11/08/2025
🗞 The Irish Independent 🗞
Delighted to feature in the Irish Independent and discuss my personal experience of having leukaemia as a child and the research I am now conference on life after childhood leukaemia
Check out the Health & Living section of today's paper to see the full article!
As always thanks to Breakthrough Cancer Research and Research Ireland for funding this research
While we mostly associate the disease with older people, cancer can and does also affect children. Around 190 youngsters under the age of 16 and around 70 teenagers aged between 15 and 19 diagnosed with the disease each year in Ireland.
Avril Deegan was one such child. At five years of age, her parents noticed that she was experiencing a lot of unexplained bruising and seemed to be permanently tired, so they took her to the doctor to get checked out.
After blood tests were taken, the family was told, to their horror, that the little girl had leukaemia.
“I was referred to Crumlin Children’s Hospital and spent the next two and a half years in treatment, either staying in hospital or going up for appointments. I know I lost my hair and probably had quite a tough time, but I don’t have many memories of the bad stuff, I think I must have blocked them out," says Avril.
The Laois woman survived her childhood cancer, but says that despite not having any vivid recollections of the time, she has a subconscious awareness of what it is like to be a young cancer patient. This prompted her to study psychology in college, and afterwards to do deep research into the after effects of the disease.
She is currently working as a Breakthrough Cancer Research-funded PhD researcher in psychology at DCU. Her work focuses on the transition back to normal life after treatment ends, a stage, she says, that is underfunded and not given enough emphasis.
