Kildare woman's breathlessness turned out to be cancer
Samantha Vaughan next to family portrait
Talking about her initial symptoms and diagnosis, she said: “I remember being so breathless at work and I used to keep getting this hoarseness in my voice and so I got an inhaler off the doctor even before I had Covid. I got Covid in October and when I got it I was extremely bad. Then when you were able to go into the doctor I said to her something’s not right. That same week I kept getting this pain on my left lung area and I said is there any chance of getting an X-ray.
“I phoned back just looking to see could what was the story on the results and she said that they found a lesion on your right lung. I was confused as I had pain on the left side.
“I could afford to go private so I said I’d prefer to go private and get a CT rather than wait within the public system. So the next week I got the scan at eight o’clock in the morning in another hospital and at half four that evening when I was leaving work, my own doctor phoned me and said a tumor has showed up in my lung. I don’t even remember driving home that day to tell you the truth. just heartbreaking.”
When it came the time for surgery, Samantha was called in urgently.
“When I went in for my operation I was going in to have half my lung removed,” she said. “I was actually in work at eight o’clock in the morning when I got a phone call to basically say we’ve got a bed for you tomorrow.”
Post-operation, Samantha felt she was left without much support from the health system.
She said:“ I was just so gobsmacked. It was like there’s your drugs off you go we’ve done your operation, we’ll follow up. I remember going back to my doctor and saying there has to be something else and she said well there’s stuff for COPD, we’ll try and get you into a therapy there.”
Samantha found her tribe in the Cuisle Cancer Support Centre in Portlaoise, where she attends counselling as well as many other holistic therapies.
She said: ”I go to the Cuisle Centre and I get counselling. I did Reiki and mindfulness with them. I did the mindfulness because I wanted to learn breathing exercises. I did chair yoga to start building myself up physically too. The best thing I did was go to counselling for the anxiety of it. It’s the mental part of it that people forget.”
Since her diagnosis, Samantha has been a shining light for lung cancer awareness, pushing herself above and beyond by taking part in various fundraising events, as well as achieving personal milestones such as climbing Croagh Patrick on the year anniversary of her operation.
She helped raise money for the Cuisle Cancer Support Centre by modelling for them when she was only three months post-op, and modelled for them again recently. She has also taken part in the women’s marathon, and the colour dash run for the Irish Cancer Society, as well as campaigning for lung cancer patients to get the proper supports needed, such as parking permits for patients visiting hospitals regularly and a suitable weekly wage.
She said: “People with lung cancer or anybody with a really critical illness should be getting their full wages every week. If you’re on maternity leave you get better than what we are at the moment.”
Samantha urges those who feel they might have symptoms to go to their GP.
“Don’t be afraid to go to the doctor. Lung cancer can spread so rapidly in the lungs. I tell people if you feel there’s something wrong you have to speak up. If you can’t speak up, get somebody to go with you to make them speak up for you, because if you don’t advocate for yourself in this country you will get nowhere.”
