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WHEN I WAS diagnosed with prostate cancer in May last year at 53 years old, I was quite pragmatic about. My diagnosis came totally out of the blue after a routine blood test, but it seemed straightforward – I thought I’d have surgery to remove my prostate, and the cancer would be gone.
A few months after surgery to remove the tumour and some radiotherapy, I started to develop pain in my hip. I had an MRI in December to try to figure out the cause. My wife, Karen, came with me to get the results, there and then they told us that the cancer had spread significantly. Hearing those three words, ‘it’s stage four’, knocked us sideways. We couldn’t’ believe it.
I had chemotherapy after I was told the cancer had spread, but it didn’t really work in my case. Now I take hormone treatment via injections and oral tablets which seem to have things under control for the moment, but I’ll be on treatment for the rest of my life.
What I didn’t realise was that along with undergoing a tough treatment plan, I’d also be crushed by the cost of cancer and forced to grapple with the financial stress that my diagnosis brought about.
Self-employed
The hardest part of having cancer has been the emotional and financial cost to my family over the past 18 months. My wife and I have four children ranging from 15 to 25 years old. The impact on them has been significant, both financially and personally. I recently broke my wrist and had to have surgery arising from a minor fall playing tennis with my daughter, because my bones are much weaker due to the treatment I am receiving.
I am a self-employed pharmacist, but due to the nature of my work I have to pay someone to fill my role for every day I take off work. Currently, I attend oncology once a month. I may have scans on other days of the month, but it can be on an ad-hoc basis.
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The cost of having to hire someone to fill my role on the days I have to take off due to hospital visits, scans and illness has been significant on my business. This year, it has cost at least €2,000 a month to get someone to cover for me. Due to fatigue from my treatment, I am unable to work eight-to-ten-hour days, five days a week, as would have been my normal.
On top of this, I’ve had to pay out of pocket for so many things. The costs have really taken a toll.
After my surgery I had to switch hospitals and consultants due to the level of my health cover. My cancer had spread further so this meant new consultants, some of whom required hefty fees for first-time consultations.
The very nature of cancer treatment often leads me to visit various different doctors and consultants as my treatments become more complex. Each visit requires a fee which, over the year, amounts to lot of money.
If you’re referred from one consultant to another consultant, you have to pay €200 or €300. Because I had a reaction to a medication for my cancer treatment, I had to get a referral to a gastroenterologist and that cost another €250.
Stage Four
I am told my cancer is at stage four and I will be on medication for the rest of my, costing at least €80 per month, as not all my medications are covered on the Drug Payments Scheme.
I strongly believe that every cancer patient should be automatically entitled to a medical card at the point of diagnosis, to protect them from the financial toll of a cancer diagnosis. This is something that the Irish Cancer Society is calling on the next Government to implement, and I support it.
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It’s crucial that everyone going through cancer treatment can have access to the care they need, without worrying about how they will pay for it.
One in two of us will get a cancer diagnosis in our lifetimes. On top of dealing with the fear and stress of a cancer diagnosis – going through treatment and managing side effects, cancer patients, like me, are facing crippling costs and a loss of income and are struggling to make ends meet.
Having cancer is hard enough, patients shouldn’t be focused on mounting bills.
The next Government needs to deliver the cancer care that Ireland deserves, to ensure that cancer patients and their families can focus solely on their treatment and getting better, without having to worry about how they’ll make ends meet due to the burden of healthcare costs at an already stressful time. Going through cancer takes an enormous toll on your body and, until things change, your pocket, too.
Mark McCormick is a cancer patient and pharmacy technician.
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“thriving economic entity that is the Republic of Ireland”- When you look at our economy from the outside it’s hard to disagree with this assessment. However despite the fact that our GDP continually grows at one of the fastest rates in Europe year on year I for one don’t feel any better off than I did ten years ago. Housing is more expensive, childcare is more expensive, filling my car up is more expensive, hospitals are still overcrowded, public transport is still poor I could go on. Ireland may be a richer country on paper but the majority of its citizens don’t seem to be any better off.
@Michael OKelly: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Property speculators who produce nothing are thriving and the hard working middle class are screwed.
@Conchubhair MacLochlainn: £2 is a lot tho. same island why the difference, when you cook it down, it’s us, Irish people elect farmers and chancers to look after us like livestock. We should join Britain
@thesaltyurchin: It would be a huge disparity if it were true, a quick internet search reveals the difference is more like 30c. The amount of factuality in that fact is wee indeed.
The DUP MP, Jin Shannon Should Get his “wee facts” straight before he goes scare mongering regarding costs in Southern Ireland compared to Northern Ireland. His bench mark of cost of Big Mac is interesting. In Southern Ireland cost of Big Mac is €4.50, while in Northern Ireland ((UK) is 3.69 Stg, equates to €4.30.
A difference of 20 cent NOT Stg 2. 00.
Also, cost of entry to A&E is a once off per annum ( and will soon be removed)
Whíle there is a charge for GP visit at least there isn’t an extensive waiting time for an appointment, and in most cases you will see your own doctor, not one of a panel.
If you are in need of a joint replacement, and if you don’t have private health insurance, you will have to wait many years in UK.
Jim, according to statista.com, Venezuela is home to the world’s most affordable Big Mac: at just $1.76 per sandwich. Maybe, we should all move there? Junk food, junk politics.
The welfare rates are £80 a week in north €220 a week in south. Average wage in north is £22k whilst in south it €35k. The medical card is available to those who earn less then €350 a week so its a myth that everyone will have to pay GP fees. The recent GDP of north resident was £22k while it is €52k or roughly that in south. Also that €100 charge for hospital I think is being abolished. Whatever has to be said about cost living being higher in south the wages and welfare rates are higher to offset that.DUP just cannot handle that unification is on the cards in the future.
That’s typical of the D.U.P. always blame someone else, was the Irish Government meant to sit back and not attract Investment, if our Government did do that, Mr Girvan would then claim how great the Unionist State of N.I. was, and how much a basket case the Republic was. If Mr Girvan’s Party went back into Government they might be able to help formulate a better Fiscal Policy for N.I. Let’s not forget they were responsible for that Policy all the Years they were in Power. Finally would some Politician please invite Mr Shannon down South and him see how different things are down here, while it’s not perfect it’s strange how he quotes from the extreme all the time. I wonder does he know his former Party Leader Mr Paisley RIP and his Colleague Mr Campbell came to Donegal for their Clothes.
Well if we want a united ireland and it is voted the DUP need to make up their minds are they irish British or only British if the want to be only British best place for them is UK
I remember the song, “Irish ways and Irish laws” by Moving Hearts. I thought I’d see a United Ireland but with mass immigration to the island, that song has really lost its meaning. Romantic Ireland is dead and gone, it’s with O Leary, in the grave.
What I want to know, is if there WAS a huge referendum and a united Ireland was decided, would it take as long or longer than Brexit. I mean that’s going on for 7 years now and it’s STILL not fixed.
@alan: you mean you actually saw a basic point in those ramblings. 15 medical centers have returned their contacts in past year or so in north. Entire communities are being left without GP services at all.
Ronald McDonald, isn’t he related to that wee Fenian leader? The food of the devil. Seriously though, Jim Shannon has a point about price disparity but he might want to mention wage disparity too in order to have the full picture. As for Paul Givan, if he really believes what he says, he suffers from acute delusion.
This is an incorrect statement by MP Jim Shannon. According to McDonalds Prices UK 2023 a Big Mac is £3.69 which according to xe.com is roughly €4.22. On McDonalds Prices Ireland it is €4.33, therefore only 11 cents more expensive
Mr Shannon
Old age pension OAP( Basic)in NI is £ 185 while the OAP in the Republic is €253 (£ 220) The weekly gap is £35. You could nearly buy 10 Big Macs with that and have some change legt over.
@SquideyeMagpie: They only have McDonald’s in three countries in Africa. US journalist Thomas Friedman had a “Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention” which argued that no two countries with a McDonald’s had ever been to war, though NATO attacked Serbia shortly after he came up with it and the locals responded by thrashing a McDonald’s.
The very fact that an Ulster unionist is even making such a comment is a sign of just how much the ground has shifted since Brexit – their inability to foresee this shows their not exactly the sharpest tools in the box.
Meantime – when Storming is actually operating SF argues that the folk up north would be better off ruled from Dublin.
Meantime in the Dail the same party argues that Ireland a terrible place of poverty injustice and inequality.
Ya gotta love modern politics
@bernard berry: Sorry, but when it comes to the DUP, there is no point. And I suggest an overweight middle-aged man should have long abandoned his interest in Big Macs.
These DUP guys are clowns. Big Mac’s. My God. The latest studies show that the average household has 12% more disposable income in Ireland than the equivalent in the north. Salaries are higher here. Almost a third of people have a medical card which is in effect free healthcare and there is free GP visits for under 6’s and now anyone on an income of under €46k net with further expansion of this on the way. The average life expectancy in Ireland is 1.4 years more than in the north. That takes account of the general quality of life and healthcare. That is the real acid test. Thee are huge waiting lists on the NHS. I don’t know what we are even talking about here. NI is an economic backwater surviving on handouts from London. It is basically on the dole. The economic output in Ireland couldn’t be more contrasted. We are near the top of the league in the world never mind Europe. It’s farcical. Yes the government badly need to get their finger out on housing but everywhere has some sort of problem that needs to be fixed. The bottom line is that Ireland is a dynamic business friendly economy that is the European destination of choice for countless companies. These clowns in the DUP pushed a hard brexit in what was already an economic wasteland. Go figure how that will continue to pan out.
He is right, it is a rip off k i p the Irish republic and McDonalds are only doing what all business’ here do..offer no value for money and the Irish say ‘sure that’s grand’..Baaaa
Big Mac price comparison? How about (i) people in RoI have a life expectancy 1.5 years longer (on the same island!) (ii) people in the North are at 50% greater risk of poverty (iii) the impact of your social class on your educational attainment is 3x higher in the North.
Are we not in the middle of a cost of living crisis? We are one of the most expensive countries to live in. I must say I empathise with the unionist take on this, at least economically
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