writes in her column for the Irish Times was an awareness that it was her 'turn' having seen several friends go through the same diagnosis over the past twenty years, but then things got worse.

'The surgeon said I'd have a rough year and then all would be well.

'As is often routine, I was sent for some more scans and on 8 December I was told that the cancer had spread to my bones and lymph nodes. Things were different now.'

It was this second diagnosis that cut deeper and initially sent her spiralling until she came to the realisation that she would have to face what was happening and what was to come and feel all the feelings associated with it.

Telling her children was another story. Breaking the news to her two daughters was unimaginably heartbreaking.

There were tears and a very understandable comment about Christmas being 'pointless' under the circumstances, still, they persevered with the festivities but there were more setbacks to come.

While on the way to a carol service at St. Patrick's Cathedral Róisín slipped and broke her ankle, an injury that required inserting titanium rods and a plate into her leg.

She got out of hospital in time for the big day and her first alcohol free Christmas where the meriment came from time with family and proved not to be so pointless after all and in fact according to one of her girls 'the best ever.'

Then she got sick again, this time contracting C.diff which can cause damage to the kidnesy and e-coli. As she underwent treatement her hair began falling out, and then in February she damaged her 'good' leg falling down the stairs and received skin graft surgery.

It was at that point that she picked up the reigns of her life again and risked further injury by getting down on one knee to pop the question to her partner of 24 years on Leap Year Day.

He said yes and five months later just as she finished chemotherapy they tied the knot at Roberta's in Temple Bar. Róisín ditched the traditional white in favour of a Bridgerton-esque tulle gown in the brightest shade of pink by Anne O'Mahony and a wig styled by Stephanie Nwambu.

'It was apart from the day my daughters were born, the best day of my life.'

Reflecting on where the past 12 months have taken her Róisín is certain of three things, life can still be beautiful, sympathy while lovely is uneccesary and that she refuses to be defined by her cancer.