THE WELL KNOWN Irish radio and television broadcaster Áine Lawlor was given an additional title yesterday – that of cancer survivor.

Speaking of her own personal experience with the disease at the launch of Daffodil Day 2013, Lawlor spoke of being left “harder on the outside and softer on the inside” as a result.

While cancer introduced both sufferers and their families to some very harsh realities, she said it was the softness that had stayed with her.

Remembering the “great kindness and support” that followed her cancer diagnosis, it helped bring her “into a community” that she hadn’t known before

You don’t know the way that people leave vegetables and dinners at your front door. You don’t know about the way that neightbours just take your children and look after them for you.

“People do all those kind things for you because they know you have cancer,” she said.

Speaking of “the privilege” of sitting in a cancer ward, the realisation soon hit that there was nothing unique about her situation and that “there’s hundreds and thousands of people in this country going through these treatments.”

We can’t cure cancer. We can’t make these horrible realities go away and too often we can’t take the pain away from the lives of our loved ones.

But what we can do, and what we do on Daffodil Day, is to support the work of the Irish Cancer Society.

Read: Daffodil Day campaign aims to raise €3.4m >