‘If I’m going to die, I’m going to fit as much living into the years I have left,” Olympian Ciara Mageean has said on her stage four cancer diagnosis.
Ms Mageean, who the current reigning European 1,500 metre champion from Co Down, was diagnosed with bowel cancer last year.
She currently holds the world record for parkrun at 15 minutes and 13 seconds. Ms Mageean said her “fierce competitiveness” from an early age has fuelled her career.
She continued to play camogie into her late teens at club level until she began competing in athletics at the World Championship stage at junior level.
Last year while at a training camp in Font-Romeu in France Ms Mageean was on a spin bike and had to jump off the bike four or five times in the middle of her spin session.
“That session might have only been an hour and Tommy was the one who said, ‘You need to get that checked, there’s something not right,” she told RTÉ Radio 1’s Brendan O’Connor.
Through her nutritionist, Ms Mageean set up an appointment with the sports doctor at the Sport Ireland Institute, who referred her to St Vincent’s Hospital for a scope of her bowel.
“I thought that would just be a routine little scope and I wouldn’t find out results for a bit after. But instead on that very day I found out that I had cancer.
“Most people, when they are told they have cancer, they’re on the ground crying.
“For me I was said, ‘Jesus, that’s not good’. I was probably so shocked that it was an unusual reaction. But because I’m so young and healthy, I thought it’ll be at an early stage.”
Months later, flanked by her partner Tommy and her sister Myra, she was told by her colorectal surgeon that she had stage four cancer.
“Tommy and I sat in the car, basically in a stunned silence and just began to cry. For the next few days it was rough, very emotional really.”
After Ms Mageean’s first 12 rounds of chemotherapy she was told that surgery and radiotherapy were not options.
“My oncologist, at that point, gave me the prognosis of probably two to three years,” she told the show.
“I walked out of that hospital appointment and I said, an expletive, I’m going to Costa Rica, and I’m having fun, because if I’m going to die, I’m going to fit as much living into the years I have left.”
She then travelled to Costa Rica to participate in RTÉ’s Uncharted with Ray Goggins, taking on an outdoor expedition.
She is now planning a wedding with her partner Tommy.
“While I’m feeling fit and healthy, and looking the way I do, I want to go and enjoy a celebration and marry the man I love.
“We will have a wonderful day, but I’m going to have a busy few months of planning a really quick turnaround for a wedding, we’ll be choosing the venues, picking a band.
“A celebration of life is what I want and I hope that that’s also what comes through in my book [My Greatest Race] is that hope that we can all have, even in our darkest hour.”
