Lynsey Bennett says she "can’t believe" she's still alive today, one year after she settled her legal case over her cervical cancer diagnosis.
The 33-year-old from Killoe in Co Longford was diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer in 2017.
Due to the delay in diagnosing it, she sued the HSE and the US lab that analysed her slide - claiming it was allowed to grow and spread without detection.
She ultimately settled for an undisclosed sum last February - a settlement she hopes will free her two young daughters Zoe and Hayley from financial worries.
A year after that settlement, Lynsey spoke to The Hard Shoulder again to give an update on her condition.
She told Kieran she was told in November 2020 that she had six to eight months to live due to the aggressive nature of her cancer.
She said: “It’s amazing. I can’t believe I’m still here. That doesn’t mean that I’ll be lucky enough to be here next year.
"The cancer in my bowels has started to grow… even in the last four or five weeks it grew a lot."
However, she said she's very lucky to have the quality of life she currently has.
She said: “Don’t get me wrong: I have bleeds from my bowels and there are days I have pains.
“But this is a quality of life I could live at if I could for the next couple of years if I have any way of getting the cancer under control.
"Unfortunately, it is not stable anymore - that’s why I knew I had to get back to somewhere else again.
“I’m not delusional - I’m hopeful. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.
“That’s why I wouldn’t take the double dose of chemo: I knew my quality of life would be gone in no time, and I would be incredibly ill and not able to enjoy time with anyone.”
She said talking about the situation with her younger daughter Haley can be very difficult, but she tries to be as honest as she can.
She said: “I had said to her… ‘none of us know when we’re going to go to Heaven - the only thing I can promise you is that I’m doing everything in my power to stay here’.
“She seemed happy enough. But at the same time, every night, she’s still in the bed beside me - which she’s never done before."
Treatment
Lynsey had been travelling to a cancer centre in Mexico to receive treatment there, and had been seeing "fantastic results".
However, she was told she couldn't fly so would need to travel by boat - something that made travelling as far as Mexico 'impossible'.
She's now hoping to travel to Germany in the next week or so, to receive further treatments there.
While it will still likely take her over a day to travel there by boat and train, she hopes it will be a "more sustainable" trip than Mexico if she needs to travel back over for further treatments.
Lynsey said what she needs is not available in Ireland, and the treatments she has received so far - including the Pembrolizumab immunotherapy treatment - have seen her immune systems take a major hit.
She told Kieran: “I need to go back and really be cared for by people 24 hours a day, having all the best food and all that stuff put in front of me to build myself back up.”
Lynsey stressed that the German team has been “very upfront” and they don’t promise to cure patients.
However, they've said they will at least try their best to stall the growth of her cancer - and Lynsey hopes that will at least ensure she has a good quality of life to spend valuable time with her daughters and loved ones.
