Isabel McCarthy, who was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer was looking forward to her Make-A-Wish experience according to her father Brendan.
The father of 16-year old Isabel McCarthy who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at 14 has said that he heard of the Make-A-Wish foundation fairly quickly after his daughter’s diagnosis.
Isabel McCarthy is one of the many young people to have a wish granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation after she received a diagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is a variety of blood cancer.
She was just 14 at the time. Isabel voiced her strong interest in sports, especially horse riding and show jumping.
“They brought it up fairly early to say that you might have something good to look forward to as well", he told The Moncrieff Show on Newstalk.
“It's something that over the six months, it was something positive to talk about all the time.
“She eats, sleeps, drinks horses, so I always knew it was going to come back to something related to horses.”
He added that the Make-A-Wish experience wasn’t just a day, but the “build up” to the event.
“To talk about it, the after it. The way they’ve been with us since she got her wish has just been amazing.
“We got a care package as well after it, with other things for her.”
Her father, Brendan McCarthy told host Sean Moncrieff that nobody expects that such a thing will happen to them.
View this post on Instagram
“You'd be frightened, you'd be angry, you'd be frustrated and, obviously, very upset.
“It all happened really, really quickly. So you kind of don't have time to process it fully.”
He praised the CHU’s for their amazing work, saying they had been “amazing during the whole process.”
Isabel McCarthy explained that before she was formally diagnosed she had initially tossed aside how unwell she felt as nothing had come up on blood tests.
few weeks later she felt a lump in her chest and consulted her GP immediately.
Wish Week 2026 Launch.“Things happened really quickly after that”, she said on the Moncrieff show Tuesday.
She said that getting used to the treatment was difficult but that it eventually became “a lot more normal.”
“It was part of my daily routine at that stage to take all the medicine at different times.
“During the time when I was getting chemo, it was about 20 to 30 different tablets a day. Those would be spread over, I think it was every six hours."
As she was diagnosed during the summer break, Isabel took it upon herself to inform her friends.
“It was also over text, so I didn't really see their like, reaction in real time, but it was all very supportive."
Donations are now open for Make-A-Wish 2026.
Main Image: Make-A-Wish Ireland logo.
