Ronan McGreevy
Radio presenter Louise McSharry has been diagnosed with cancer.
The 31-year-old broadcaster, who presents an evening show on 2fm, spoke this morning about how she was told she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma last week.
Ms McSharry said her first reaction was ‘what am I going to do now?’.
However, she is determined to remain positive.
“I’m very lucky because Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a curable cancer,” she said, adding that some 80 per cent of those who get the disease are cured after the first round of treatment.
Ms McSharry told Ryan Tubridy on 2fm this morning that she first got her appendix out in December. Afterwards, she lost her appetite, was experiencing night sweats and her periods stopped.
Originally, doctors thought she might have a residual infection from the appendix. Then she got a pain in the side “like a stitch” and large lymph nodes appeared under her arm.
She was admitted to hospital but felt “like a total fraud” because for most ofthe time she was there, she was well in comparison with the other patients. “They were sick and I didn’s feel sick,” she said.
Last Wednesday, she went into the hospital to get her results with her fiancée Gordon.
Her consultant told her “pretty straight” that she had cancer.
“I was literally taken aback. I was physically moved back. I couldn’t believe it. I had tears in my eyes immediately,” she said this morning.
“All I was thinking was, ‘how am I going to tell people this’. This is crazy. I’m going to have to have this conversation with people’,” she said.
The consultant told her that it was cancer, but she was in good shape and it had been caught early.
It is common in young people and she was in a “very strong position going into the treatment”.
The presenter had been filling in for Tubridy on RTE’s prime time 2fm slot.
She is getting married on August 20th next year, a year and a day from her diagnosis.
She is confident that after receiving her treatment, she will get back to her life.
Ms McSharry was born in Ireland but moved to the United States when she seven.
In an interview with The Irish Times earlier this year, she spoke about how her father died of cancer when he was 28. Ms McSharry was three years old.
Her mother was an alcoholic and the family moved to the United States.
Ms McSharry went to Chicago while her mother continued to battle with alcoholism. They moved around from home to home.
Eventually her mother left her children, and ended up homeless and paralysed after a violent assault. She is now sober and still lives in Chicago.
Ms McSharry was brought up by relatives in Ireland.
